The One With Aldacron

China’s response to Jack Cafferty’s recent on-air, negative comments about Chinese products and the Chinese government borders on the absurd. Cafferty said:

“I don’t know if China is any different, but our relationship with China is certainly different,” Cafferty said. “We’re in hock to the Chinese up to our eyeballs because of the war in Iraq, for one thing. They’re holding hundreds of billions of dollars worth of our paper. We are also running hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of trade deficits with them, as we continue to import their junk with the lead paint on them and the poisoned pet food and export, you know, jobs to places where you can pay workers a dollar a month to turn out the stuff that we’re buying from Wal-Mart.

“So I think our relationship with China has certainly changed,” he said. “I think they’re basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they’ve been for the last 50 years.

He later clarified that he was referring to the government when he said “goons and thugs”, not to the Chinese people. And China’s official response:

“Cafferty used the microphone in his hands to slander China and the Chinese people (and) seriously violated professional ethics of journalism and human conscience,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said Tuesday, according to China’s state-run Xinhua news agency.

She said Cafferty’s remarks “reflected his arrogance, ignorance and hostility towards the Chinese people, ignited indignation of Chinese (at) home and abroad and will be condemned by those who safeguard justice around the world.”

First of all, for China to accuse a foreign journalist of a lapse of ethics is like the Bush administration accusing another government of violating human rights. China ranks right near the bottom when it comes to the ethics of journalism. The tight control they have over their own media, restricting journalistic freedom to the point that there are few outlets that are anything other than a government mouthpiece, does not qualify the Chinese government to be a judge of ethics. Nor does the way they suppress any news that damage’s the country’s image, as most recently demonstrated by the protests over Tibet.

Secondly, Asians are generally very prideful. Any negative words about an Asian country or its people will hurt their pride. I’ve seen it frequently here in Korea when they’ve gotten bad press in other countries. But generally, they tend to keep it at home, with the local media going off on tirades against those who dares show such disrespect. China’s reaction, on the otherhand, is typical of a non-Democratic government. These dictatorial regimes love to publicly pout, call names, and throw tantrums when the foreign media says something they don’t like. Just look at all of the garbage that comes out of North Korea when they get their feelings hurt.

So I’m not surprised that the Chinese spokeswoman called Cafferty arrogant, ignorant, and hostile towards the Chinese. Nor am I surprised at the reaction of Chinese people, particularly since Cafferty didn’t explicitly indicate that he was talking about the government in his initial comments (though it most likely wouldn’t have made a difference). That’s to be expected. But accusing him of a lack of journalistic ethics quite defies logic, given their track record.

Then again, it says something that the Chinese place so much value on the opinions of Jack Cafferty. I’ve always like to hear his opinions, but I didn’t know he had that kind of influence!

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