Illustrations: Peter C. Espina/GT





With the rise of China, Western mainstream media by now ought to have increased its understanding of China, with its reports becoming more objective.



Yet the Western mainstream media always seems to fail to understand China and can never escape its prejudices.



Looking at Western reports about China, the media can never overcome its bias. It obsesses over China's negative side when reporting on the country. Though they also often report negative news in their own country, they will at least check the facts. While reporting Chinese news, they become more casual or even ignore their professional ethical codes. For example, when reporting on the 2008 riots in Lhasa, capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region, Western media used photos showing the Nepalese police beating Tibetan people in Nepal and reported that the perpetrators were Chinese soldiers. Why didn't they do more fact-checking before they reported this? What's worse, they didn't apologize even after the mistake was pointed out. The answer lies in their cultural arrogance.



Another reason is the limitation of Western philosophy and social sciences in understanding China. The Western reporting methods on China can be summarized as failing to see the wood for the trees - that is, they are sometimes accurate in reporting and describing a certain event, but the overall reports on China are absurd. Philosophical concepts may be responsible for this difference. Chinese philosophy lays emphasis on the whole while Western philosophy generally focuses on individuals.



The West has hardly made a correct political forecast for China over the past 30 years. Almost all predictions they made were wrong, such as China would follow the same path after the collapse of the Soviet Union; Hong Kong's prosperity would be gone forever after its return to the motherland; China would collapse after joining the WTO. In a word, the China collapse theory fell apart.



In this sense, we must re-educate the Western media to help them know the real China. The more people in the West that know the truth, especially the truth about the rise of China, the more likely they will see their own system's problems.



However, we cannot ignore the fact that the ideological and other biases from the so-called free Western media against China are ingrained. For example, although all Western governments recognize Tibet as part of China, students in the West still learn from textbooks that China occupied Tibet. The Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, presented to late Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, is another expression of Western prejudice against China. What lies behind the prize is the dreadful fear that some Western powers harbor about China's rise and Chinese-style development. Regardless of fear or suspicion, China's rise is unstoppable and Western hegemony may be going to end.



A German sinologist told me about the time he wanted to publish reviews in major German newspapers about his compilation of a collection of Chinese essays. But the editors told him that German readers were only interested in the works of Chinese dissidents, nothing else. As a Chinese saying goes, "it is impossible to clap with one hand." Understanding can't be reached if one side is eager to explain while the other turns a deaf ear. What matters is whether the West totally understands the real wishes of different nations and culture. As far as I am concerned, the West shows far less interest in understanding China than China wants to know the West.



The outstanding advantage of China's institutional arrangements is that it is more adaptable to pluralism, the technological revolution and the age of big data, because China's cultural genes are more inclusive and China's institutional arrangements are more dynamic and flexible.



With better understanding about the West, China can draw on the advantages and avoid disadvantages. While with arrogance and self-satisfaction, the West will find itself stuck in a political and economic impasse in the end.



Westerners have started to show growing interest in understanding China along with China's rapid development. The Chinese language has become more and more popular worldwide and China no longer cares much about Western prejudices. A West that believes in strength will try to understand a country that is developing, so we can hand the task of gradually understanding China over to the West. For example, there is no need to send a delegation to Western countries to introduce Tibetan affairs. The British never sent a mission to China to explain the Northern Ireland situation. Western media will continue to demonize China, but we do not need to care too much about the prejudices.



French scholar David Gosset said those in West that hold prejudices against China are like the frog in the well - a Chinese idiom used to deride a mix of parochialism, narrow-mindedness and complacency - in his article published in the Asia Times. He wrote in his article: "Can the West open itself to a Chinese renaissance as China opens itself to the world? If the West believes that it has nothing to learn from China - from its ancient wisdom, aesthetics and values - and if the West, facing the overall success of the Chinese model, refuses to question its own assumptions about economic and political modernity, it simply runs the risk of ending up as the last frog in the well."



The author is director of the China Institute, Fudan University. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn