Media Thought of the Morning

As I'm writing this entry, it's one of those late nights/early mornings in which I woke up and had trouble falling back asleep. So I did what I always do when I can't sleep; I surfed the Web. I imagine that my Web surfing habits start off like just about anyone's. I begin by firing up the emails, followed by some general news sites. After those standard routines, I get into my specific areas of interest. One of them is the U.S. media.

I've been living in Hong Kong for over a year and a half now, but I still find myself a U.S. media junkie. Maybe it's because I don't read or write Chinese, but I find it harder to track all the things here which I like monitoring in the U.S. media. From weekly box office receipts to Nielson's top rated TV shows, I have several meters for how various movies, TV shows, books and comic books are doing. One place I frequent perhaps once every 2 weeks is a Website called the mediabistro, where it focuses on the U.S. TV and cable news media. It was at this site which I found a link to an L.A. Times article about how CNN was blacked out in China during an interview with Hong Kong's leader, Donald Tsang, when he spoke about plans on universal suffrage in Hong Kong.

I found this stream of media-centric Web surfing interesting for a couple reasons:

First, the Web has made it possible for me to be more in tune with the American media anywhere in the world. I'm more in tune with the state of the U.S. media living in Hong Kong, than I was 5 years ago living in the U.S. How's that for a sign of the times and what NYT's columnist Thomas Friedman calls the flat state of the world?

Second, is the way in which the U.S. media paints the state of Chinese censorship and democracy. My reaction just a year ago to this article is far different from what it is now that I live here as a permanent Hong Kong resident. A year ago, I would have thought about what a bunch of bastards the Chinese government has been for taking away the system of government that the British put in place. What the British set up here resulted in a Chinese city far more prosperous than any other in the mainland.

Now that I live here, my perspective has been clarified a bit. Don't get me wrong, I still hate censorship. But thanks to some friends here, they've pointed out a few things that are obvious if you bothered to read between the news headlines: There's more democracy in Hong Kong now under Chinese rule then there was during almost all of British rule.

Sounds strange doesn't it? But I do remember reading in the international press back in the '90s about how right before the handover back to China, the British Hong Kong governor, Chris Patton, put in last minute government changes to give the people of Hong Kong democracy. So when this British governor, who was appointed by British bureaucracy without universal suffrage, made these changes which were revoked by the incoming Chinese government, it looked like China was coming down hard on democracy. But several locals have told me that the people of Hong Kong have gained more rights and privileges in deciding government matters than they did under British rule, when relatively none of the local Chinese had much say in the British appointed government.

The truth of the matter is that Hong Kong is far from a democracy right now. But by living here in these times, I've got a lot better insight on the political and media war going on both sides. And with that closing thought, I think it's time I went back to bed now.