Jeff Cole at PR 101 asked, “Why do people believe everything they read on the Internet?” Then Cole cites two examples in his PR 101 post to make a point. In both cases, what people read and believed without checking the sources led to a panic and may have caused children to suffer and die.
If interested in more details, click on the link in the first paragraph to read Cole’s post.
His conclusion was, “Many people will believe something no matter how outlandish it might seem.” He said, “People seem more willing to believe bloggers and others using social media without checking,” and he asked, “Doesn’t anyone check the source?”
Wanting another source on this topic, I searched further and discovered a Pew Internet Study (the first national survey of the use of social networking sites by adults) and read, “the typical internet user is more than twice as likely as others to feel that people can be trusted.”
After learning how gullible people are when it comes to reading something on the Internet, it should come as no surprise that China’s only national Red Cross society is fighting to keep the public’s trust after a scandal erupted when Guo Meimei, a 20-year-old woman, claimed on a Blog to have a link to China’s national Red Cross.
Guo bragged online about her luxurious lifestyle and triggered concerns among the Chinese public that money donated to the Red Cross in China was being misused. Source: China Daily
After bragging, Guo Meimei became a hot topic on China’s major micro blog website, Weibo.com. Her fans jumped from a few hundred to more than 108,000 within a short period.
Five days later, Shanghaiist.com reported that Guo was stopped at a Beijing airport from leaving China to visit Australia with her mother.
Shanghaiist‘s Robert O’Connor wrote, “Guo continued to deny connections to the Red Cross Society and asked reporters and internet users to “stop fooling around”.
When was the last time you believed something you read on the Internet without checking to see if it were true or not? A good place to start might be Snopes.com.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.
Passport reported, “India has one of the largest railway systems in the world, carrying about 19 million passengers every day on about 7,000 trains. It’s called the ‘lifeline to the nation’, Unfortunately, that often means trains are jam packed.”
It’s worth visiting Passport for the photos to see how crowded India’s trains get.
Then a friend, the author of East of Indus, about life in the Old Punjab, sent an e-mail that said, “Accidents can occur, but Chinese technology is as advanced as anywhere in the world. India’s development is not nowhere near that level; accidents with multiple deaths are a way of life in India and don’t shock too many people there.”
At this point, I asked myself what the ratio of deaths and injured were compared to the total number of people travelling by rail in India, China and the United States. After that, I spent several hours hunting for statistics, and finding facts for the United States was not easy.
What I discovered was, “China had 876.22 billion passenger kilometers in 2010; India had 838.03 billion passenger kilometers in 2009, and the United states had 17.21 billion passenger kilometers in 2008.
The United States has the largest railroad system in the world with 226,427 kilometers of rail (2007). China is third place with 91,000 kilometers (2010) and India is fourth with 64,215 kilometers (2011).
Then I found these statistics for the United States from an American government source.
In 1990, there were 599 fatalities and 22,736 injured in rail accidents.
In 2005, there were 525 fatalities and 10,424 injured.
In 2008, there were 514 fatalities and 7,993 injured.
For China in 1990, no rail accidents were listed, while India had seventy killed.
For China in 2005, there were five killed, while India had 122 killed and many injured.
For China in 2008, there was seventy-two killed and 416 injured, while India had no fatalities or injuries reported.
For China in 2009, seven were killed and 280 injured, while in India thirty-two were killed and 280 injured.
Source: List of Rail Accidents (Wiki) Note: I suspect this source gets most of its information from the major media reporting on rail accidents.
In the United States for 1990, 2005, 2008 and 2009 (combined), there were about 30.3 deaths for every billion passenger kilometers traveled. In addition, according to Parilman & Associates, a National Law firm that specializes in rail accidents, “Every ninety minute (in the United States) there is a train derailment or collision.”
For every billion passenger kilometers traveled in China for the same four years, there were .02 deaths.
For every billion passenger kilometers traveled in India, there were .07 deaths.
The death rate in America was 1,515 times higher than China for each billion passenger kilometers traveled.
In addition, delays are common on long-distance Amtrak routes in the United States. This is because private railroads own the tracks used by Amtrak, and are more concerned about their own freight trains than about Amtrak’s passenger trains. Average delays vary considerably among routes. However, as of 2008, Amtrak has increased its efforts and most trains arrive on time well over 50% of the time.
Note: As a journalist, I am aware that the media does not always report on types of accidents or tragedies that happen often. However, the media does report on rare accidents and tragedies such as an airplane crash. For this reason, it is possible that rail accidents are so common in the United States, the media does not bother to report most of them unless it is really horrendous, which leaves the public ignorant of how unsafe America’s rails are.
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.
On October 30, 1938, H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds was broadcast in the style of a radio news story with bulletins from reporters played by actors in the Mercury Theater, which resulted in hundreds if not thousands believing the earth was being invaded by Mars.
The excuse used to invade Vietnam and escalate the Vietnam War was the Tonkin Gulf Incident, which never happened as President Johnson claimed. This hoax led to the long war in Vietnam (1955 – 1975) with millions of troops and civilians killed and injured. Sources: The National Security Archive, Shakesville, and American USSR
Since 1950, when the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China invaded and reoccupied Tibet, we have been told repeatedly by our leaders, Hollywood celebrities and the Western media that Tibet was never a part of China before 1950, which was proven to be a lie by letters written in the 19th century by Sir. Robert Hart.
More evidence (that we do not hear of in the media) was published in the October 1912 National Geographic Magazine.
Now, Wiki Leaks reveals that the Tiananmen Square incident may be one of the biggest hoaxes in Western Media history or manipulation of the media by the U.S. government on a grand scale.
This revelation of the Tiananmen Square slaughter “that never happened” is big news in China, but in the West it is almost non-news.
After doing a Google search, it appears that only one Western media source published this story on June 4, 2011, and that was the UK’s The Daily Telegraph (to read the story click on the link).
To learn of this, I had to receive an e-mail from friends (American citizens) visiting China as tourists.
Wiki Leaks obtained cables that originally came from the US embassy in Beijing during the Tiananmen Square Incident, which partially confirms the Chinese government’s claim that PLA troops did not massacre demonstrators inside Tiananmen Square.
I wonder how many more Western media and U.S. government lies will be discovered in the future.
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.
If you suspect China is under a biased Western microscope being watched for every hiccup, the answer is “absolutely” yes and the evidence is overwhelming, while most of the world – especially the United States – is often ignored for the same sins and flaws.
On Saturday, July 23, 2011, China had its first railroad accident of the year, and it was reported globally with much criticism.
The Los Angeles Times shouts, “Deadly Chinese bullet train crash spawns anger, safety concerns”, and then reports that at least 43 people were killed and at least 200 injured.
The LA Times only had a few comments from readers and all that I read were insulting and negative of China.
MSNBC’s headline said, 32 die in China high-speed train crash and reported, “The total power failure rendered useless an electronic safety system designed to warn following trains of stalled trains on the tracks up ahead, and automatically halt them before a collision can occur.”
Comments such as this one followed the piece in MSNBC, “Anytime the Chinese get hosed by their own doing I just can’t feel bad for them… Better them than anyone else getting screwed by their quality control and reverse engineering.”
However, to be fair to MSNBC’s audience, there were many comments attacking ones such as the example I copied. It was a lively debate worth reading.
Yahoo News was much more critical of China than MSNBC by focusing on safety and previous train wrecks in China dredging up as much dirt as possible.
One comment of many said, “the traffic safety in china is a joke. a very big joke. they don’t care about people, they care about face, they only interested in propaganda and fighting the big imperialist empire. they struggle to show the communism is working. guess what, is not working. so next time when you reverse engineering something do it completely. ever heard of Line blocks ? and throw the CTCS down the toilet and flush. twice.”
What causes such cruel and often evil reactions such as these from the Western media and readers?
Is it resentment because China is fast catching up to the United States as a global economic superpower?
Is it ethnic/racial hate because they are Chinese?
Is it envy because the quality of life is improving in China while life in the West is crumbling and burdened by debt?
Is it because they have a government run by China’s Communist Party?
One example of the “always beat up China” syndrome is a flawed and misleading opinion piece written by Charles Lane for The Washington Post.
Charles Lane wrote, “China’s bullet-train experience shows what can go wrong when an unelected elite, influenced by corrupt opportunists, gives orders that all must follow — without the robust public discussion we would have in the states.”
I wonder if Lane would include the “robust public discussion” we had in the states leading up to the 2008 global financial crises caused by American and Western greed and corruption.
I wanted to put Charles Lane’s Washington Post opinion to the test and I Googled the “history of global train wrecks” and found a detailed history going back to the early 19th century.
To save time and space, I decided to compare rail accidents starting from 2007 for only two of the world’s largest democracies and China.
It should be mentioned that both India and China rely on trains to move people much more than the United States, so we should expect more injuries and deaths from rail accidents in those countries. For that reason, I will compare the number of rail accidents to see which country has the best safety record.
The lowest score wins.
In 2007, there were thirty-three rail accidents listed for the world, and the United States had nine (27% of the total) killing seven and injuring more than a hundred, while India had three accidents killing 80 and injuring twelve.
China (ruled by what Charles Lane calls the unelected elite) had two rail accidents killing four and injuring two.
Score: United States 9, India 3 and China 2
In 2008, there were thirty-four rail accidents listed for the world, and the United States had eight (24%) with twenty-nine deaths and almost 300 injured, while India had one rail accident with no deaths or injured listed.
China (ruled by what Charles Lane calls the unelected elite) had one rail accident killing seventy-two and injuring 416.
Score: United States 17, India 4 and China 3
In 2009, there were thirty-nine rail accidents listed for the world, and the united States had seven (18%) with seventeen killed and five injured, while India had four accidents with thirty-two killed and 280 injured.
China (ruled by what Charles Lane calls the unelected elite) had two rail accidents killing seven and injuring 280.
Score: United States 24, India 8 and China 5
In 2010, there were fifty rail accidents listed for the world, and the United States had three (6%) with 32 injured, while India had fourteen rail accidents with hundreds killed and injured.
China (ruled by what Charles Lane calls the unelected elite) had one rail accident killing nineteen and injuring 71.
Score: United States 27, India 22 and China 6
This year by July 23, 2011, twenty-one train accidents were listed for the world, and the United States had eight (35%) killing eleven and injuring eighteen, while India had five accidents killing seventy-one and injuring two.
China (ruled by what Charles Lane calls the unelected elite) had one rail accident with at least 35 dead and 200 injured.
Score: United States 35, India 27 and China 7
From 2007 to July 23, 2011, the world had 177 rail accidents. The United States had 20% of the total, India 15% and China 4%. Source: List of Rail Accidents (Wiki)
When I Googled “train accident in China 2011” there were 55 million hits. It seems that popular “bad news” about China spreads fast and then the Western blame game begins, which represents Charles Lane’s “robust public discussion” in a democracy.
A few more interesting facts to know before judging China’s rail system is that the average number of people traveling daily by train in China is 2.4 million, and in 2008, 1.456 billion people travelled 772.8 billion kilometers by rail.
I’d say with confidence that the odds are very good that if you travel by rail in China, you will reach your destination on time and without an accident.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.
When the Western media reports that a riot happened in China, do not mistake this unrest as a demand for a Western style democracy as the media did when the Tiananmen Square protests took place in 1989. Just because a few young people are captured on camera saying they want a democracy in China, that does not mean the majority of Chinese do.
For example, CNN reported a June 10, 2011 riot in Xintang located in southern China.
Witnesses and media reports said local officials beat up a pregnant migrant worker and her husband, pushing the woman to the ground. Mass protests ensued, quickly spiraling to violent clashes with government forces that spread to other parts of Xintang, a city of 400,000 residents, almost half of them migrant workers.
The result was the arrest of 19 men, which included nine teenagers.
If you read the CNN report, you will discover that a slowdown in economic growth (caused by the 2008 global financial crises, which started in the US) in China has caused social tensions between rural versus urban, ethnic minority against majority, and haves versus have-nots, which has led to several riots in different areas of China.
The same thing happened in 1947 when General (and dictator) Chiang Kai-shek ordered his army to quell a riot in Taiwan. The result was the 2/28 Massacre in Taiwan where30,000 civilians were killed by the military.
The reasons for riots around the world seldom have to do with a demand for a Western style democracy. Even in the Middle East where there have been riots and calls for democracy (according to the Western media), most of the people involved don’t know what a democracy is or how to set one up. They just want some form of social justice.
In 1992, in Los Angeles, there was the Rodney King riot caused by ethnic strife, which ended with about $1 billion in property damages with 53 people killed and thousands injured. The US Marines and Army had to be called in to regain control and there were shootings between the military and civilians.
Recently, in Oakland, California, there have been several riots due to the 2009 killing of an unarmed black man that took place at a BART station. Hundreds took to the streets to protest while looters broke into stores and set cars on fire.
In 2001, England had riots in three cities due to tensions in the South Asian Islamic community. It was estimated that the riot in Bradford, England involved about a 1,000 youths and eventually 1,000 police to end it.
A recent riot in Vancouver erupted after the Canucks lost the Stanley Cup. After the game, many teenagers went on a rampage attempting to shatter store windows and loot stores. When one man tried to stop them, he was jumped by no fewer than 15 people, who beat and kicked him until he was left a bloodied heap on the ground.
Wikipedia lists many of the reasons for riots, which may stem from the unlawful use of force by a group of police against civilians, prison riots, race riots, religious riots, student riots, urban riots, sports riots, and food/bread riots, which have taken place all over the world no matter what form of government a country has.
However, when the Western media reports riots in China, it is usually mentioned that China’s central government is challenged to prevent widespread grievances from taking place as if riots in China are different.
According to the history of riots, this challenge of an unruly civilian population is a problem all governments eventually face and the job of governments the world over is to end the killing and damage as soon as possible by whatever means to restore order.
In fact, Matthew 26:52 warns, “Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword,” which may also means if you take part in a riot, you risk death or injury.
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
To subscribe to “iLook China”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.
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