Chinese state media discourages April Fools' Day
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
"That China’s propaganda apparatus has a problem with satire has long been evident. In 2012, The People’s Daily fell for a satirical report in The Onion voting North Korea leader Kim Jong-un the sexiest man alive. The Communist Party newspaper ran a 55-page photo spread in tribute to Kim, quoting the Onion as celebrating his devastatingly handsome looks, round face, boyish charm and strong, sturdy frame — not realizing it was satire. "
I really hope none of this is real. LIES all LIES?!?! :D
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...
Because the scans of the paper don't exist, it wasn't in the printed media, it's a 55-photos slideshow in an online English news site, and it was with the quotations from the Onion without any commentary:
http://www.commentary.com/region/asia_china-daily-screenshot...
Somebody had fun selecting 55 photos for the slideshow.
Isn't there an archive.org or something for that? what's the original link?
Curiously it looks like they switched(redirected) to en.people.cn from english.people.com.cn just days after this article was originally released. Not sure if this is an issue with archive.org and 301 redirects or if this actually occurred on this date.
Interesting either way.
I could not find instances of any of the other pages correctly archived, sorry m8.
I case anyone is interested and doesn't want to transcribe from a screenshot, this was the original url of the article: http://english.people.com.cn/90777/8035568.html
I am NOT trying to prove or disprove the credibility of the article.
Though, I do wish someone had made the arcade cabinet ipad holder thing... as a bluetooth game controller, with some classic arcade games, it could have been awesome.
Yes. Possibly with a stout stick. For some reason I really, really dislike a whole day when everyone is doing their best to spam me with misinformation for teh lulz.
Please do not joke that it's not illegal, this is serious, don't risk it!
Google Translate gives me: "Today is the West so-called "April Fool." "Fool's Day" is not in line with our cultural tradition, does not meet the socialist core values, I hope we do not believe rumors, do not spread rumors, do not pass rumors"
And the account seems to be "verified" by Weibo.
After all, Xinhua has traditionally avoided publishing opinions because their main role is a news agency, but with social media there is a lot less restraint than before.
Stop the presses, HN also mostly manages to "ban" April 1st from the first page. And never succeeds completely.
And to give you more insights on this matter, I shall use my response from another reply: Honesty and integrity has always been part of the China's cultural tradition and it was only recently added into list of "socialist core values". It is reflective of the general consensus of population on the core characteristics of a Chinese person, and not related to the Chinese government specifically. Hence there is nothing wrong with discouraging spreading of rumours (as NH now correctly named the title of this submission).
You mean the later I guess (just the law against the misinformation, not just on 1st of April)?
Like the medieval version of April Fool's Day, Saturnalia revelers would appoint a chief fool, the Saturnalicius princeps, whose commands had to be obeyed, no matter how silly.
From the examples it seems like China is actually trying to ban April Fools Day for western media, but the article doesn't make this clear, and it's difficult to imagine that is the case. So I find it hard to take this article seriously.
That's a good way of putting it. We've changed the title to reflect that.
No coverage on terrorism or tragedies around the world, but a piece of news about a country trying to fight rumors by banning a foreign holiday gets onto the front page. If you actually study a bit about China, you would know that rumors are a huge problem and people are not cautious enough to verify them before getting tricked into believing them.
People just love making fun of China, aren't they?
If India or Germany banned April Fool's Day, I imagine it would be treated similarly.
> If you actually study a bit about China
I grow up in China, and I know that the root problem is that it's a one-party state. There is no election whatsoever and the country is owned and abused by princelings and government officials. Rural areas are underfunded and manipulated so that resources are concentrated in the major cities. The justice system is not broken, but has never been built. Thought crimes don't only exist but are also prosecuted. With all these serious problems, you are telling me rumors are a huge problem?
Rumors are just a proxy. People are concerned about regional instability and human rights abuse, aren't they??
I agree with all the problems that you listed, but I believe the spreading of rumors is a problem that has to be tackled. It is true that there are many more problems to attend to, but why not fix them one by one, starting from the most obvious ones like rumors.
I'm more interested in the idea that "rumors" are a problem that needs to be tackled and the best way to do so is to ban them and only trust what is coming from the government. Isn't this type of system ripe for abuse? Let's say a rumor was that a certain government official embezzled $100M Yuan, but it was true. Perhaps that would be very embarrassing for the central party and thus they issue a statement saying that is not the case. Isn't it the public that is hurt in this situation?
However, you might not realize that there are many other rumours in China that are not true, and has nothing to do with the government per se, such as a disease outbreak or a certain foreign firm exploiting fellow Chinese people. These are the rumours that we need to fight.
I do not expect you to believe me though. After all you would not know any of those without living in China for a few years.
Plenty of FBI suppression of "thought criminals" too. They just have different names, like Black Panthers or anarchist.
The FBI struggles against a legal system and public that reaist its overreach. China has no check or balance.
The fact is, and I quote: “'April Fools' Day' is not consistent with our cultural tradition, or socialist core values,” state news agency Xinhua announced on social media Friday. “Hope nobody believes in rumors, makes rumors or spreads rumors.”
What you are suggesting is the opinion of the WSJ editor on this matter.
Which is also an opinion. But opinions like that are frequently given the force of law, and that's why stories like these provoke strong reactions.
You need to respect China's cultural tradition and socialist core values, which value honesty and integrity over disingenuity.
Yes I understand the culture of pranking may be prevalent in the West but it is certainly not in the roots of China's long culture.
There are a few hundred too many billionaires in Chinese government for anyone to believe that honesty and integrity and socialism are Chinese government values.
And the Chinese Communist government has no tradition -- is it a decent tyranny imposed on the Chinese people.
Honesty and integrity has always been part of the China's cultural tradition and it was recently added into list of "socialist core values". It is reflective of the general consensus of population on the core characteristics of a Chinese person, and not related to the Chinese government specifically.
The argument at hand is that clearly the Chinese government can't take a joke (among many other things, including the whole controlling/oppression thing), and the people of many other countries laugh about it because we find it amusing. It doesn't make us dishonest or bad people, just because we don't talk about how these are our "core values" and part of "cultural tradition."
Is it because common folk is too easy to fool? If so, wouldn't April's fools day improve critical thinking?
Note what the government calls rumors are often embarrasing news that the government wants to cover up. Legitimate news are often first reported by Reuters and other western media, and then in China. Sometimes true stories that circulate outside of China are never reported domestically. For example, the former premier of China has huge wealth overseas [1].
The Chinese government is suppressing free media and transparent information by cracking down on jokes/rumors. I have no idea what the h* you are doing here.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/business/global/family-of-...
中国人民是中国政府的最大受害者。
Rumors spread quickly in the United States too, often through Facebook and Twitter. We even have a website dedicated to debunking them (snopes.com). But we don't see rumors that Trader Joe's is going out of business, the Weather Channel switching to Celsius, or that the president is a Muslim as a particular problem or a justification for totalitarianism.
They put in much more efforts into crafting their speeches in order to make them look real and trick people into believing in them, nothing like the April Fool's joke. Hence it is a very difficult task to fight rumours in China, especially when people are having trust issues with the government.
> it is a very difficult task to fight rumours in China, especially when people are having trust issues with the government.
Is distrust of government such a bad thing? Here in the United States it's pretty much a founding value.
The thing that many westerners like you do not understand, is that it's not simply a fight between China and the free world, there are other parties that deliberately paint China black and the free world would gladly welcome them as their allies.
So when there is overwhelming evidence that China is bad, combined by the good investigative journalism and the rumors created by the 3rd parties, it's hard to distinguish one from another.
Now, there are plenty of people who disagree with me, some of them are good people, they present evidence and facts, and I do not try to argue my way out. But at the same time I had to recognize that there are people who pretend to be genuinely interested in freedom of speech but with the hidden agenda, which I had to disagree with.
The problem here is that the two are often mixed together, in news articles and on Wikipedia, hence it would appear that people like me are lunatic and having the mentality you described above.
Personally, from talking to many Chinese, I get the sense nobody really gives a damn what the gov says or does. A casual complaint here and there, but for the most part people are too worried about their boyfriend/girlfriends, mom/dad, schoolwork, do I look ugly?, food pics, and everything else the average person talks about.
Reading that the first time I thought 'hoaxing' was a chinese word.
How weird.
[1] xing: http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=worddict&wdrs...
[2] ying: http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=worddict&wdrs...
A quick Google of "hoax" suggests it's possibly derived from the 17th century noun "hocus".
The "xinger" is that "hoaxing" has a 腥: "fishy (smell)". ;) [1]
[1] http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictionary/characters/2962/
人家新华社哪有说禁止了？我不是党员难道非要遵守社会主义核心价值观？有本事来查我水表asdfuiygdfsnkkjseahf
> You Now, get clothes ! Do not see the wind is the rain all day, wanted to criticize about it, engage in a big news
> How can people Xinhua News Agency said the ban ? I do not have to comply with the Socialist Party 's core values ? I have the ability to check the water meter asdfuiygdfsnkkjseahf
Which I think is saying that regardless of what their government is telling them, Chinese folks are perfectly capable of using their heads and distinguishing truth from falsehood.
Been living in China for 10+ years and in the us for 10 years, Chinese memes are some next level shit.
And also, western media is kind of a joke. Xinhua puts a weibo saying don't spread rumors(it's comment section is full of jokes and satire, mind you), Washington post be like 'China bans April Fools Day'. Same things happened again and again, and will happen in the future.
Ironic propaganda. Analyzing soundbites requires slightly verbose context:
"Why do conservatives insist that democracy was invented in ancient Greece, and that it is somehow inherent in what they call 'Western civilization'—despite all the overwhelming evidence to the contrary? In the end, it’s just a way of doing what the rich and powerful always do: taking possession of the fruits of other people’s labor." [...]
"Democracy was not invented in ancient Greece. Granted, the word 'democracy' was invented in ancient Greece—but largely by people who didn’t like the thing itself very much. Democracy was never really 'invented' at all. Neither does it emerge from any particular intellectual tradition. It’s not even really a mode of government. In its essence it is just the belief that humans are fundamentally equal and ought to be allowed to manage their collective affairs in an egalitarian fashion, using whatever means appear most conducive. That, and the hard work of bringing arrangements based on those principles into being.
"In this sense democracy is as old as history, as human intelligence itself."
— David Graeber, "The Democracy Project"
The reason why soundbites win is because, "The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it."
> Even in ancient athenian democracy egalitarianism was not a thing: only "the chosen" landowning male native citizens had a say in collective decision making.
This is the point. It was a democracy amongst a group of citizens declared to be equal. It wasn't universal, and the fact that equals ultimately cast lots is neither surprising, nor was it granted to the world through Western culture through the Athenians.