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Comment by rajacombinator | Hacker News Reader

Wow ... if you scroll down (on mobile) and keep reading the articles there, it’s just an endless list of “really bad stuff happening in China.” To the extent that I had to look up whether SCMP is some kind of American propaganda outfit. And ... from what I can tell it seems to be heavily influenced by the Chinese govt. Can someone with more insight offer a quick rundown of how SCMP fits into Chinese media?

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SCMP is a prestigious newspaper and the “newspaper of record” for Hong Kong.

However, recently it was bought out by Alibaba, which is of course a Chinese company. The articles still don’t seem that much pro-Chinese, however this does have some sinister overtones for the future, and fits in well with the Chinese strategy of steady expansion / soft subtle influence of foreign govs and institutes.

as long as they keep publishing nominally critical articles, they can also pick and choose among the available news stories and over time start burying the worst and even becoming a propaganda arm. "look even the SCMP says things are getting better, and they're the critical ones"

SCMP has hired a few former Straits Times journalists with an ax to grind with Singapore, and the articles they churn out have a decidedly anti-Singapore, pro-China bias. The messaging became more strident ever since it got bought by Alibaba.

Although the Chinese government occasionally manages to exert its influence to prevent particularly inconvenient reporting, the SCMP is still a mostly independent outlet similar to newspapers in the West. Consequently, the SCMP website is blocked by the Great Firewall so that Mainlanders can't easily read anything critical of their government.

>SCMP website is blocked

scmp.com is no longer blocked in China. This is likely due to content changes as a result of their purchase by Alibaba.

>mostly independent

SCMP is known to water-down and remove stories critical of China and its leadership. Jack Ma acquired SCMP to promote positive news of China abroad. See this Nytimes article [0].

>In effect, Alibaba has taken Hong Kong’s English-language paper of record since the days of British rule and put it on the leading edge of China’s efforts to project soft power abroad. Every day, The Post churns out dozens of articles about China, many of which seek to present a more positive view of the country. As it does, critics say it is moving away from independent journalism and pioneering a new form of propaganda.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/31/world/asia/south-china-mo...

Another thing is that some stuff that Americans consider dystopian are seen as good by PRC citizens; for example thieves getting apprehended by leveraging ubiquitous cameras and facial recognition, getting train discounts for not knowing people banned from wechat etc. My guess is all the nutty stuff that went down in the mid 20th century makes "stability" much more attractive

It's difficult to gauge how well-liked a policy is when you're in a country that very plainly has no free speech. To see why, imagine what would get posted to Facebook if you got a free ice cream cone for expressing support of the free ice cream Facebook posting law. (I.e. even people who didn't support it would pretend to in order to "get theirs.")

> it’s just an endless list of “really bad stuff happening in China.”

It's not necessarily inaccurate. I lived in China for a few years and still try to keep up with news about China, and it really seems to me like one worrisome thing after another.

I don't think this is necessarily perceived as bad publicity or anti-mainland propaganda. This can easily be perceived as PSA "listen, in china laws are draconian, deal with it."

SCMP was founded as a pro-british propaganda newspaper in the early 20th century and has pretty much remained so while switching owners ( rupert murdoch then robert kuok ). SCMP's claim to fame is coining and popularing the propaganda term "Rape of Nanking" during ww2 when the japanese invaded british/western interests in nanking.

It was bought out by Jack Ma in 2016. Jack Ma is the founder of Alibaba and it is rumored that he maintains close ties to the chinese government/party.

It is assumed that SCMP will be the english language pro-beijing propaganda arm going forward.

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