media - Will the real Li Xiguang stand up?


Some more issues to catch up with.
The famous dean of the journalism school at Tsinghua University, Li Xiguang, is already a case study at the Chinese journalism school for the strange way how he makes the right sounds in Western media about press freedom, but in Chinese does right the opposite. The recent crackdown on BBS's fits exactly the domestic agenda of Li Xiguang who does not want internet users to get online anonymously.
ESWN took the issue up and translated some of the Chinese material that sheds light on the split personality of this media professor. From an open letter by Liu Xiaobo:

Li Xiguang is the typical two-faced person, and he used English and Chinese to maximize his personal gains. In his essay titled "The Double Jeopardy of Chinese Journalism and the Dual Identities of Professor Li Xiguang", An Ti pointed out the following: Li Xiguang is a very peculiar person who can be split into two persons both named Li Xiguang. One of those persons uses the name "Lixiguang" when he speaks to the western media in English or pens essays in English to advocate the benefits of freedom of media and the perils of opinion suppression. The other person has the Chinese name 李希光 and is a hatchet person against freedom of expression inside China.

And an illustration by An Ti:

"During the SARS period, CNN interviewed him and asked him about why China imposed a national blackout on information. He bluntly pointed out that there was no need for the government to do so and that the media should be allowed to collect and publish news. Then he turned around and told the Chinese students that the whole SARS terror was manufactured by the foreign media."

ESWN blamese Western media like CNN for creating the confusion about what Li Xiguang is really representing:

Assuming that we accept that Liu Xiaobo's presentation is true (and you should not accept that as a certainty), who is to be blamed for the ascendancy of such a person as Li Xiguang? Alas, it is the western media (such as CNN) which accept his credentials and statements at face value without checking the record. In fact, you will probably be enchanted by two English-language links below. Indeed, one cannot blame the Chinese officialdom for wanting to shower even more praise and power upon him as long as he can hoodwink the western media.

Also at BNN.