Now It's The Turn Of Mercedes-Benz To Grovel Before China, Over An Instagram Post Quoting The Dalai Lama

from the extremely-erroneous dept

A couple of weeks ago, Techdirt wrote about Marriott International kowtowing to China because of a drop-down menu that dared to suggest that Tibet might be a country. We noted that a newly-confident and increasingly aggressive China might well start finding more of these alleged "insults" to use as pretexts for asserting itself internationally. And sure enough, that's already happened again, this time with Mercedes-Benz. As a New York Times story explains, the German car maker posted an image of a white car parked on a beach, along with a quotation popularly ascribed to the Dalai Lama -- "Look at the situations from all angles, and you will become more open. #MondayMotivation" -- to its official Instagram account.

Becoming "more open" by looking at things from this particular angle didn't go down at all well in China, where the authorities regard Tibetan veneration of the Dalai Lama as a threat to political stability in the region. According to the New York Times, the post provoked an "outcry" from Chinese internet users, many of whom pledged to boycott the Mercedes brand. It's hard to gauge to what extent Chinese citizens did this spontaneously, or whether some of those protesting online were part of the authorities' well-oiled Internet surveillance and propaganda machine. In any case, what mattered was that the Chinese government was not happy at all, and Mercedes-Benz realized that if it wanted to carry on selling its cars in China, it had better start apologizing quickly and deeply. This it did by posting to its official Weibo account, translated here by the Shanghaiist:

This morning, we noticed that our company's international social media had posted an extremely erroneous message. For this, we sincerely apologize.

Although we deleted the post as soon as possible, we fully understand how it has hurt the feelings of people in this country, including our colleagues who work in the country. For this, we express our sincerest apologies.

The Chinese government evidently wanted to make the most of this new opportunity to humiliate a Western company. The People’s Daily, the ruling Communist Party's official newspaper, went so far as to berate Mercedes-Benz thus in a headline (original in Chinese):

If you do like this, you are an enemy of the Chinese people!

What makes the situation even more absurd is that Instagram is blocked in China, and so in theory nobody in the country could even see the ad. As with the Marriott International story, it underlines that the Chinese government now believes it has a right to dictate what should happen outside its borders, as well as within them.

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Filed Under: china, dalia lama, free speech
Companies: instagram, marriott, mercedes-benz

Thin-Skinned Chinese Govt. Declares Media War On Lady Gaga For Meeting With The Dalai Lama

from the how-to-look-small-and-petty dept

It's pretty common knowledge at this point that the Chinese government spends a great deal of time and effort attempting to censor the internet at its own whim. And, while the walls of censorship erected are penetrable with enough effort, it still results in much of the population being unable to search out information that might be embarrassing to the Chinese government, such as references to the Tiananmen Square incident, for instance. But while examples like that can make some measure of sense to outside observers, even as they still decry the censorship, the fact is that the Chinese government's application of this censorship has been managed so erratically and unpredictably that the result is everyone watches where they step for fear of a takedown.

Which naturally brings us to Lady Gaga, whose meeting with the Dalai Lama recently resulted in the Chinese government attempting to wipe her off of the China-facing interwebz.

Hong Kong news outlet Apple Daily reports that China’s Ministry of Propaganda and SARFT, the regulatory body that oversees media, ordered China’s broadcast and websites to stop offering Lady Gaga songs. They also ordered media outlets not to publish anything (link in Chinese) about Lady Gaga’s meeting with the Dalai Lama, other than what prominent state-media publications have written.

“[Media outlets] must resolutely struggle against Tibetan independence, and closely follow reports from CCTV, the Global Times, People’s Daily, and other reports and commentary from central media outlets,” the directive reads, according to Apple Daily.

The Tibet issue is one that China regularly regulates in terms of coverage, of course, and the Dalai Lama is the worldwide person of focus for the cause of Tibetan indpendence. Even so, reacting to a meeting with an American pop singer by attempting to scrub the internet of news of the meeting and her music seems delightfully ham-fisted, even for Chinese censorship. And, as per usual, it isn't working particularly well.

A search on QQ Music, one of China’s most popular music streaming sites, shows there’s still plenty of Lady Gaga music available.

Which makes, as usual, the attempt at censorship come off as both petty and the wild flailings of an ineffective government agency. That, I would assume, is not the perception that the Chinese government was hoping to achieve. There will come a day when this particular government finally understands that these censorship attempts don't work in any way other than to supply a great deal of egg on its collective face, but that day is apparently not today.

Filed Under: china, dalia lama, lady gaga, music, tibet