The following article was brought up in a forum:

As they eagerly await the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese people express extraordinary levels of satisfaction with the way things are going in their country and with their nation’s economy. With more than eight-in-ten having a positive view of both, China ranks number one among 24 countries on both measures in the 2008 survey by the Pew Research Center’s Pew Global Attitudes Project. These findings represent a dramatic improvement in national contentment from earlier in the decade when the Chinese people were not nearly as positive about the course of their nation and its economy.

The Chinese people’s puffed chests are understandable. It only took a quarter of a century, after all, for them to go from citizens of one of the world’s most backward countries to members of an emerging world superpower. The Olympics is the symbol of this achievement, and it’s one that must be credited to the Chinese people–as well as to the government, whatever you may think of it. Both groups certainly deserve their moment in the spotlight.

There’s something else at work here, though. Part of reason that Chinese people are so satisfied with their country right now is due to the fact that they not aware of the reasons not to be. Beyond the nationalism and Olympic fever is the hard fact that censorship is a way of life in China. Take, for example, the protests at Western coverage of the Tibet issue. Certainly, Western media distorts and overplays the Tibetan independence movement, but Chinese perception of this bias was itself exaggerated by the fact that the Tibetan independence issue is so rarely engaged on a deeper level–the media isn’t allowed to report on it, pro-independence Tibetan sites are blocked, and generally, few Chinese ever come in contact with people able (or willing) to defend the pro-independence position intelligibly. It was something of a shock to Chinese people, then, to find that the issue got so much attention in the West and, because they simply lacked the tools to get a nuanced view of the other side of the debate, they chalked it all up to bias. Hence sites like “Anti CNN“.

There’s no proof, of course, that China wouldn’t still have satisfaction rates of 82% (in the economy) and 86% (in the general direction of the country) if the media had more freedom to report, but there’s certainly a strong argument to be made that, when the media devotes the majority of its energy to putting positive spins on a single topic, such satisfaction levels are more likely to occur than if they had freer range for reporting. These elevated satisfaction rates then, though impressive, are unfortunate. A feature of any strong country is an acute sense of dissatisfaction–an understanding of what is going wrong and that needs to be fixed.

If the Chinese people are willing to ignore their country’s pressing problems for a few days of basking in the Olympic glow it’s certainly their right to so, but they exercise that right at their own risk. Things like inflation, corruption, and a widening gap between rich and poor, after all, don’t get solved when everyone’s happy.