Earthquake in Wenchuan-China

CB 

Jing

Thanks to all kind people in the world. We'll never forget those people helped us.

Hi Jing

There seem to be cultural differences with regard to how thankful some people are. There have been complaints on the Chinese Internet about the West and western companies not providing sufficient aid for the victims of the earthquake. Names that have been mentioned include Nokia, The Coca-Cola Company, Toyota and Wal-Mart.

This criticism prompted a Chinese ministry to make an announcement to the media. The ministry thanked foreign companies for "the biggest donations of all time."  According to the ministry, foreign companies have given at least 170 million euros plus 20 million euros' worth of equipment.

Many Chinese state-owned companies have donated less than Nokia, which has given 5 million euros plus 5,000 cell phones to the relief workers. The Finnish Red Cross has given hundreds of tents, which Finnair has flown free of charge to China. A Finn living in Chengdu, China, has personally organized 119 kilos of blouses, shoes, towels and other stuff donated by her friends to be flown from Finland to China. She paid the cargo fare herself.

No doubt the western companies that have helped China hope these donations will improve their image in China. The situation is very difficult: if they provide assistance, the are blamed for pursuing their own interests. If they don't provide assistance, they are criticized for not doing anything. 

All this is easy to understand. However, I know my compatriots well enough to say that the kind of criticism that has been seen on the Chinese Internet is unlikely to increase donations from Finland. We are a small nation anyway. Our population is 5,3 million. We cannot salvage China. I don't know what people in other countries think  -  if they ever hear about the Chinese criticism at all.

CB

Cool Breeze

There seem to be cultural differences with regard to how thankful some people are. There have been complaints on the Chinese Internet about the West and western companies not providing sufficient aid for the victims of the earthquake. Names that have been mentioned include Nokia, The Coca-Cola Company, Toyota and Wal-Mart.

Hi CB,

Don't be upset about it. Here in Hong Kong, most people are unaware of such criticism. I think the vast majority of people in China would agree with me that such extreme nationalistic comments are completely absurd.  Such view certainly is not shared by anyone except the few bloggers who posted such comments.  In fact, those companies said they have not noticed any effect to their businesses and obviously no one actually cared about such comments except perhaps Associated Press, which was the source of all such articles I can find online.  The AP articles seem to suggest that such criticism is widespread and that this is what most Chinese think.  I find it hard to believe AP would take such an angle in reporting.  It said the Chinese government took an unprecedented step in thanking the companies from other countries because of such criticisms.  This is absolutely nonsense.  In fact, the Chinese government has taken many unprecedented and impressive steps in handling this crisis.  As always, the Premier and other top officials personally thanked the people of Hong Kong for the donations and the various forms of aids, just like what they did in disasters in the past.  They also thanked a lot of different countries.  How could such a normal thing be interpreted as the response to the criticisms of just a few blogger?  I am really upset by the AP article.  This is just a single article from Joe Mcdonald of AP and it got carried over by all other "news sources".

Some people have already commented on such a troubling trend in online news publishing.  A single article could easily get carried over to all other "news sources" and it looks like the whole world is reporting the same thing.  This is not the first time with articles from AP.

EDIT:

I was trying to find the original source of such criticisms.  What I can find so far is that those are just comments left on discussion forums.  These comments were in fact immediately refuted by other posters as rumours.

EDIT 2: 

Cool Breeze

No doubt the western companies that have helped China hope these donations will improve their image in China. The situation is very difficult: if they provide assistance, the are blamed for pursuing their own interests. If they don't provide assistance, they are criticized for not doing anything.

I think we should say thanks to anyone and any company which helped us. No matter how much they donated. Of course I know some different voice on the internet. But internet is a free and public platform. Everyone has the right to express his/her opinion, isn't it? This is a disaster to human being, not only chinese, isn't it?