Column: Truth about China not being told by mainstream media In the past two months, we've seen riots in Tibet, protests against China and the Olympics torch relay, counter-protests by the Chinese against untruthful biased mainstream media coverage and separatism, and a column article in the CT advocating using the Olympics to voice political concerns.

Reports from the MSM have certainly raised a lot of concerns about "cultural genocide" and "bloody crackdown" in Tibet and have drawn fierce criticism of China's "human rights records."

For peace- and freedom-loving people, these anti-China protests are absolutely reasonable, given what has been reported on the MSM. But as Chinese studying, working and living in the US, we have major concerns about whether these protesters and people in general have received adequate and impartial information before making their judgment. In fact, there has been a never-before-seen backlash against the MSM in the overseas Chinese communities for the past month.

The MSM reacted by frequently portraying us as "brainwashed" by a "communist government" whose nationalism resentment is "out of control," avoiding the real issue that caused this backlash, the extremely untruthful and biased reports on China's practice in Tibet. These very irresponsible and unprofessional reports, for example, used videos and pictures from Nepal and India to showcase the "crackdown" by the "Chinese armed force" on Tibetans.

All these are very upsetting for most Chinese overseas who are bilingual and have seen both sides.

Another reason for such a large-scale backlash among the Chinese is that we simply know our country well. We are aware of and familiar with the censorship in China that blocks some different voices.

This has made us more sensitive to the "smell" of censorship — whatever medium it is on. On the other hand, most pro-Tibet independence protestors and Tibetans grew up outside Tibet and have never been to China or Tibet, and most of the information they learned is very biased and incomplete.

I know what you might be thinking: This Chinese guy is so pathetic and has been brainwashed. But wait a minute, let's see whether you have gotten the whole story or not.

In a CBS interview, pro-Tibet American protesters in San Francisco weren't able to point out Tibet on a map. OK, that's just geography.

How many of these following facts, which can be verified by third-party sources, are you able to learn from the MSM? 1) The Dalai Lama was the theocratic feudalism dictator, and 95 percent of 1.2 million Tibetans were serfs under his rule until 1959. 2) The Dalai Lama banned the worship of deity Dorje Shugden among Tibetans in exile in India. 3) The CIA funded weapons and millions of dollars to the Dalai Lama-led "Tibetan government in exile" in the 1960s as part of a worldwide effort to undermine Communist governments. 4) Minorities in China are not required to abide by the one-child family plan policy, one example of many privileges minorities enjoy. 5) Two percent of Tibet population are monks, a percentage higher than any other Buddhism regions and countries, such as Thailand's 0.5 percent.

In contrast, the MSM has hidden the Dalai Lama's past and darkness. Books such as "The Shadow of the Dalai Lama" never gained publicity. The MSM was talking about "cultural genocide," but there are still 55 different minority ethnics in China after thousands of years of interactions.

I've been to the Tibetan region in my home province a couple of times for research projects and tourism. The data and my personal experience tell me that the "suppression of religious freedom" in Tibet is nonsense. Religious flags with scriptures, shrines and Lamas are everywhere.

Two percent monks means 2 percent unemployed population, which is supported by government funding and donations from religious followers. Although the Chinese government is led by an Atheist party, when I think about it, I am still amazed by the religious diversity of my hometown compared to Blacksburg.

We have a Buddhism shrine, a Catholic church and a Muslim (Hui) Mosque in town, and a Taoism shrine up in the mountain a couple of miles away.

I have to mention Falun Gong here as my grandma was a follower and a victim. Falun Gong was used as an example of the human rights violation of China after it was banned by the Chinese government in 1999, about seven years after its introduction. The man who started it claimed himself to be a reincarnation of a Buddha greater than Gautama Buddha. Because he stole most of the concepts from Buddhism, he managed to lure many Buddhists to his cult. Not only did this cult promise health to practitioners, it also advocated that disease is a way to pay off the bad karma from their past lives and that taking medicine would jeopardize this process. One will still suffer in his next life if the karma is not paid off.

As a faithful believer, my grandma refused all medicine whenever she was sick. She managed it mostly, but the last four months of her life were painful and miserable. After hiding her condition for an unknown period of time from my family, she was diagnosed with stage III colon cancer. Her faith was so shattered that she wanted to return to the hospital desperately when waiting for biopsy results at home. It is too easy to recruit a westerner who has no experience with this cult to protest for the cause of human rights and religious freedom. To some of them, victims like my family don't exist, or are "made up" as "government propaganda."

However, China is not perfect. Every Chinese is able to compile a list of flaws, so I am not going to try it here. But in the end, we are not so different from you. We all want more freedom and our human rights protected. We all want China to keep making progress as we have experienced in the past 30 years.

Honest communication is priceless. However, the MSM has been building a tower of Babel with bias, untruthful stories and resentment. Should MSM become the communication barrier between the ordinary Chinese and the Americans, we will not just be lost in translation. Yet everyone is so powerless against the MSM.

In case I totally failed to convince you with my poor English, please try to Google "Ron Paul and Censorship" and look at Google trends of some Republican candidates' names. There was actually a column pu blished titled, "Censoring Ron Paul," (CT, May 23, 2007). If the MSM can censor Paul, they can censor anything about China, and that doesn't include always using the "Communist" prefix.