Why would Shanghai United Media Group, whose heritage is Liberation Daily 解放日报 and Wenhui Bao 文汇报 be promoting Western-oriented garbage like Sixth Tone? It’s definitely a Western-influenced operation.

https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1011191/China%20Pays%20Tribute%20to%20Queen%20Elizabeth%20II/

The following comments are by contributors from SF Bay Area China Group

As a child in HK I learned the Chinese people felt humiliated and angry about the British rule. My father for example never stopped talking about the subjugated HK political system where all the best Gov’t jobs go to the most unqualified British white people.And how British police inspectors rained terror over their Chinese subjects and committed serious police brutality with impunity against HK demonstrators during HK riots in 1967. We were a degraded people born into an institutional second class citizenship. Our Chinese ethnic language and culture were considered inferior to our colonial master’s.

I am not surprised by the Six Tone article. Even recently, the People’s Education Press apologized for controversial textbook art accused of distorting kids’ aesthetic taste. See
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202205/1266605.shtml. Another history textbook from the People’s Education Press chose sports jerseys with the numbers “7”, “3” “1” on them. Two of the authors are Japanese nationals.

China has been heavily influenced by the west, especially the US, in the 1980s and 90s, in the social sciences and education. In the 1950s, China learned from the Soviets. In the 1980s and 90s, China learned from the west, in areas not only in market economics but in many areas. If you read or listen to Wen Tiejun, he will tell you that even now the many social science textbooks used in Chinese Universities are from the US. So this Six Tone article is not a surprise. While the influence of what is derogatorily called “公知 or Public Intellectuals” is declining in China, particularly among the Chinese young people, many of them are still around and are exerting their influence. Remember the May 2020 virus diary by well known writer Fang Fang that disparaged China’s efforts in controlling the COVID pandemic in Wuhan?

The reality is that it will take a long time for China and other countries of the global south to develop a system for replacing the Eurocentric narrative of the world that was built up in the last few hundred years.

John is right about the wide latitude for opinion in China, at least on some topics.