The issue if we can believe the news in the China Daily - or for that matter the Shanghai Daily - has come up in the past few weeks here in Europe more than once. Because the quality of the English language daily has gone up (well, it could not get worse from where it was at the beginning of the 1990s), quotes regularly also Western newswires and is reversely also increasingly quoted as a reliable source in Western media. It is now also online available, so more than once media outside China are inclined to use it as a source.
I think that is still a mistake: both are state-owned media and all they say fits the agenda of the government. So, it does not mean what they write is always wrong, it only means that on crucial moments you just cannot believe them.
How should we look for example at this article, reporting about the progress the State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) in its fight against the rampant pollution? The article is even sourced from Associated Press. I think we can safely assume that SEPA indeed has issued such a statement. But what does it really mean? Very little, according to me.
SEPA is a rather powerless institution that has mainly some leverage on central level, but the English language media in China will never be able to say just that. Whether on a local level factories really have been closed is not that certain, and even less certain is whether they have not opened again after the inspectors have left the site again.
Most of the rest of the article consists of well-intended promises that might or might not be delivered. In most cases this is propaganda is being pumped around and the fact that also AP is part of that system does not really increase the trustworthiness.
For a nice inside view, do read this blog Positive Solutions, by a British copy-editor of the China Daily, who has unfortunately left his post recently. The China Daily can only be believed when it reports negative news about China, and even then you need to be alert for possible twists.
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