Being pro-China does not mean agreeing with absolutely everything China does. I have been critical of Chinese government policy when I believe it to be wrong, and freely admit that there is plenty of room for improvement in terms of the role of government and how important decisions should be made. A position, btw, which is also shared by the Chinese government itself, who often stresses the importance of the Party aka government, being able to constantly adapt and improve.
Interestingly, it's hard to find anyone from the west who would take such a stance when it comes to the Holy Trinity or Democracy, freedoms, and capitalism.
It is also worthwhile to note that censorship is entirely different from deliberate lies and misinformation.
It is actually pretty hard to find examples where the Chinese central state media has outright lied. You may disagree with the conclusions they reached, but in terms of factual or reports accuracy, I would take Chinese state media over the likes of the BBC or CNN any day.
There is a world of different from editorial bias, where commentators choose to interpret stories and facts in a certain way, and flat out lying about the basic facts themselves.
If you report the facts and then interpret it as you wish, at least the general public has the choice and chance to make up their own minds on their own views and feelings about the facts of the story.
OTOH, if the basic facts of the story is wrong or even pure made up BS, then the public doesn't even get to make up their own minds.
For example, if reporters found a bunch of bullet ridden bodies in a part of Aleppo that had recently been captured by Asssad's forces. Reporting that bullet ridden bodies had been found, and then presenting an argument on how you think they were civilians and not fighters, and why you think Assad's forces executed them is how that story should be been run if you have an anti-Assad bent but still care about professionalism and ethics.
OTOH, claiming that a large number of civilians were executed by Assad's forces, and then focusing the commentary on discussing how the west could intervene is going to fundamentally change what conclusions the vast majority of viewers might take away from that piece of news.
Also, its a pretty ridiculous and arrogant to make such a sweeping argument as there is no balanced reporting in China.
The censors only gets involved in sensitive topics. For the vast majority of stories without any political implications (which is the majority of stories), the censors don't care and Chinese reporters are free to report as they like.
Indeed, most negative stories the western media report on China actually are first reported by Chinese domestic reporters.
The Chinese censors were happy to let them report on those negative stories until the western media picked the stories up and started to use them as propaganda against China to further their own agendas.
A major reason why a lot of Chinese people don't want to talk to western reporters is because the Chinese people are not stupid. They know that western reporters in China couldn't care less about their plight and trying to help them resolve the grievance they have, and only want to exploit them to write another piece about how bad the Chinese government is.
Surprise surprise, that the people who's situations get exploited so are far less likely to see their grievence addressed, as Chinese government officials who might have looked sympathetically on their plight based on the bare facts are going to interpret them in an entirely different light with western reporters using the story to bad mouth China and challenge the legitimacy of a he Chinese government itself.
Having lived here in the U.K. for the past 14 years I could not agree more, will come back to this topic when I have more time.
