Beijing - Beijing is hitting back against anti-China protests surrounding the Olympic torch relay with a massive media campaign, blaming the "despicable" demonstrations on Tibetan separatists and saboteurs and charging foreign media with publicizing false reports about protests in Tibet. The scale and fierceness of the Chinese reaction is an indication of the Communist leadership's concerns that the gauntlet the Olympic torch has so far had to run through on its way to Beijing would endanger its hopes of a frictionless Summer Olympic Games.
The state-run news agency Xinhua condemned protesters for "vile misdeeds" while Wang Hui, spokeswoman for the Beijing Olympic organizing committee said, "We strongly condemn the disgusting behaviour of a handful of Tibetan separatists who have tried to sabotage the Olympic torch relay."
"Their despicable activities tarnish the lofty Olympic spirit and challenge all the people loving the Olympic Games around the world," Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu added Tuesday.
China is also attacking "false" and "biased" foreign media reporting of protests by Tibetans against Chinese rule. The campaign seems to have had some success at home in undermining the usually high credibility of foreign news organizations among the Chinese while also stoking nationalism and securing the government's position as the determiner of Chinese opinion.
After the torch relay was hit with protests for the second day in a row in Paris, where the torch was extinguished and had to be transferred to a bus to protect it, Chinese state media put their focus Tuesday on criticism of the protesters.
"Spectators of the Beijing Olympic torch relay were greatly annoyed and angered by Tibetan separatists and their supporters attempting to disrupt the Monday event in Paris," Xinhua wrote of the protests that drew thousands of people from around Europe.
A Chinese student studying in Paris was quoted in the report as expressing China's official line: "A majority of the French people are friendly towards China, but they have no knowledge about what really happened in Tibet and have been misled by some Western media's distorted reports."
State newspapers described the protesters as "Tibetan separatists" without mentioning that some of the demonstrators' criticism was directed at China's human-rights record and its ties to the regime in Sudan, which is blamed for a humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region, which some governments have described as genocide.
But Tibet has been the big shadow hanging over the August Olympics after protests against Chinese rule broke out there and in Tibetan-populated areas in neighbouring provinces on March 10, resulting in a crackdown by authorities.
For weeks, China has criticized the protests as a plot by anti-China forces that are seeking to prevent China's rise as a political and economic power, tying them to China's historical humiliation suffered at the hands of colonial powers.
Such tactics have been well-received by China's patriotic people. Charges of biased reporting by foreign media have been accepted mostly without question.
While China has accused Western media of not showing the whole truth about Tibet, the Chinese censors routinely blocked satellite reports on CNN or Eurosport about the torch relay protests in London Sunday and Paris Monday.
Chinese media, meanwhile, have featured daily images of severely injured Han Chinese from Lhasa who were attacked March 14 by rioting Tibetans. Those media reports, however, have failed to mention that international criticism has been levelled against crackdowns on peaceful protests by monks and reports from human rights groups and Tibet's government in exile of mass arrests and deadly shootings by security forces.
Hate-filled e-mails, telephone calls and death threats have been levelled against foreign correspondents in Beijing. The phone numbers and other contact details of American reporters accused of fabricating reports on Tibet have been published on the internet while the Foreign Correspondents Club of China urged news bureaus to take security precautions.
On Chinese internet forums, which are otherwise rigorously controlled, computer users have been given free rein to express their anger. In characterizing the postings, Xinhua said hundreds of thousands of internet users "expressed indignation" at the torch relay protests, "saying the evil nature of Tibetan separatists was clearly exposed to the world."
What remains as a bad taste in the mouths of China's people is the long-held feeling that the rest of the world begrudges China its Olympic Games.
