I may, perhaps, be getting a little obssessed with the giant, gaping holes in the mainstream NZ media’s coverage of China. Hot on the heels of Tim Groser’s leading a trade delegation to China, a trip that apparently completely did not happen if you only read English, comes news of Nelson mayor Aldo Miccio leading his own delegation to China. And once again, it apparently only happened in the Sinophone world. Not even the Nelson Mail seems to be able to find time to cover the goings on of their own mayor (although, to be fair, something may have appeared in the print edition but not online…).
Quzhou municipal party secretary Zhao Yide travelled up to Hangzhou to meet Miccio. They discussed further communication and cooperation in fields such as tourism, agriculture, education, and development and exploitation of mineral resources.
Miccio also took his delegation down to Jiangmen, where they were reported to be completely satisfied with the investment environment. Miccio said he was left with a deep impression and would recommend Jiangmen to local enterprises after his return to Nelson.
And both those articles end with a brief introduction of Nelson including a quick rundown on its important industries.
Now, I dunno, but I’m still wondering why, after the Shanghai Pengxin/Crafar farms saga, with China’s economy somehow still managing to charge full steam ahead, with all the potential future economic troubles here, with NZ leaders for decades now having waffled about moving our economic focus away from our traditional European, North American and Australian partners and growing new markets in Asia, with the current sorry state of Western economies, why Tim Groser and Aldo Miccio can lead trade delegations to China and NZ’s media not cover them. Maybe I’m just looking in the wrong places. Maybe my google fu is just really bad. I dunno.
I do know I frequently find myself frustrated with the incredibly shallow and fragmented nature of the knowledge of China displayed by so many Kiwis, and I think it’s becoming reasonably clear that I am somewhat frustrated with the immense holes in the mainstream NZ media’s coverage of China. Something tells me their may be a relationship between these two phenomena.
And a couple of tangents:
I also know that I’ve found coverage of John Key’s trip to the nuclear summit in South Korea really pathetic so far. So he gets to hitch a ride on the Korean president’s Blackhawks to pay his respects at the ANZAC memorial. Well, he certainly does seem to enjoy his military helicopters, does our John. Apparently Obama stole his hotel room, or some such nonsense. Oh, wait, today the serious stuff starts. Oh, but wait, I thought he was there to talk nuclear security, not free trade or his lack of drinking buddies, or name dropping. An edit I was hoping to do a little more instantly, but that was held back by an odd connectivity problem: Oh, but wait, there is something on nuclear security tacked on the end of that name dropping article:
“I’ll challenge them to do a bit more, actually.”
Um, that’s nice, dear. But you don’t think you could persuade Claire Trevett to go into a little bit more detail in her article, could you? Oops, sorry, in my haste to hit publish I forgot I also had this article open. It’s a little better.
Now, having ranted all that, I must say I appreciated the NZ Herald posting this fun takedown of Gerry Brownlee’s ignorant bloviations on the sorry state of Finland.
