China's PR Woes Continue

Obama's reference to defeating communism, as you may well know, has been censored in China. This shows the continued myopia of the government's PR battle with the world and more importantly its own citizens. Had they not censored the portions, there would be no story afterwards of how they censored the speech, and this blog would not exist, nor the plethora of news stories across the world about the incident. Reuters carried a story in which the government defended its right to edit whatever they want, but that argument gives the sense of a petulant child. Yes, it's also my right to never shower again, but I will have to live wit the ramifications of my decision. Likewise, they have every right to manipulate the media, but they must understand that such actions will have a greater impact than whatever it was they were censoring in the first place. In 2008, China learned the value of PR, even going so far as to hire a PR company, but it's clear that they still have a long way to go to understand that blatant, objectively provable control of information is in an of itself a story, and a PR black eye both abroad and at home.