Eileen Gu wins a second gold which will no doubt send ABC journalists into another screeching fit, COVID cases inside the Beijing bubble plummet, leading some Western media actually praise China’s COVID success, and Western media still aren’t seeing a correlation between hideous anti-Chinese reports and the huge uptick in anti-Asian hate crimes in the US. Let’s get reporting!

Eileen Gu has just taken her second gold and third medal of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, making history in the process. Congratulations to Eileen, her team, and Team China. Unfortunately, it’s too early for reaction from the US media covering the games, but I’m expecting some uplifting and empowering reports on the 18-year-old snowboarder. Ha!

Bloomberg reports that COVID cases inside the Olympics bubble have dropped dramatically following strict controls and quarantines on the 435 positive cases that began arriving in Beijing for the games last month. Their story which, tellingly, is filed under ‘politics’, says: ‘Virus cases in China’s Olympic bubble fall amid COVID zero curbs.’

They go on to say: ‘The number of Covid-19 cases at the Beijing Winter Olympics is dwindling as the closed ecosystem China developed to insulate the event from the virus succeeds in catching and containing them.’ Well, it needs to be said that this is only a surprise to those outside China, but hey, welcome to reality.

This is significant because foreign reporters and diplomats have been allowed inside China for the first time to witness zero COVID measures first hand, and are not allowed to fall back on the lazy “well, that’s what the Chinese government says” claims of falsified statistics. 

This has led other US media to a point where they cannot further ignore China’s COVID’s successes, meaning they too need to stop with the propaganda and report reality. 

The Wall Street Journal, in a shocking about face, announced: China’s ‘Zero-Covid’ Policy Holds Lessons for Other Nations. They say: Ever since China adopted its policy of stamping out every Covid-19 infection, outsiders have wondered whether it could last. With each new, more infectious variant, “zero Covid” has required more vigilant and frequent crackdowns on daily activity.

And yet it has lasted. And seen from inside China, the results are remarkable. Foreigners in Beijing for the Olympics may be confined to a dystopian bubble in constant fear of being quarantined. But outside the bubble, life in the city looks close to normal with stores, museums and offices operating and subway and road traffic in line with this time of year in 2019. Americans only now are moving on from the coronavirus. Most Chinese did so back in 2020.”

Despite having to sneak the “dystopian” word in there, the general message of the Wall Street Journal’s story is fair and honest. 

US media are still drawing a blank when it comes to the uptick in anti-Asian hate crimes there, following the hideous murder of a Korean-American woman in New York’s Chinatown a few days ago. 

The Guardian reports: SF police data shows 567% increase in reports of hate crimes against Asian Americans. 

“Preliminary data from the San Francisco police department showed reports of incidents where police believe an anti-Asian bias played a role jumped from nine in 2020 to 60 in 2021, a 567% increase, in the city of 875,000 people.”

As usual, though, they fail to take into account the huge increase in anti-Chinese reports in US media and, in pure California style, lay the blame squarely on former President Donald Trump. 

Last year the New York Times unironically asked: Why Has There Been a Spike of Anti-Asian Hate? Let’s take a quick look at some recent anti-China content in US media.