# 2555
News reporting out of China can generally be divided into two camps.
The `official', generally sanitized version offered by Xinhua News, and the bordering-on-tabloid-journalism delivered by dissident newspapers like Boxun News.
Neither extreme can be considered truly reliable. Both have agendas.
Boxun's policy is that anyone is free to submit news to their website, which means that many of these stories are contributed anonymously and are unverifiable.
Of course, unverified isn't necessarily the same as untrue.
Reports in dissident, or opposition papers, must therefore be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism. Many of these news services delight in publishing anything that reflects badly on the Chinese government.
Another caveat is that translations into English from Chinese, particularly machine translations, can be difficult to interpret accurately. We can generally get the gist of a story, but details are often obscured by the syntax.
With these cautions in mind, we are seeing several machine translated articles today from various sources on the net, that purport to give us more information about the Jiangsu Outbreak.
Commonground, who posts on Flutrackers and is the co-editor of Pandemic Information News, has been working overtime the past few hours seeking out, and translating, Chinese news reports on the Jiangsu outbreak.
This first article comes from Boxun News, and is submitted by someone named jsgorden, who indicates he is not a journalist.
It describes a large bird flu outbreak in Jiangsu/Dongtai (already confirmed), and goes on to suggest that infected chickens may have been shipped to other regions, including Shanghai, Shandong, and Henan.
It also appears to state that frozen chickens were shipped to Taiwan. In fact it seems to allege that a lot of chickens were sold, traded, or somehow distributed out of the afflicted area over the past few weeks.
The author also indicates that local officials either ignored, or tried to cover up, the outbreak.
It's along article, and awkward reading, so I won't reproduce all of it here. You can follow the link to read a machine translation (very rough) of the entire article.
Boxun Beijing on December 15, 2008
Very shocked, local governments Cover, the disease has a large number of dead chickens flows to the country (Ministry of Agriculture has recently been sent to the east of Taiwan).
Jiangsu Province, eastern Taiwan, large areas of dead chickens, dead chickens almost the flow of patients in major cities, as well as Shanghai, Shandong, Henan, and other places.
Dead chickens slaughtered after an underground hideout, water treatment (hydrogen peroxide), after soaking, quick-frozen and shipped to the flow field, just east of the three stores in Southern Taiwan, Tang Yang North has processed more than a dozen, day and night, every day There are tens of thousands of dead chickens sent to patients across the country or frozen, wait until the Spring Festival market, probably in place of the cold, put a few 100,000.
Another article from Commonground, this time from the Aboluowang website, which describes itself as: Apollo Network News Network - an integrated global Chinese news Web site.
Frankly, I've no idea about the reliability of the reporting from this site. Many details are quite similar to the previous report, but that may simply be due to a `sharing' of information.
So Caveat Lector.
CPC Jiangsu bird flu cover up more than 10 million sold across a large number of dead chickens
Apollo News Network hearing 2008-12-16
CPC Jiangsu disease patients to conceal a large number of dead chickens sold in the field
Hong Kong's recent outbreak of bird flu after. Dongtai, Jiangsu Province, China, the city of Hai has been more than a month before the outbreak of a large number of chickens died. Local people said that the government blockade, the lack of vaccination program, on the sale of chickens and there is no regulation, a large number of dead chickens have been sold to patients in Shanghai, Shandong, Henan and other provinces and cities.
The city of Hai veterinary practitioners to stop this station reporter confirmed that more than a month before the local disease occurred.
Recording Reporter: When did it happen?
Employees: there are now more than a month.
Dongtai village official, said villagers in the village 70% of the chickens died of infection, symptoms are fever, anorexia, pulling Green feces, 2 days he died. Chicken farmers are raising each more than 10,000 chickens, about 10 tens of thousands of dead chickens.
Villagers village official recording: the place we have not had all died, do not know what illness, not good. Delivery to eat well, his illness very quickly.
Dongtai Tang Yang said that people in the town, local farmers have lost their capital, the Government has not taken effective measures, there is no media coverage, and if they are not of great importance, is also a matter of fact the Government has neglected the safety of human life and human nature.
While both of these reports were posted by Commonground, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the work being done by the other newshounds following this story. On Flutrackers alone, Commonground, Ironorehopper, Niman, Shiloh, and Florida1 have contributed to the China: Jiangsu, new avian influenza h5n1 poultry epizootics thread today.
Similar work is being done on the other flu forums, by other newshounds, as well.
A big thank you goes out to everyone working on these translations.
These articles certainly run contrary to the `official line' voiced by state controlled media. Whether these two articles are truly representative of the facts on the ground is hard to say.
The truth may lie somewhere in between.
About all we can do is take notice of both versions, and try to fit the pieces together as best we can.
