Days after a South Korean newscaster triggered public outrage with an insensitive comment about the deaths of two Chinese students in Saturday’s Asiana Airlines crash in San Francisco, a Chinese newspaper found itself in even hotter water for appearing to exploit the deaths in an effort to flatter a local official.
“If they were alive and knew that Zhejiang Organization Department Chief Cai Qi cared about them, Wang Linjia would probably open her smiling eyes, and Ye Mengyuan would hardly believe it and jump up with joy,” read a profile of the crash victims published in the Communist Party-controlled China Youth Daily newspaper on Tuesday.
Ms. Wang and Ms. Ye, both 16 and students of Zhejiang province’s prestigious Jiangshan Middle School, were the only two people to die in the crash on Saturday and have been mourned across China this week.
On Sunday, a presenter for South Korea’s Channel A sparked an uproar in both South Korea and China when he said during a newscast that it was a “relief for us” that the girls were Chinese and not Korean.
But reaction to Tuesday’s story on the Chinese Internet was even more strident, with microbloggers describing the reporter who wrote it, Zhuang Qinghong, as “shameless” and “stunningly sycophantic” and calling for her resignation.
10/07/13 Wall Street Journal
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“If they were alive and knew that Zhejiang Organization Department Chief Cai Qi cared about them, Wang Linjia would probably open her smiling eyes, and Ye Mengyuan would hardly believe it and jump up with joy,” read a profile of the crash victims published in the Communist Party-controlled China Youth Daily newspaper on Tuesday.
Ms. Wang and Ms. Ye, both 16 and students of Zhejiang province’s prestigious Jiangshan Middle School, were the only two people to die in the crash on Saturday and have been mourned across China this week.
On Sunday, a presenter for South Korea’s Channel A sparked an uproar in both South Korea and China when he said during a newscast that it was a “relief for us” that the girls were Chinese and not Korean.
But reaction to Tuesday’s story on the Chinese Internet was even more strident, with microbloggers describing the reporter who wrote it, Zhuang Qinghong, as “shameless” and “stunningly sycophantic” and calling for her resignation.
10/07/13 Wall Street Journal
