Actually China’s state media initially suppressed coverage of the torch relay protests until they simply couldn’t do it anymore since news of the protests were leaked through internet reports etc. I met a Chinese grandma who was temporarily staying in the US, when she saw news of torch protests on US TV, she was so angry that she was shaking. So it really doens’t matter whether it’s Chinese media coverage or western media coverage, the Chinese people are generally pissed at the protests.

As for the Z-list celebrity, I totally agree. But I think the reason is not anti-nonChinese, rather the Chinese, having shut themselves off for so long, do not have a good grasp of who is important and who is not… generally I think East Asians, including Japanese and Koreans, tend to treat western celebrities as more important than they really are, in a way it’s kind of a reverse discrimination, just because so and so is from the west and white, they are important when they could be nobodies back home. When the Hilton sisters visited Korea, the Korean media went ooh and ahhhed over them, it was laughable.