Ontario will not become an ‘America lake’ with a single stroke of the pen

Claims that Chinese media completely concealed a disaster do not tell the whole story, the commentary argues. Although censorship operates in China, its large domestic media environment also contains many videos of the event on Chinese websites.

The piece cautions that the spread of artificial intelligence makes it difficult to determine which videos are genuine and which are digital fabrications. It also criticizes Western media for publishing numerous sensational videos that appear dramatic but may not be authentic.

A second theme is the politics of geographical names. British authorities and media continued to call Myanmar “Burma” as recently as 2007, despite the country’s official name since 1989, signaling London’s position toward the military junta. The commentary notes that Britain later accepted “Myanmar,” while the country’s former capital became Yangon rather than Rangoon.

It compares those changes with names that have disappeared from common usage in English, including Bombay, Calcutta, Trivandrum and Madras. It also says Guangzhou is no longer appropriately called Canton in politically careful usage, while the suffix “-king” has become outdated for Chinese city names in English because of its association with the Japanese occupation. Nanking became Nanjing, although Peking remains in Hungarian and French.

The cover image shows Chinese rescue teams in Tibet. The commentary’s central point is that people do not necessarily accept changes to geographical names without resistance.