China Censors Info About Fakery and Cheating

I told you Tuesday about how China's "culture of fake" is seeping into the Olympics. Now, adding insult to injury -- or, more accurately, censorship to fakery -- Beijing authorities are censoring Internet information about some of the faking.

A Communist Party official ordered opening ceremony organizers to use a stand-in actress for the little girl who won a nationwide singing contest because he didn't like her teeth. China is defending the move to the outside world, but CENSORING THE NEWS INTERNALLY.

Meanwhile, amid widespread accusations that the Chinese government re-issued passports to some of China's gymnasts with fake ages because they were under the Olympic-minimum age of 16, the Associated Press found a news story on the Xinhua Web site (Xinhua is essentially the Chinese Associated Press) from November stating that one of China's female gymnasts was 13. The Xinhua story was QUICKLY REMOVED. A previous L.A. Times story claims her birth year of 1994 had been reported on at least five Chinese language sites and one message board. The women's team won the gold medal.

But according to the New York Times, nobody will really challenge China on all this cheating and censorship because of a media double standard that exists about China coverage.