Some rare good coverage of China

Over at Telegraph, Shanghai bureau chief Malcom Moore has been travelling through the Yangtze Delta, China's second largest manufacturing corridor, to try and get the skinny on China's lot in the financial crisis. I read most everything produced by major western media outlets on China, and I must say I'm impressed. Though I don't agree with the Anti-CNN crowd about some grand conspiracy to demonize China, I am getting tired of seeing every little tidbit of information getting filtered through a lens of Chinese repression and every single economic statistic being pointed out as the potential spark for a future uprising of disgruntled peasant masses. Mr Moore has been poking around factories, wholesale markets and workers' dorms talking about shrinking export orders, laid-off workers and the like, and his prognosis is that things aren't all that bad after all. In fact, he chimes in with Morgan Stanley to say that "China will be the first major economy to recover from the recession". 

The basic gyst of his argument is that orders are down, people are getting paid less, but things aren't as bad as they're made to look in other media outlets. I'm not angling for an apologist or blindly flattering stance on China, I just think that his coverage shows a rare mix of balance and hard work. There's no sensationalism to be found here. Anyway, his special series is worth a look, and I'm looking forward to seeing what this guy produces in the future. Now you know...