Chinese Air Force Propaganda

SopsSops Join Date: 2003-07-03 Member: 17894Members, Constellation
edited February 2011 in Off-Topic
<div class="IPBDescription">Where have I seen that before...</div><!--sizeo:4--><span style="font-size:14pt;line-height:100%"><!--/sizeo--><b>Chinese air force drill looks awfully similar to ‘Top Gun’
</b><!--sizec--></span><!--/sizec-->By Joe Pompeo

Check this out... look at the clip around 1:09

<center><object width="450" height="356"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/9XB_de_bQrA"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/9XB_de_bQrA" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="450" height="356"></embed></object></center>

On Jan. 23, China's state broadcaster, CCTV, ran a story about an air force training exercise that contained some suspicious footage.
Around the segment's one minute 12 seconds mark (see above), as the China-U.S.-oriented blog Ministry of Tofu pointed out, "the way a target was hit by the air-to-air missile fired by a J-10 fighter aircraft and exploded looks almost identical to a cinema scene from the Hollywood film Top Gun."
Viewers were led to believe that what they were seeing was a live fire exercise. But according to Ministry of Tofu: "A net user who went by the name "刘毅" (Liu Yi) pointed out that the jet that the J-10 'hit' is an F-5, a US fighter jet. In Top Gun, what the leading actor Tom Cruise pilots an F-14 to bring down is exactly an F-5. Looking at the screenshots juxtaposition, one cannot fail to find that even flame, smoke and the way the splinters fly look the same."


Not convinced? The Wall Street Journal's China Real Time Report put the videos side-by-side. <a href="http://online.wsj.com/video/cctv-tries-to-pass-off-top-gun-clip-as-real/43EC0FC2-A440-4522-8E81-437EC747D30A.html" target="_blank">Link</a>


The seemingly doctored footage has been removed from CCTV's website. But Real Time China Report notes that Chinese media has in the past been caught red-handed lifting fictional U.S. material in news reports.
"In 2002, the popular Beijing Evening News tabloid translated and published as genuine a satirical news article by The Onion about U.S. Congress threatening to leave Washington D.C. unless the city built them a new building with a retractable roof,"<a href="http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2004/04/63048" target="_blank">Link</a> writes Josh Chin. "Five years later, the state-run Xinhua news agency infamously used an x-ray image of Homer Simpson's head to illustrate a story about the discovery of a genetic link to multiple sclerosis."<a href="http://www.globalnerdy.com/2007/08/02/homer-simpson-x-ray-used-in-medical-article-in-chinese-news/" target="_blank">Link</a>
CCTV has declined to comment in media reports.

<a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thecutline/20110131/ts_yblog_thecutline/chinese-air-force-drill-looks-awfully-similar-to-top-gun" target="_blank">Yahoo News</a>

Comments

  • ThaldarinThaldarin Alonzi&#33; Join Date: 2003-07-15 Member: 18173Members, Constellation
    I don't get the big deal about it. It looks like to me they were just playing a game, you ever tried to put a stupid word in to a sentence when working and talking about something serious? That sort of thing, but with a well known image instead as the medium of talking is different to that of television.
  • SopsSops Join Date: 2003-07-03 Member: 17894Members, Constellation
    edited February 2011
    I am not sure that is what they were doing (they removed the video after being questioned and choose not to comment) I just thought it was funny. But if it was, I am just passing on the joke.
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