[UPDATED 25 June: Okay, turns out that the update below needs an update. The Global Times site was, an emailer tells me, undergoing an upgrade, and links to some content were broken in the process - including links to Mattimore's pieces. They are now restored.]

[UPDATE 13 June: The Global Times editorials referenced in this blog post have all been deleted from the Global Times website. However, cached versions remain, and I've added links to those versions where possible. The fact that the Global Times would delete this editorial, and others by Patrick Mattimore says much about their veracity and quality. Put differently, it takes a real whopper to get yourself deleted from the Global Times, let me tell you.]

On Monday, the English language edition of China’s state-owned Global Times newspaper, daily circulation of 1.5 million, had this to say about Millinocket, Maine, population 5000, and its high school (Stearns), enrollment 200: [UPDATE 13 June: a cached version of this now deleted editorial is available HERE.]

Stearns is a run-of-the-mill high school and doesn’t appear on any “best high school lists.”

The school building is over 40 years old. The school has only one Advanced Placement class and the school maps date from the Cold War era.

Millinocket is isolated. The closest mall and movie theater is one hour away. The town gets 93 inches of snow per year. Millinocket has about 5,000 residents but has experienced increasingly hard times since its paper mill filed for bankruptcy eight years ago. There were about 700 students at the high school in the 1970s. Today there are about 200?and the biggest kick for kids is hanging out in a supermarket parking lot.

Context: Millinocket, Maine has an active international students program in its public schools and, over the last year, it’s been covered by several media outlets, including the AP and the New York Times (indeed, the Global Times story lifts language, unattributed, from the Times’ story). The Global Times editorial argues that Chinese parents are better off sending their children to elite Chinese schools, rather them to international programs like the one in Millinocket, Maine – especially if they want their children to attend elite American colleges. It’s the kind of thing that the Global Times, once described by James Fallows as “the pro-Communist Fox News of China“, likes to run, especially when – as in the case of this editorial – it’s written by an American.

In any case, it struck me as patently unfair that a subsidized newspaper, circulation 1.5 million, would pick on a small town in Maine, population 5000, without giving that small town the opportunity to respond. So, Monday night, I wrote to the Town Manager of Millinocket and offered Shanghai Scrap as a forum for him to respond to the editorial in any way he liked. He wrote back and, soon after, so did the Superintendent of Millinocket’s schools. I’ll post their complete responses, in a moment. But first, a brief word about the author of the Global Times editorial, American Patrick Mattimore. Continue reading →