I know there are a lot of things the Chinese government should do to improve; but the incidents in Huili county of Sichuan Province surprised me; twice.
Huili is a small county in southwest Sichuan Province with less than half a million residents. Its website recently published a piece of news of three government officials inspecting the construction progress of county road with a photo included:
And, the photo was clearly photoshoped but unfortunately discovered and shared by a China Internet user last week, which went viral in a few days on Sina Weibo. This photo was ridiculed for the supernatural ability to flow on the road. I can never imagine they would put such a clearly fake photo on the website.
What also surprised me is the government response. Huili County set up a Sina Weibo account today, apologized and responded with what happened:
The post above confirmed the criticism that the photo (top) was “PS”ed and share the original photo as well. In another post, it stated that the government officials did go for the road inspection but PSed it because the photo taken was not quite clear. They said that they learned a lesson from this and will work also, and they also thanked the Internet users for their criticism.
Though there are not so much positive response to Huili’s apology, it’s good to see the government utilizing social media to communicate with citizens.
The positive side of this is, the small county is now well known. What’s your view on this?
