Former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and a leading German expert have voiced their concern over many Westerners' misconceptions regarding China, and some Western media's biased and misleading coverage of the recent events in Tibet.

"We see China in a totally false way," Schmidt said in a recent interview with the German newspaper Westdeutschland Zeitung.

Western hostility toward China is largely rooted in the strong perception of many Westerners that China should develop according to the "democratic mode" represented by the United States and many Western European countries, he said.

"Why should it have to?"

Schmidt, who has visited China 15 times, said many Westerners have no idea about China's history and culture, or the complicated political and social issues that the country is dealing with, including Tibet.

Eberhard Sandschneider, director of the Research Institute of the German Council on Foreign Relations, said many Westerners' fear of China comes from their uncertainty about what effect the country's rapid development may have on the Western world.

"I firmly believe it makes no sense to have fears about China," he said.

Sandschneider is one of the most prominent China experts in Germany.

China does have social, economic and environmental issues, some of them deeply challenging, he said.

Germany and other nations should stop their interference in China's affairs as long as what China does is "legitimate," Sandschneider said on an online chatroom of Germany's ARD TV recently.

Referring to a potential boycott of the Beijing Olympic Games, Sandschneider said it makes more sense in the long term to engage with China, including on the Olympics, rather than reacting emotionally to what happened in Tibet, which has long been a part of China.

Adrian Geiges, a correspondent for the German weekly Stern, said in a recently published story entitled "Dalai Lama is no innocent angel" that he was "outraged" by the one-sided perception of many Westerners regarding Tibet.

What happened in Tibet, including arson and assaults on innocent civilians, can by no means be justified, he said.

He was among the small number of foreign journalists in Tibet during the violent unrest last month.

"However, many Westerners are under the impression that the Chinese attacked the Tibetans," he said.

"Where does this misunderstanding come from?"

One of the reasons, Geiges said, is the idealization of the Dalai Lama and Tibetans, who many Westerners believe are innocent and nonviolent and should receive sympathy for alleged human rights violations.

However, the violent and deadly attacks on civilians by the rioters in Tibet have instead "violated the human rights of the Han nationality," Geiges said.

Moreover, Tibet was no paradise under the rule of the Dalai Lama, he said.

About 95 percent of the Tibetans under the rule of the Dalai Lama were serfs who were not even allowed to learn to read or write, he said.

The Chinese public is venting its spleen online over some Western media groups' inaccurate reports about the Tibet riots.

Various inaccurate photos from Western media claiming to portray the Lhasa riots of March 14 have been collected and uploaded onto the Internet by some Chinese overseas students.

The collection comprises dozens of pictures and footage broadcast by well-known Western media outlets, with netizens highlighting the misleading captions accompanying the images.

The Germany-based RTL TV and N-TV made corrections on their websites on March 23 and 24, respectively, and also issued apologies to the public.

On the website Anti-cnn.com, Chinese people continue to try and pressure Western media, including CNN and the BBC, to apologize to their Chinese audience.

(Xinhua News Agency April 18, 2008)