Chinese paper falls for spoof by The Onion

Anyone with Internet service is likely to have come across www.theonion.com, a Web site that satirizes American journalism. Recently, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch devoted a big chunk of its op-ed page to a spoof by The Onion of how legislatures get involved in building sports venues. The satire suggested legislatures should get equal treatment and that the nation's capitol might move if it didn't get a new building.

Somehow, one of Beijing's newspapers came across the parody -- and treated it as a real news story. The incident showed one of the inherent dangers in assessing Internet information. Sometimes, things aren't what they appear to be.

This embarrassing goof in the Chinese paper was a reminder of a recent Paul Harvey explanation. According to the radio commentator, four newspaper reporters in 1900 were looking for a story and concocted one about China's plans to tear down the Great Wall as a symbol of less isolationism and an embracing of western ideas and culture. This was at the same time that secret societies in China were doing everything possible to maintain Chinese culture without any outside influence.

When the made-up story reached China, Harvey recounted, the secret societies responded with mass murders of anyone who wasn't Chinese, including hundreds of missionaries and their families. This was the Boxer Rebellion.

In a way, history has repeated itself.