Chinese online anger at snow relief

Chinese web users are taking to the Internet to express their anger at the nation's snow-relief efforts

Chinese web users are taking to the Internet to express their anger at the nation's snow-relief efforts

To judge by Chinese state television or the main Communist Party newspapers, the nation appears to be pulling together to battle heavy snow that has stranded millions ahead of the Lunar New Year.

But Internet message boards, hugely popular with China's web-savvy youth and growing middle class, contain complaints of official incompetence and laughably optimistic, or just plain bad, television reports.

"Today's CCTV news was exasperating. They did a whole segment on the frozen disaster area in the south, and then cut away to talk hysterically about how heroic their reporters were," one user complained.

Another contributor said he had stopped believing the weather forecast and renamed CCTV "Cheating Civilian TV".

The state broadcaster was "good only for duping people" and had not reported on the full extend of the disaster, added another poster.

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