Around the globe, the US diplomatic cables leaked by Wikileaks are treating the public to a reality show of relations between the US administration and foreign governments. But as so often, China is an exception. The WikiLeaks page devoted to the cables is blocked in China. The country’s print and television media, all owned by state or Communist party organs and kept on a tight censorship leash, are reporting on ‘Cablegate’ but omitting almost any reference to their own government - despite the fact that cables involving the US embassy in Beijing are a large part of the leaked documents and have revealed some of the most newsworthy details, including suggestions that hacker attacks on Google in China originated in the Politburo.

The only Chinese media report mentioning China at all was Xinhua, the official news agency, which said: 'Wikileaks released some 250,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables on Sunday, shedding light on clandestine activities by U.S. diplomats including spying on UN leadership and permanent Security Council representatives of France, China, Britain and Russia.' On the internet, the place where Chinese public opinion is most likely to break through, this gaping omission was noticed. “How come that among those 250,000 secrets, there is just by coincidence none from China?” asked a writer calling himself Hu Danglao on the Sina microblog on Tuesday. Some internet users posted translated parts of foreign media reports on the China-related aspects on discussion forums. A user on Tianya, a popular online discussion forum, said: “If only our country had one [WikiLeaks] as well!”. Another added: “I thought they were going to leak Chinese leaders’ financial information?” One post on Tianya summed up many others’ comments with sarcasm: 'Really cool, if [this happened in China], they would have been shot I don’t know how many times. The Americans are really too unpatriotic. It’s not surprising that they often say in the news that [America is] where the water is deep and the fire is hot and there’s no harmony.' Harmony is one of the slogans with which the Chinese government often justifies the suppression of criticism.