Why do you think China would write a fake article about an event that hadn't happened?

They probably got an advance script of what was supposed to happen. Or what the govt wanted reported when it did happen. Then they wrote the story and set it to the ready so they could post as soon as possible once it did happen.

Kind of like how the AP likely had advance copies of various political speeches but accidentally posted a “reaction” to one of them before the speech had actually happened. Half of the news is getting in early and being ready.

they probably got their info from a fortune cookie: “you will soon enter space”

China’s big national secret is that they actually use time-travel to report their news.

Wow- time travel, controlling the weather…should we just bow down to our overlords now?

they just got lots of free time

I’m trying to figure out how to post questions and answers I haven’t thought of yet here on fluther. Maybe I should ask China!

It just shows ta go ya that there are Republicans in other countries, and not just in the USA.

It is fairly standard to write press releases in advance that contain quotes from important muckymucks. This happens all the time in the US. We all write scripts before we say anything.

It’s important to remember that the Chinese Space Program is also like the Chinese Space Company, and it wants to market its success. And, in China, business and government often go hand in hand. So the government is also marketing the success of the space program as much as the program, itself, is.

It’s propaganda, is what it is. Journalists have been known to make up dialogue before, and who know how prevalent the behavior is. Maybe more so in China than in the US, but still, it happens here, too. For every journalists who makes up stuff that is caught, who knows how many go uncaught?

In China, they don’t have a set of professional journalists, yet. Journalists are used to asking their bosses what they should say. The space agency was happy to tell them. Journalists don’t know how to go out and ask their own questions and find out their own information.

So this doesn’t surprise me at all, and it seems rather normal, given China, and given the nature of the relationship between business, government, and news. Propaganda is alive and well.

Can you imagine how embarrassed the Chinese would be, if the launch had failed (or exploded, like the Challenger did)?

That’s the #1 reason why press releases should NEVER be issued, prior to the occurrence of an event.

As they said, “technical error”.... I mean “technician error.” If it blows up, they’ll have to behave like real journalists and try to figure out why.

Looks like China’s not the only government agent to blow their wad a little preemptively.

Although some folks are now speculating that ad’s a fake. I guess we’ll see.