If you care too much you loose. If you care to fight in their game you loose. Spreading influence is always good. But this particular strand of PR war AKA soft "power" that has been adpoted by the west since the "color revolution and spring" has beome "racing to the bottom". It is counter productive even to the west, not only internationally but domestically. We shouldn't be pulled by the nose by the loser.
I don't think we are on the same page. Probably I wasn't clear. But I did not say how the Chinese authority should be transparent. Neither did I say how China should fight the PR war. Therefore I was not implying to follow the western style of transparency or PR tactics.
I understand the needs for the authority to keep certain processes in secret, for whatever reasons. But if China is to take PR seriously, it could have handled the incidents a bit more tactfully.
We need all agree on that complete lack of transparency is no good to anyone. It only leaves the public to rumors, lies and FUDs (fear, uncertainty and doubt).
At the beginning when Qin and Li were detained, it would have disabled the western media from scoring the easy points if the authority have proactively made a simple public statement of fact saying that these gentlemen are going to be off duty temporarily due to undisclosable reasons, i.e. “因故暂时无法履行职责” in Chinese.
For figures like Qin and Li who were constantly in spotlights, any disappearance of them from the public sights without explanation would immediately catch notice and start brewing rumors.
In the age of Internet, I don't think announcements like this would hurt reputation of any public servant if he later comes out clear and clean. It's a norm for officials to carry out undisclosable tasks, including cooperation in anti-corruption investigation.
