CHINA PERSPECTIVE

Beijing offers the most revealing angle through its very neutrality: the South China Morning Post (Hong Kong-based, international readership) runs a 220-word standard AFP dispatch — the most minimalist obituary possible. No mention of the 2025 Legion of Honor refusal. No mention of Woman, Life, Freedom or Mahsa Amini. No mention of the Iranian letter of protest against Cannes in 2007. Satrapi is described as a "sharp critic of the theocratic government" — verbatim from AFP — then the story turns strictly biographical. This is a coherent editorial choice: even the most liberal Chinese press (such as SCMP) systematically avoids spotlighting dissidents who openly criticize an authoritarian regime, lest the reading public draw analogies. China's official press (Xinhua, People's Daily) has not covered the death — or barely. The relative silence is not an editorial accident: it is the position. A filmmaker who spent her life saying that women cannot be silenced and that an entire nation cannot be caged does not fit Beijing's official narrative about world order.