As a China watcher, the most remarkable aspect about the recent death of North Korea’s hereditary Dear Leader is the level to which it has exposed the Chinese media’s divorce from reality. Last night before bedtime, a CCTV news anchor read out a complete list of branches of the Chinese Communist Party, the People’s Liberation Army, Navy and Airforce, and all major government ministries, all of whom “stand in solidarity with our North Korean comrades.” Finally, as an afterthought, she mentioned that the Chinese people shared in the grief of North Koreans, and offered their condolences at the passing of their leader, and their support for his heir, a man qualified only in happening to be his predecessor’s son. How very socialist.

Two hours prior to the anchor’s emotively-worded but utterly deadpan performance (which, along with her tearfully hyperbolic North Korean counterpart, deserve Oscar nominations), I had been discussing humorous cat anecdotes with a few of the Chinese people at my local gym. One of them, coincidentally, was a CCTV presenter, who told us her cat had learned to move its feces from its litter tray and onto the kitchen floor, thereby incriminating her pet dog. My boyfriend joined in the discussion. That afternoon, he had stood up in his office to announce the death of Kim Jong-il, China’s great pal, the guy whom the CCP never gets tired of shielding, and was met with utter indifference. “I don’t care about him,” remarked his deskmate. “I’m busy.”

Official portraits of Mao and Kim.

Kim Jong-il’s name wasn’t mentioned once in my office the following day, apart from by myself and the other two foreign employees, who were keeping up with The Onion‘s rolling-out of every back article it had on everyone’s favorite communist oligarch. I had personally witnessed my boyfriend’s parents teasing one another for crying after learning of the death of China’s own Dear Leader, Mao Zedong:

“You cried!”

“No, YOU cried!”

The endless footage of Mediterranean-style weeping helpfully provided to China’s state mouthpieces by North Korea’s even more ridiculous state media agency may have been a popular source of amusement on the Chinese blogosphere, but the Chinese, at least those in my immediate vicinity, seem pretty much unmoved. Compare this to the tears when staff at my previous place of work found out about Michael Jackson’s death in 2010. My boyfriend entered a deep mourning for the loss of his favorite pop icon, joining in the bidding wars on eBay for one of those precious few signed albums, so that he might own something his idol had once touched. To this day, Michael Jackson tributes and rip-offs dominate Chinese talent shows and the few other “entertainment programs” permitted to exist by the Party’s newly-zealous media czars. Hell, I’ve even seen Jackson referenced in advertisements for the children’s TV channel Kaku and the utterly ineffectual brain medication Nao Bai Jin.

I doubt the same treatment, whether reverent or shamelessly exploitative, will be meted out to Kim. Of course that’s entirely due to the media blackout imposed when it comes to mocking North Korea’s potato-faced ex-leader, but even if such a blackout weren’t in place, not even China’s countless brands of undrinkable alcohol would be able to up sales with a grinning Kim clad in a Tang jacket, proffering one of their products from the side of a bus.

The fact that CCTV was compelled to offer up this shameless smorgasbord of communist solidarity is further testament to the decline in its relevance to the sociopolitical views of the Chinese people. Time was that the television was the principal source of both entertainment and information in a Chinese household, and CCTV’s word had gravitas. Now, whether it’s slamming the Nobel Peace Prize committee, depicting the heroic actions of police in hog-tying and humiliating prostitutes, or offering up pronouncements from the Central Committee as if they were engraved on tablets of stone fresh from Mount Sinai, Chinese people have learned to switch off. If we may return to my gym for a moment, lack of a satellite or cable connection means the TVs are eternally tuned to domestic channels, but it’s curious that as soon as a news, current events or “lifestyle” show comes on, a staff member switches over to a nature show, TV drama or kung fu movie. That’s what people want to watch.

North Korean and Chinese propaganda posters.

You can’t liberalize education, open the floodgates to the Internet, sanction overseas travel and expect people to swallow the same propaganda they did in the 1970s. I doubt even the most voracious Party cadres in China looked to Kim Jong-il as an example. While his unique brand of belligerent Stalinist autocracy was a goldmine for satirists, it ran utterly against the Chinese government’s often painful efforts to appear non-confrontational and universally friendly. China rejected the cult of personality with the inauguration of Deng Xiaoping. It realigned its planned economy towards profitability—shrewdly funneling profits to the center in the process—and shaping China into a “rich country, poor people” nation modeled on 19th century Britain. In every sense other than name, the Communist Party of China and its North Korean equivalent have parted ways. And yet, at least on CCTV, they seem to be placed on an equal footing, with Kim’s death treated as the martyrdom of a fellow comrade who, of course, died of “exhaustion” and not a heart attack induced by a blowjob on a luxury train journey, or whatever Kim was more likely to have been doing when he finally shuffled off.

Why not be objective? Show the North Korean footage, sure, but at least acknowledge public opinion by keeping declarations of grief as low-key as possible. Chinese people overwhelmingly pity North Koreans—they compare North Koreans to Chinese two generations ago. The average Chinese youngster, many of whom will have come into contact with someone who has visited the hermit dictatorship on business, sees North Korea as what would have happened had the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward both come at once. Starving, brainwashed and helpless in the face of an absolute despot they have to pretend to worship as if he were a mix of Jesus, Che Guevara and Santa Claus. Sure they’ll cry for the cameras, but don’t expect that of the comparatively well-off and infinitely better-informed Chinese. Not only is it patronizing, it has the potential to be politically incendiary.

If CCTV continues to speak for the Chinese people (as Rui Chenggang famously did for Asia), and what it says continues to run directly counter to popular views, the only result will be that viewers will simply switch off their sets altogether and either immerse themselves in the relative freedom of real world or, more likely, Internet debate. CCTV and print media have had their day as China’s principal source of mind control, and yet they remain massively over-funded when compared to the most effective tool of State control: the education system. Schools in China are screaming for funding, with principals having to pay for school buses out of their own pocket, teachers underpaid and offered minimal training, and children who respond to the absence of authoritative teaching by reaching across borders via the World Wide Web for information. In the few instances where the government has gone all-out to enforce ideology, such as safe sex or anti-Japanese sentiment, the results have been startlingly effective.

However, rather than getting them when they’re young and impressionable, CCTV has the unenviable task of preaching to hardened cynics who, increasingly, are uninterested in hiding their real thoughts and feelings. Now, thanks to their utterly disingenuous coverage of Kim’s death, that distance from China’s social reality, is showing itself with greater clarity than ever before.