Editor's note: Daryl Guppy is an international financial technical analysis expert. He has provided a weekly Shanghai Index analysis for media for the Chinese mainland for more than a decade. Guppy appears regularly on CNBC Asia and is known as "The Chart Man." He is a national board member of the Australia China Business Council. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily those of CGTN.

It is too easy to underestimate the lasting impact of the persistent misreporting of China that has come to characterize much of the Western media. A recent example serves as a compelling illustration.

It starts with a report in a well-respected financial daily newspaper Australian Financial Review. The report carried the claim that "share markets on the Chinese mainland… fell to their lowest levels since the 2008 financial crisis."

This claim was easily de-bunked. I posted this observation and correction, along with a price chart, on a professional social media feed. I noted that the Shanghai index was 78 percent higher than its 2008 low. It was 60 percent higher than the 2013 low and 21 percent higher than the 2009 low. Clearly the stock market had not fallen to its lowest levels since the 2008 financial crisis. The same newspaper repeated the false claim several days later.

This inaccurate media reporting begs an important question: If these basic and easily verifiable facts are false, then what else is inaccurate in the media's China coverage? This inaccuracy is a widespread challenge with Australian media reporting of China and it is having a long term impact on the way the public understands the country.

The responses to my observations are both astounding and concerning. There were a surprising number of respondents who asserted that my comments were wrong despite my post including a price chart of the Shanghai Index confirming the inaccuracy. If they chose not to believe the figures, then surely the visual evidence shown in the price chart would be confirmation in its own right. After all, this is the index that forms the basis of many Chinese exchange-traded funds traded on Western stock markets.

There was not one admission that my observations were correct. Instead there was a continued stream of comments suggesting that my observations were incorrect propaganda despite the visual evidence proving otherwise.

This is more than just a minor and irritating example of inaccurate reporting. What is far more concerning is the way that an informed, professional segment of the population remained happy to accept demonstrably inaccurate reporting. It represents a hardening of ideological positions that has become impervious to even basic facts.

If this is the attitude of some professional people, then we can assume these committed misconceptions will also be found among business leaders, politicians and policy makers. Certainly with populist leaders, this becomes part of the foundation of policy decisions.

This is not something that has developed overnight. It is the product of a sustained attack on China by large segments of the Western media. It seems that in their eyes, and reporting, China can do nothing right. This attitude feeds into almost all levels of discussion and reporting.

Policy options around China are feeling the impact of work by groups registered as agencies of foreign influence. When they work alongside a concentrated media, then their impact on policy making and the shaping of opinion is disproportionally large.

A combination of forces – unbalanced media coverage; outsourced policy formulation; foreign interference and influence – have created fertile ground where misinformation could shape the perceptions of China and drive the China policy debate.

There are no easy solutions to rectifying this lack of balance and accuracy in Western media reporting. We do not see these inaccuracies in ASEAN media. In theory, the internet offers easy access to a wider range of reporting from the mainstream media in Asia and elsewhere. In practice, most people do not read anything other than their home country media.

It has become all too common to dismiss the contrary evidence offered by those who have lived or worked in China by suggesting their observations are tainted by their on-the-ground experience. Their observations are dismissed by many since they believe the negative reporting of China. This leads to the situation where objective, irrefutable factual evidence such as the Shanghai Index chart, can be dismissed in favor of an obvious inaccuracy.

The depth of this ideological positioning is concerning in an environment that extolls the virtues of a "free" media while accepting reporting that is inaccurate and un-balanced. This presents a significant problem for informed public policy discussion. The media tendency to distort, vilify and misrepresent what is happening in China creates a cesspool of misinformation. This in turn facilitates the growth of racism and poor policy decisions.  

We should not fear improving our knowledge of China, but we have every reason to fear ideologically driven and willful ignorance about China.

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