The BBC News web site is banned in China. I can look at any other part of the BBC site - I can keep up with the latest developments in EastEnders if I really want to. But if I want to use the UK's most popular news site - no chance.

The BBC's news services is considered by some in China to be the propaganda mouthpiece of the British government and the West. As the best-known Western news agency in this part of the world, the BBC is fighting a legacy of misconception.

You can read the web sites of The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph - every one with much more of a political agenda than the BBC. But our national broadcaster is, somewhat ironically, considered the dangerous government mouthpiece. Someone should have told Alastair Campbell.

This media censorship creates one of the biggest negative perceptions of China in the West. Add to that software piracy, copyright theft, accusations of human rights abuse, and the spectre of the Communist bogeyman, and you have many of the worst views of the country that its companies have to overcome to trade as equals in the West.

Huawei chief marketing officer Xu Zhijun admits the company has to make 'one hundred times the efforts and face one hundred times the challenges' compared to US or European rivals before it can win international business as a result of these preconceptions.

But how realistic a picture do these controversial topics really paint of modern China?

When Computing first visited India about five years ago as the offshore outsourcing boom took off, you quickly learned that India cannot be judged by our Western values - it is just too different.

China is just the same.

Take, for example, the explanation of the role of democracy in modern China given to me by one young person here. Democracy is seen by the younger generation as a goal to be achieved - but one that cannot truly be reached until the country has tackled the challenges caused by the huge disparity between rich and poor, rural and urban society in a country of 1.2 billion people. Other aspects of life are considered more important goals to achieve, on the route to democracy.

In the West of course, democracy is seen as the fundamental tenet of our belief system and society, the foundation upon which everything else is built.

Does that mean China is wrong, or just different? India is again the best comparison - a country of one billion and the world's largest democracy. But how different is the life of a rural Indian farmer 1,000 miles from Delhi with a vote, and a rural Chinese farmer 1,000 miles from Beijing without a vote? Probably not much. China has never been a democracy, even before Chairman Mao it was ruled by an Emporer and further back split by feuding warlords. Democracy has only become a consideration as the country engages with Western democracies.

Surely if we reject China for some of its values, we are rejecting the opportunity to engage in cultural and social debate about those differences, and to encourage the country to embrace democracy as we have in the West? After all, 25 years ago we would scarcely have considered China to be the economic powerhouse it has become. It has shown a willingness to change - that is a good starting point.

Chinese schoolchildren are taught little about the Cultural Revolution - it is seen as a passing part of history, not a factor in today's society. The Tiananmen Square massacre though is still a taboo subject in official circles - everyone knows it happened, but they would rather forget it as a regrettable stain on recent history.

Few of the younger generation, I am told, consider themselves to be Communists. It is just a label used by politicians.

Like India, that new generation has enormous enthusiasm and pride in taking their country out into the world.  Unlike India, they live with the unique situation of being the first brought up under the government's one-child policy, limiting most families to a single child.

This is a policy that has had terrible consequences and as-yet unforeseen implications. In rural China, millions of families have aborted female babies because they want their one child to be a boy who can work in the fields. As a result, by 2010 China will have 60 million single men - the equivalent of the entire population of the UK, many of whom will never marry and may never even have a relationship.

What also are the effects of a whole generation that has never known what it is like to have a brother or sister? And the burden those children will have to take in caring alone for their elderly parents in years to come?

But, like much of what we perceive about China, even this policy has had benefits - aside from the obvious one of population control.

Many children have been able to study, go to university, and even travel abroad to universities in the US, UK and Australia purely because as an only child their parents can afford to send them for the first time. This has been a particular boon for girls who once may have been passed over for further education in favour of their brothers. It is this educated, English-speaking generation that is the future of China. Go to one of the bars here in Shenzhen and see the energy and anticipation and pride that these young people have in their country and their future.

China is by no means perfect - it has huge flaws and problems, many exacerbated to the West by some fundamental differences in values and beliefs. But what country is perfect? Certainly none in the West.

China is trying to open itself up to the world, and the least we can do is open our eyes to China. The opportunity for the West is to engage with China, encourage it to understand and value the aspects of our lives that mean the most to us. By rejecting China for its obvious flaws, we risk rejecting the opportunity to be part of the global community that a new generation of Chinese are enthusiastically embracing.