The difference is largely cultural and involves the difference between the use and purpose of illustration and the perceived, in Western eyes, misuse and purpose of photography.
The Chinese would rather not use photos at all, instead using woodcuts representing the scene distilling the essence of the situation that is being reported, but the loss of traditional skills and the pressures of time mean that the use of woodcuts is no longer feasible.
The tools of photography with their verisimilitude and seemingly verifiable veracity, as seen and used in the West, are not germane to relating the narrative.
Chinese photo editors are often poorly paid clerks who are told to cobble something together which shows the narrative. They are often, make that usually, not skilled enough to make a pixel by pixel photo composition where the finer points of Photoshop and the elimination of these lacunae are taken into consideration.
The even may not even have been covered by a photographer. Its a skilled profession and it costs money to send a photographer to make a record of an event. Posing the participants may also have been problematic. (Maybe one of attendees was in the bathroom or just not in frame at the time of the shot, or is relying on an unseen representative to relay the narrative of the event.)
The story editors don’t feel that its even necessary to have photographs taken since the written words, ideograms in these cases, are far more important that the mute image. The written account has flow, the photo is merely an instant in time.
