The headlines reflect China’s confusion over how to respond to the protests that have accompanied the Olympic flame on its route. One reads: “Warm reception in cold London.” Another says: “Chinese outraged over torch relay disruption.”

The Communist Party propaganda apparatus has faced a challenging week. Confronted with the PR disaster that has been the torch relay, it apparently decided to ensure that media reports at home reduced to a minimum the disruptions by protesters in London. The state-owned China Daily said the 25 people involved were detained. “They were no deterrent to thousands of Londoners, and a large number of Chinese working or studying here packed the streets and cheered the torch on its way around the city.” The demonstrators were reduced to a line in the story.

However, in Paris, Chinese media gave more substantial coverage to the attempts by what they described as a small number of people to challenge the safety, security and passage of the torch. Some of the media methods were even slightly reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution when propaganda organs were able to whip up the public into a frenzy of rage over an issue of their choice.

When it comes to nationalist pride, though, it takes little to arouse popular sentiment. And the attacks on the torch speak to that pride. Chinese officials, it would appear, decided to allow their people to see a large part of what was happening in the knowledge that they could count on popular support.

The internet response has been resounding. Millions have expressed their rage against protesters – particularly pro-Tibet groups – who threw themselves in the path of the torch’s “journey of harmony”.

For San Francisco, where the relay was, in effect, abandoned, the media splashed photos of delighted Chinese supporters waving huge red flags. Smaller corners were reserved for images of the pro-Tibet protesters being wrestled to the ground by police. Headlines followed the tone of “Relay finishes well despite route change”.

Despite Chinese criticism of French media reporting of the torch’s progress, the relay in Paris did throw up a new national heroine – the torchbearer “angel in a wheelchair”. Jin Jing, a 27-year-old amputee and Paralympic fencer, has rocketed to fame after fending off Tibet protesters in Paris. A torrent of internet messages has fêted her as a patriotic symbol of revulsion at the relay mayhem.

Her look of determination as she shielded the torch from protesters has spread through China, inflaming simmering public anger at the protests.

One of the tens of thousands of internet postings read: “I thought we had lost in France, but seeing the young disabled torch bearer Jin Jing’s radiant smile of conviction, I know in France we did not lose, we won!”