© Jacquelyn Martin / AFPUS Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Recently the US Department of State released a
report titled "How the People's Republic of China Seeks to Reshape the Global Information Environment." In it, Washington accuses China of employing "a variety of deceptive and coercive methods as it attempts to influence the international information environment." It says "Beijing's information manipulation spans the use of propaganda, disinformation, and censorship" and China "spends billions of dollars annually on foreign information manipulation efforts."
At the very start, the report acknowledges every country's right to "tell its story to the world" but says "a nation's narrative should be based on facts and rise and fall on its own merits."
Apparently, the paper's authors saw no irony in these maxims coming from the US, the greatest state propagator of misinformation, narrative manipulation and deception in the world. This is the country whose own lies have served as pretext for devastating wars - see the Gulf of Tonkin incident preceding the Vietnam war, or the claims about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction that led to the invasion of Iraq.Intent aside, China's very ability to influence the global information environment is weak compared to America's. Beijing lacks several advantages enjoyed by Washington, including speaking the world's dominant language, which permeates through all culture, literature, music, news media, and film. The US is an information hegemon, and that's why China has not been able to arrest the changes in public opinion in Western countries which stem from the United States presidential administration.
The US shapes global discourse and narratives at its own will by its powerful ability to coordinate the machinery of government with corporate agenda incentives, and therefore create an organic news cycle which mirrors its national agenda. At the highest level,
all major news organisations in the US, be it the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, CNN, etc follow and endorse the foreign policy of the state.As explained in Noam Chomsky's essay "Manufacturing Consent," if the US cares about a given human-rights issue in a targeted country, it will plough resources into placing that issue at the forefront of attention. This means government-sponsored think tanks will follow that issue and put out the associated talking points, while "experts" with certain points of view are given platform and media coverage, thus a self-reinforcing system of incentivisation is created by the US whereby both experts and media professionals attach their own careers and commercial interests to adhering to the established narrative, and of course if major outlets are following one issue, lesser ones will follow it in a herd mentality.
Why would you devote your time to exposing human-rights abuses in, let's say, Saudi Arabia, when it's much easier and more lucrative to turn your gaze to China? Sign up to the Anti-Beijing agenda, and you have a network of Washington-backed dissidents, think tanks, leaked documents and other things to make your reporting easy. Therefore you become inclined to follow the 'current thing' and thus Washington is able to control your reporting agenda, which you then deliberately dramatize and sensationalise, creating another self-reinforcing loop which polarises and shuts down objective debate on the issue. The US is also able to pull the plug on an issue when it sees fit.
For China, on the other hand, doing the same is much less feasible. Beijing does not have the starting advantage of having the most-widely used language on Earth on its side. Online, 58.8% of all content is in English, and only 1.7% is in Chinese, meaning that the absolute majority of opinions about China are both produced and consumed by English speakers. For China, it's a second language, severely limiting the cultural base of Beijing's soft power. In addition to that, while the US has, as described above, created and perfected a system of incentivisation in co-opting and controlling the international corporate media by proxy, China does not have such a system available, at least not on a comparable scale. Instead, it has a hierarchical, direct state-media system which follows orders, which in turn reduces the credibility and reach of its message. Chinese journalists thus lack the 'journalistic' tradition of America's corporate media, and therefore do not know how to utilise media as a competitive enterprise as per the norm of capitalism.
This means that China can't be the misinformation machine the US State Department depicts it to be. Meanwhile, the US excels in successful deception more than any other country on earth. Sometimes it isn't even hidden, such as proposals to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into schemes to
promote negative coverage of the Belt and Road initiative. Why, after all, do you think public opinion of China has sharply worsened in Western countries? Of course your average think-tanker will claim it's Xi Jinping's fault, but the fact you have a think-tanker saying that in the first place might be indicative of who the real malign force of global public opinion is.
Reader Comments
William Casey, former director of the CIA, upon being asked what the goal of the agency was in 1981.
The largest EVER democide was comitted in China by Mao, which makes even the vax democide in the US seem somewhat less aggressive. While the largest genocidal war was born out the asiatic principle peoples in Ghengis Khan.
What the Chinese don't like is the whole world now knows it was the Americans who had to show them how to manufacture and China dropped it's own culture to dress and live like a former enemy to Americans anyway....they rejected the Lord and went with Communism, which if you were able to ask how life is as a Chinese without any worldy accolades you might see even now while America is on it's last legs people can still enjoy more freedoms like owning a gun and defending a family frim a "gibsmedat", America is still preferable to live than China (judging by the biggest proponants of Americas demise insist on still living in America and not willing to emigrate to Russia China or Iran even...) has to make even the most staunch anti-American think why that might be (even to ponder it silently).
Christianity is a "badge" that can be worn by anyone with a presidential appeal to foreign national media, why?....well first and foremost we know there are in many different contexts, wolves in sheeps clothing and secondly the fruits never fall far from the tree (by their fruits ye shall know them) but since even Satan can quote scripture and demons believe in the one true God, the truth can handle more scrutiny than the casual will ever wish to offer.
China adopted Communism. Period.
Also the premise that Russia's wealthy Jews would somehow lose the land they took from Christians without even a fight is laudible.
I think it is naive and dangerous pov imho.
Russian people were vaxxed like every other country, have WEF young leader/honorary guest to London City financial forum, have the same biometric infastructure being set up like China, boasts extreme poverty on par with America and unemployment figures you wont hear about anywhere that can compete with any western nation...... somehow adopting Yeshua in leu of church building, yet ok murdering civilian kin in nieghbouring Ukraine presided over by another Jew seems to of flown over peoples heads (then and still now). It's all theatre to me, I read my bible that states in John that ALL nations leaders are under inspiration of Satan, an awkward fact overlooked by people who wear Christianity as a badge but carry no spiritual discernment or conviction to admit that.
China adopting Christianity is also moot on the premise they have already been fully accepting of the beast system that both Russia and other nations are hoping to "adopt" themselves in only a few years time. Do you know who the "dragon" is, did China not adopt that either??
Strange how building churches and lighting candles convinces so many people.