In the face of the lovely ice pier, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) and some foreign media reporters even want to continue the "anti-China" narrative.
On February 9, a report by Eryk Bagshaw, a reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald, a major Australian media outlet, declared that the ice pier was China's way of "promoting the cute side". The article also quoted ASPI researchers as falsely claiming that Chinese officials hired a large number of "fake accounts" on social media in order to promote the ice piers.
IC Photo drawing of a derivative of an ice pier
But instead of "China's hard cultural exports," athletes, journalists, and officials from all over the world have spontaneously become fans of the ice piers. The Prince of Monaco wants to bring an extra ice pier for his children, Japanese journalists become fanatical fans of the ice pier, athletes post "intimate photos" with the ice pier... Ice piers, without publicity, have become the global "top stream".
Baggshaw wrote in the opening stage that the biggest star of the Winter Olympics was not the Chinese freestyle skier Gu Ailing, nor Japan's "Ice Prince" Yusheng Yushin, but the chubby ice pier. This mascot is used to "promote the cute side of China".
Subsequently, the report hinted in the absence of sufficient evidence that many of the bloggers on social networking sites who posted the cute ice piers came from "fake accounts" promoted by Chinese officials.
Albert Zhang, a researcher at ASPI's International Cyber Policy Center, declared that the promotion campaign against the ice piers was China's "propaganda and information campaign." Paradoxically, he said that while these actions could "rapidly scale" to thousands of accounts, many of them were "spam" and "had little effect."
After discussing the ice piers, the report extended to the "unfair treatment" encountered by foreign media reporters during the Winter Olympics. For example, Dutch media reporters from NOS claimed on the 4th of this month that security guards in Beijing "forcibly interfered" with news interviews.
However, some domestic media pointed out that the allegations of noS reporters are unfounded. In fact, the reporter of the Dutch media entered the temporary control area that the Beijing police had notified as early as the 3rd, and failed to show his identity when facing the security personnel, and continued to intensify the situation. The security guards' persuasion of him was reasonable.
NOS so-called "blocking interview" video screenshots
Finally, Gu Ailing was borrowed to further allude to China's "propaganda activities." In Baggshaw's view, Gu Ailing, like the ice pier, is China's "story that the world wants to see"—a victorious, beautiful and powerful China.
According to public information, Bagshaw is a Northeast Asian reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian Time newspaper, and is usually critical of China's policies. ASPI, a notorious anti-China think tank, has concocted a number of so-called "reports" related to Xinjiang to smear China.
Unlike these journalists and researchers who have "adversarial thinking", many athletes, politicians and reporters reporting on the spot have been truly infected by the charm of the ice pier.
For example, Yusheng knots take the initiative to take a group photo with the ice pier.
Feather knot string and ice pier photo Twitter image
In September local time, the US Winter Olympic delegation released a video on the official account of TikTok (Douyin International Edition) on the 9th. The video begins with a shot of the scene inside the Beijing Winter Olympic Village, and then focuses entirely on the cute ice pier. The video caption reads: "Now this is a hardcore fan account of the ice pier."
Video screenshot of the ice pier taken by the U.S. delegation
Hungarian short track speed skater Liu Shaolin said in a short video recently uploaded that the ice piers in the Olympic Village have been sold out, and he took the last one when he received the award, and those who want the ice piers can go to him to grab them.
Japanese journalist Yoshido Tsujioka has become popular online because of his fanatical love of ice piers.
Video screenshots
In the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Prince Albert of Monaco experienced the production of face sculpture, and after completing a face man ice pier, he asked the staff to let him do it again, because he had a pair of dragon and phoenix fetuses, "If you only bring back one ice pier, it will be difficult to explain." ”
Since the opening of the Winter Olympics, the official Twitter account of the Olympic Games has also become a fan of the ice pier. Perhaps as the tweet says, "Ice Mounds are our best friends." ”
This article is an exclusive manuscript of the Observer Network and may not be reproduced without authorization.