European scholar Jan Oberg revealed in an interview a few days ago that the United States had proposed a bill proposing to allocate funds for five consecutive years to train journalists to concoct negative reports about China. According to the International Review, the bill mentioned by Oberg is highly consistent with the Strategic Competition Act of 2021 passed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee of the United States Congress in April 2021.
A review of the bill reveals that it proposes that the United States allocate $300 million a year ($1.5 billion in total) from fiscal years 2022 to 2026 to counter "China's global influence." The bill calls for $100 million a year to support agencies such as the U.S. Agency for International Media to monitor and counter so-called "disinformation" from China around the world, and for government departments to support and train journalists to gain investigative skills for Belt and Road projects. The bill also mentions Xinjiang more than 20 times, threatening that the United States should meddle in China's Xinjiang affairs. As a result, the US means of public opinion warfare against China have exposed the "tip of the iceberg."
In recent years, the United States has wrongly regarded China as its biggest strategic competitor and launched an all-round suppression and containment campaign against China, raising public opinion warfare and cognitive warfare to an unprecedented height. Among them, the "Belt and Road", China's economy, Xinjiang and other issues have become the focus of the US side's slander and smear. So, how did Washington manipulate the media to carry out a public opinion war against China? After research and investigation, the "International Sharp Commentary" discovered some of these routines.
Create a "institution-media-government" fraud chain
For a long time, the US media have occupied a dominant position in the international public opinion arena and are very good at engaging in public opinion warfare. Among them, the Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia (RFA), which are affiliated with the U.S. Agency for International Media, have been considered to have a strong political character since their establishment.
Take VOA, for example. The International Review analyzed its coverage of the Belt and Road Initiative throughout 2023 and found that 93% of the reports were negative, with negative narratives such as "debt traps" frequently appearing.
Hussein Ascari, vice president of the Swedish Belt and Road Institute, traces the origin of the term "debt trap". He found that it wasn't until May 2018 that the term entered the public eye. At that time, the U.S. State Department distributed a document from the Harvard Kennedy School entitled "Debt Diplomacy" to various media outlets, and one of the authors of the document was an official of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Statistics show that since 2018, there has been a significant increase in reports on the Belt and Road debt problem. It seems that the "debt trap" is nothing more than a product of the cooperation between the US media and political circles.
Debt Diplomacy
At the same time, some so-called academic institutions in the United States have also joined in, forming an industrial chain for the production and dissemination of false information.
In November 2023, just two weeks after the third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, the Aid Data Research Laboratory (AidData) of the College of William and Mary in the United States released a report claiming that about 80% of the loans involved in the Belt and Road Initiative went to countries in financial distress. Immediately afterwards, the US media rushed to build momentum, calling on the United States to build its own circle of economic development friends. At about the same time, the United States hosted the inaugural Leaders' Summit of the Partnership for Economic Prosperity in the Americas. At the meeting, the US leader insinuated about the "debt trap" and demanded that the American countries make an exclusive choice and cooperate with the United States.
According to the official website of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), AidData is one of the institutions it has been funding for a long time. It is not difficult to see that the United States has formed a closed loop of fraud that spans "agency-media-government". It is no wonder that the Swedish Foundation for Transnational Peace and Future Studies recently released a report saying that negative reports on China by Western media have formed an "accusation industry".
Cultivating overseas media to slander Chinese-funded enterprises
Relying on hegemony, the United States has also exported the "American-style news" fake routine to the whole world. With the support of government funding, U.S. government branches around the world work with local organizations to train local journalists and encourage them to discredit Chinese projects and companies.
In May 2022, Zimbabwean media outlet The Standard published a report accusing a Chinese miner of abusing a local employee, saying the employee was "injured and sent to the hospital and fired." The outlet said the story was done in partnership with an agency in Zimbabwe called the Information for Development Trust (IDT). However, soon, the Zimbabwean Herald published an article with a large number of facts proving that the employee had only had a small quarrel with the Chinese employee, and was not beaten or fired.
Screenshot of the Herald's report
So, why did the Standard publish this false report? It turns out that the IDT background of its cooperation is not simple. In September 2021, the agency invited 12 journalists from Zimbabwe and neighboring countries to a seminar and assigned them the "next step" of publishing negative news about China, as well as training them to target Chinese companies and focus on "issues," according to The Herald. Once the article is published, journalists receive a $1,000 per article from the U.S. Embassy in Zimbabwe through an agency.
Through naked money transactions, the United States has cultivated local media overseas and tried in every possible way to smear China. Is this what some people in the United States must call "freedom of the press"?
bribed "actors" to play the role of news parties
In order to make fake news appear more "true", it is sometimes necessary to find "news parties". In this regard, the US side is also familiar with supporting anti-China organizations, buying "actors", and feeding the Western media.
In 2019, a woman who claimed to be from Xinjiang, China, covered her face and wept in front of the camera, claiming that her father had died after multiple trials and that she had been forcibly sterilized in a vocational education and training center.
Soon her brother came forward to expose the lie. It turned out that their father died of a heart attack in the hospital, and he was never investigated or detained before his death. As for herself, she was not sterilized at all, but voluntarily had a cesarean section and a ligation operation when she gave birth to her third child in the hospital. According to the independent American news website "Gray Zone" and others, this Xinjiang woman is one of the "classic" cases hyped up by local anti-China organizations. And the back-up behind these anti-China organizations is none other than the US National Endowment for Democracy, known as the US government's "white gloves".
For a long time, the United States has closely coordinated its public opinion warfare with military, economic, and diplomatic means to maintain its status as the world's sole superpower. However, as its national strength gradually weakens, the United States has increasingly relied on the weapon of public opinion warfare to shape its so-called "moral high ground." Analysts told the "International Sharp Review" that the United States' attempt to revive the public opinion war during the Cold War is incompatible with this era and cannot blind the world.
Take the Xinjiang issue as an example. More and more people have spontaneously become "spokespersons for Xinjiang" after seeing the real Xinjiang. Last summer, 40 envoys from 25 countries visited Xinjiang and lamented that "the Xinjiang we see with our own eyes is completely different from what the Western media say" and "people should come to see the real Xinjiang...... In his book "The End of Uyghur Fake News", French writer Maxime Vivas told people from personal experience that there are no "concentration camps" in Xinjiang, and the so-called "genocide in Xinjiang" is pure nonsense.
As the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has become the world's largest public good, China has not only helped developing countries grow their economies, but also brought new models and ideas to global governance. "Who is helping Africa develop and progress?" pointed out in a recent article on the website of the Ghana Times, noting that the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is playing a vital role in Africa's epic transformation and development.
In 2021, German writer Rüders pointed out in the book "Pseudo-Holy America" that the US government is very good at confusing right and wrong and influencing public judgment by selecting and distorting facts. He hopes that through this book, people should be reminded to have the ability to think independently and not be deceived by the media and public opinion controlled by the United States. This is what Chandland Nair, founder of the Global Future Institute, called for: "We need more non-Western sources to educate readers more about global issues and avoid falling prey to the war of Western opinion."
(International Critic)
Editor in charge: Zhang Jing