We are pleased to republish this article by Chen Weihua, chief of China Daily EU Bureau, originally published in China Daily on 15 October 2021. The article is based on the author’s speech at our recent webinar, The Propaganda War Against China. The video of the speech is embedded below the article.
For decades, US politicians have been engaging in smear campaigns against China, an apt example being the reckless China bashing in almost every presidential campaign. The propaganda war against China escalated after the Donald Trump administration took power and further intensified when it launched all-out trade, tech and ideological wars against China, reversing decades of US policy.
The Joe Biden administration has not withdrawn those disastrous Trump policies despite criticizing them during his presidential campaign. Although the Biden administration comprises many officials from the Barack Obama administration, its China policy resembles more that of the Trump era than Obama’s presidency. And it includes the relentless propaganda war against China.
On October 10th, the Associated Press released a report that walked back Western media claims of a “genocide” in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. In the video embedded below, FoSC co-editor Danny Haiphong reviews this and other sensational claims about human rights in China to set the record straight.
Introducing the event, Radhika Desai (Professor of Political Studies, University of Manitoba, Director, Geopolitical Economy Research Group) pointed out that, on the left, the most fundamental lie about China is that it is not building socialism but rather that it is just another capitalist country, indeed a particularly brutal capitalist country. Once this untruth is accepted, China can be treated as an enemy of progressive humanity – successes can be ignored, weaknesses exaggerated and accusations hurled.
For decades, the West constructively engaged with China at an economic and diplomatic level. But the capitalist powers were suffering under two illusions: first, that the Communist Party of China would transform itself into a social democratic or even a neoliberal party that would lead China towards the type of financialised, neoliberal, unproductive capitalism that prevails in the West; second, that China would remain on the bottom rung of the global economic ladder, providing low-cost manufacturing for goods consumed in the West.
On October 9, the Friends of Socialist China sponsored a zoom event on the Propaganda War against China. The event was co-sponsored by Morning Star, the Grayzone, Pivot to Peace, the Geopolitical Economy Research Group, the International Manifesto Group, and the Qiao Collective.
The event was moderated by Radhika Desai, Professor of Political Studies, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada; and Director of the Geopolitical Economy Research Group. In her introduction to the panel, she noted that propaganda is dehumanizing, in that it portrays peoples and nations in ways that deny their humanity. Propaganda is always based on lies, and the biggest lie about China is the denial of the fundamental fact that China has been developing with continuity its socialist project for seven decades. The anti-China propaganda disseminates the false claim that, with the Reform and Opening that was initiated in 1978, China abandoned socialism for capitalism.
This very useful editorial in the Morning Star challenges the recent reports about a purported police defector ‘Jiang’, who claims to have witnessed human rights abuses perpetrated against Uyghur people in Xinjiang. The story is “spectacularly telegenic”, but its authenticity is highly questionable.
The new cold war on China has an essential ideological front in order to shape Western public opinion.
It has captured the headlines on an international scale over the past seven days, not least on Sky News today.
Someone claiming to be a former police officer in China’s Xinjiang Autonomous Region, claimed in a silhouetted interview that he had witnessed, heard of or participated in deadly beatings, sexual torture and inhuman treatment of prisoners in police stations and internment camps.
On Saturday 9 October, we held a very successful webinar opposing the propaganda war being waged by the US and its allies against China. The videos from the event are embedded below.
At the Friends of Socialist China webinar on the propaganda war against China, held on Saturday 9 October 2021, the following statement was adopted.
We, the undersigned, are concerned about the escalating propaganda war being waged by the United States and its allies against the People’s Republic of China.
Although China in recent years has recorded some truly remarkable achievements in the realm of human rights – notably, eliminating extreme poverty and successfully containing Covid-19 – it has been subjected in the Western media to the most terrible slanders regarding its human rights record. Unsubstantiated accusations of genocide and forced labour in Xinjiang echo endlessly in Western media and governments, along with conspiracy theories about the origins of the pandemic.
This information warfare accompanies, complements and seeks to build public support for a dangerous New Cold War; it serves to distract from, and justify, the construction of nuclear alliances in the Pacific, the deployment of warships to the South China Sea, the fomenting of a new arms race, and assorted attempts to obstruct China’s economic rise.
We believe that this demonisation campaign is an obstacle to urgently-needed cooperation between the world’s major powers on the questions of climate change, pandemics, nuclear weapons, and economic development. Such cooperation cannot be built in an atmosphere of fear, distrust, enmity and slander.
Therefore we demand that Western governments adopt a principled and responsible approach to improving relations and deepening cooperation with China; and that media outlets cease their vilification campaign and adhere to journalistic principles of honesty and balanced reporting.
US citizen in support of peaceful bilateral international relations.
Cooper Johnson
Retail Worker
Reb Z.
Angela Rong
Student
Linda King
Community activitis
Simon McGuinness
Dave P
Worker
Aster Eckert
Student
Christopher Murry
Librarian
Jessica Ryan
Concerned US citizen
Sasha Gervais
Jenny Lam
Artist, Chicago
Damien Marsic
Principal scientist, Porton Biologics
Yi Li
Lecturer, The University of Sheffield
Evan Richards
Young Communist League
Katherine Cui
concerned Chinese Australian
Josephine Bau
Strategic Planning Specialist
Connie Woo
John Leehane
Daniel J. Brown
Rite of Strings
David Harris
Alex Adisorn
Jordan K
Zhu Gong
June Patterson
Communist Party of Canada – Fredericton Club / 2019, 2021 CPC Candidate for Fredericton
Christy Franklin
US citizen, activist, socialist, and a friend of China
Jack Shneidman
Handsun Xiao
Family Doctor, Montreal
Robert Green
Retired
David Erick Altimari
Revolutionary Marxist Leninist
John Thompson Parker
Coordinator, Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice
Vincent Hui
International Socalist
Tom Wickham
Film-maker
Angela Gao
Miguel Figueroa
President, Canadian Peace Congress
Colerain McCardle
PCUSA
Scott Hegarty
Teacher
Ron Judd
Ted Tripp
Retired. Part-time work with CareerSource Gulf Coast, Florida
Carlos L Garrido
Editor at Midwestern Marx
Andre Powell
Socialist Unity Party
Peter Goselin
Labor Attorney
RuheForst
TRUE
John Beard
Chris Larsson
Activist and political observer
Eddie Liger Smith
Midwestern Marx Founder and Editor
Albano Coelho
IT consultant
Chin K Seah
Retired Structural Engineer
Albert Ang Chun
Oscar Vietor
Student, Guilford College
Maria Fe Celi
Torbjørn Melbye
Robert Monks
Clerical worker
Masao Suzuki
Professor of Economics, Skyline College
Wong Mun Lai
Engineer
Wong Mun Lai
Dong Long
Legal Professional
Manuel Kiener
Stan Squires
Retired Health Care Worker
Mario Simeunovic
Journalist
Betty
Z. Sullivan
None
johntyrrell3@icloud.com
Dr Agnes Kory
Michael Pollock
MIck Kelly
Editor, Fight Back!
Henrik Niemeyer
John Frederick Maryon
New Communist Party
Elizabeth Burton
Retired Doctor
Andy Brooks
General Secretary, New Communist Party of Britain
Patxi Suarez
Txinarekin.com Basque Country
Winfred Liu
Note: once you sign the statement via Google Forms, your name will appear on this page within a few hours. If you are having difficulty accessing the form, please email your name and organization/role to statement[at]socialistchina.org
We will discuss the relationship between this propaganda onslaught and the New Cold War; the reality in Xinjiang and Hong Kong; the participation of sections of the Western left in the propaganda war; and more.
The event is co-sponsored by the Morning Star, the Grayzone, Pivot to Peace, the Geopolitical Economy Research Group, the International Manifesto Group, and Qiao Collective.
On 25 September, Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez was interviewed on the Rebirth of Communism YouTube channel about China: what is the nature of the propaganda war being waged against it? What’s really happening in Xinjiang? Why does much of the Western left support this propaganda war? What are the reasons for the different levels of economic and social progress in India and China since the late 1940s? Will China suffer the fate of the Soviet Union? What does China’s project of being a ‘great modern socialist country’ by 2049 entail?
We are pleased to republish the excerpts from a Workers World livestream, which took place on 19 August 2021, devoted to debunking the so-called ‘lab leak’ anti-China conspiracy theory. The video is also embedded below.
Lee Siu Hin: I was in China in January 2020, when there was a new outbreak from unknown sources causing pneumonia in Wuhan, a city in central China. At that time, no one knew exactly what it was. China called formally on the World Health Organization to acknowledge that it was COVID-19 in February. No one had done so officially before that. It’s common knowledge and scientific fact.
However, the so-called “lab leak” theory comes from far-right, anti-China neocon warmonger politicians around the Washington D.C. Beltway, notably Senator [Tom] Cotton and the anti-China think tanks and also from the far-right, anti-China cult Epoch Times, the so-called “Falun Gong.” From Day One, they spread the “lab leak” theory. That’s how it started. This is not coming from scientists.
We are republishing this article from CODEPINK about their petition, with almost 4,000 signatures, demanding that PBS stop censoring the documentary ‘Voices from the Frontlines: China’s War on Poverty.’
By Madison Tang
Last week, on August 12, 2021, CODEPINK’s Medea Benjamin, Tighe Barry, Leonardo Flores, and Michelle Ellner delivered over 3,600 signatures from the public to Public Broadcasting Services’ headquarters in Arlington, VA asking them to stop censoring the truth about China.
Much to our disappointment, PBS, a PUBLIC broadcasting service, chose to call the police on these four peace activists members of the public, who were calmly and respectfully representing the opinions of the taxpayers — who fund PBS to the tune of over $26 million annually. The viewers who signed this petition are simply requesting that PBS honor its mission statement and values to “keep citizens informed on world events and cultures,” “express a diversity of perspectives,” and deliver content that is “responsive solely to the needs of the public—not to the interests of funders.”
On Saturday 9 October 2021 (2pm Britain, 9am US Eastern, 9pm China), Friends of Socialist China are hosting an international webinar to discuss the intensifying information warfare being waged by the US and its allies against the People’s Republic of China.
We will discuss the relationship between this propaganda onslaught and the New Cold War; the reality in Xinjiang and Hong Kong; the participation of sections of the Western left in the propaganda war; and more.
The event is co-sponsored by the Morning Star, the Grayzone, Pivot to Peace, the Geopolitical Economy Research Group, the International Manifesto Group, and Qiao Collective.
Speakers
Chen Weihua (EU bureau chief, China Daily)
Li Jingjing (Reporter, CGTN)
Ben Norton (Assistant editor, The Grayzone)
Jenny Clegg (Author, ‘China’s Global Strategy: Toward a Multipolar World’)
Daniel Dumbrill (Canadian Youtuber and political analyst based in Shenzhen)
Michael Wong (Vice President, Veterans For Peace, San Francisco)
Danny Haiphong (Co-editor, Friends of Socialist China)
Kenny Coyle (Editor of Praxis Press; Morning Star contributor)
Chair: Radhika Desai (Professor, University of Manitoba; Convenor of the International Manifesto Group)
About the organisers
Friends of Socialist China is a platform based on supporting the People’s Republic of China and promoting understanding of Chinese socialism. Its website (edited by Danny Haiphong, Keith Bennett and Carlos Martinez) aims to consolidate the best articles and videos related to China and Chinese socialism, along with original analysis.
The United States trailed China in gold medals for much of Tokyo2020 but finished atop the medal count after the games concluded on August 8th. Despite the U.S.’s late success, Western media used the Olympics competition to target China with nonstop negative press coverage. Much of the coverage was overtly political and racist in character.
On July 29th, the New York Times’ Hannah Beech unleashed a series of racist tropes in her analysis of China’s model for sporting success. The article claimed China uses inhumane methods to prepare athletes for the Olympic games and directly compared these methods to “the Soviet model.” Words like “harvest” and “assembly line” stripped Chinese athletes of their humanity. Meanwhile Beech stated that “Beijing’s focus has been on sports that can be perfected with rote routines, rather than those that involve an unpredictable interplay of multiple athletes.” This is a familiar dog-whistle, leading readers of the New York Times to believe that Chinese citizens are akin to machines and lack the cognitive skill to compete in unpredictable team sports.
On August 2nd, Helen Davidson and Jason Lu of the Guardian centered their attention on Taiwan, China. The authors argued that Chinese Taipei’s gold medal victory over mainland China in the badminton competition was a case of “David” defeating “Goliath.” They allege that Chinese Taipei’s Olympic success strengthens the argument in favor of Taiwan’s independence from China. This blatant interference in China’s internal affairs should come as little surprise given the U.S. and the U.K.’s military support for the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the refusal of Western governments to condemn its emphasis on separatism and hostile relations with the mainland. Curiously, they fail to mention that the One China Policy is recognized by the vast majority of countries in the world, including the U.S. and U.K.
The politicization of the Olympics went far beyond the Western media’s biased coverage of China, however. In the months leading up to Tokyo2020, prominent members of the U.S. Congress such as Nancy Pelosi and Ilham Omar supported a call to boycott the Olympics over China’s alleged “human rights abuses.” The International Olympics Committee (IOC) took the politicization of the games a step further by investigating whether Chinese cyclists Bao Shanju and Zhong Tianshi violated the Olympic Charter’s rule against “political and religious” propaganda by wearing pins of Mao Zedong. Implementation of this somewhat ambiguous rule was selective, to say the least. For example, Tokyo2020 participants wearing Christian crosses around their necks were not subjected to any such scrutiny.
The IOC concluded that no punishment would be rendered to Bao or Zhong. However, punishment was never the purpose of the investigation. Its true purpose was to create a scandal that would provide a veil of credibility to racist and degrading Western media coverage of China. Western media outlets from the Guardian to the BBC responded to the incident by spreading Cold War messages that demonized Mao Zedong as a murderous dictator who “ruled with an iron fist.” Left out entirely was the perspective of the athletes themselves or any other Chinese citizen who would surely disagree with the assertion that the founder of New China – during whose tenure at the helm of the PRC, life expectancy increased from 36 to 67 – could be described as a “monster.”
The Western media’s racist coverage of China during Tokyo2020 is a byproduct of the U.S.-led (and Western supported) New Cold War. The New Cold War is a zero-sum game. Racist depictions of China justify the aggressive policies of Western governments and foster a hostile political environment similar to the one that existed during the Cold War of the 20th century.
It was during the first Cold War that Black American track and field athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos engaged in their iconic protest at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. Smith and Carlos received medals barefoot and raised their black glove-covered fists to symbolize the plight of Black Americans and their struggle for liberation from centuries of racism. What fewer remember is that Peter Norman, who hailed from Australia, expressed solidarity with Smith and Carlos by wearing the badge of the Olympic Project for Human Rights on the podium alongside them. Smith, Carlos, and Norman were all ostracized from the sporting establishment in their respective countries for standing up to racism and injustice.
Still, Peter Norman’s solidarity can be applied to Tokyo2020. The West used Tokyo2020 to spread racism against China, in particular those athletes who exhibited pride in China’s long journey from an impoverished semi-colony to an independent, socialist power and the world’s second-largest economy. People across the West who stand for peace and social justice should follow in the footsteps of Peter Norman. This would mean firmly standing with the Chinese people against the West’s racist propaganda and opposing the New Cold War against China spearheaded by Western leaders and institutions.
Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez was interviewed on the World Today podcast by Anna Ge, on the subject of the ‘Uyghur Tribunal’ and the latest round of accusations regarding China’s treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
The segment is embedded below, along with a transcript.
Anna:
You’re listening to World Today. Some Western media outlets have started hyping another report wrote by the infamous anti China activist Adrian Zenz. The report claimed there will be millions fewer Uyghurs and other ethnic minority newborns in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the next 20 years. But how did he come to this sensational conclusion, how reliable is his study? To delve into these questions and more, we’re joined by Carlos Martinez from London. He’s an author and activist. Thanks for joining us, Carlos. So first of all, how much faith can we put into this report based on the data samples and methodology Zenz used?
Carlos:
So there are two things that we need to look at here. One is the data samples and methodology, the actual scientific validity of the study. And the other is the way that it’s reported. Because for the vast majority of people that see this study, they’re going to see the headlines, they’re going to see maybe a few sentences from an article, they’re not going to take a close look at the data.
Now, in terms of the methodology, Adrian Zenz has really honed this method over the course of several years. He gets lots of data from lots of places, he throws it all together. And then he tries to find the subset, the small piece of that data, that seems to prove what he wants it to prove, his hypothesis. And that’s a classic technique that people use to lie with statistics, to make statistics work for them. The correct scientific approach is to analyze all the data you have, and see if it confirms your hypothesis or not, not to narrow the sample down in a very specific way, until the data tells the story you want it to.
An equivalent example might be, maybe I’ve got a hypothesis that people read more books than they used to 10 years ago. So I start by asking a random sample of 100 people: how many books did you read 10 years ago? And then I go and stand outside a bookshop or a library and ask another 100 people, how many books did you read this year? Obviously, the average is going to be higher now, but not because 10 years have passed, but because I’ve selected the sample that’s going to give me the answer that I want. And this is what Zenz has done, essentially, he has narrowed in on a very small subset of data for one year, in a section of Xinjiang, in southern Xinjiang. And on the basis of that data, he projects that the population growth rate will reduce by 1/3.
But then, his study gets blanket coverage in the Western media. And the headlines also, that the Uyghur population number is going to reduce by 1/3. Now to cut actual population numbers by a third in 20 years, not only do you have to stop anybody from having children, but you also actively have to kill a few million people on top of that. So the whole thing is just ludicrous and unbelievable.
The population growth rate might be declining somewhat. But that’s actually the case throughout China for a number of reasons including urbanization, people joining the workforce, people going into higher education and so on. But actually we’ve seen that over the last decade, the Uyghur population in Xinjiang increased by 25% compared to the Han population, which increased by just 2%. So this latest study from Zenz is really just something that really be ignored but in fact is being given blanket media coverage in the West and is feeding into this overall story that we have of China committing a genocide or a cultural genocide in Xinjiang.
Anna:
You have visited China before. What is your impression about China and Xinjiang? Is there a gap between Xinjiang in western media and in your personal experience?
Carlos:
Yes, I would say there’s a big gap. I went to Xinjiang, specifically to Urumqi, in January last year. In terms of my expectation, going on the basis of what I had seen in the Western media before I went, I thought I would witness the intense repression of Uyghur Muslims. I didn’t think that I would see Uyghur people and other ethnicities living ordinary lives, engaging in their customs, engaging in their traditions. But actually, that’s exactly what you do see in Xinjiang. I mean, the group I was in, we didn’t have an official guide. We weren’t being told where to go by a CPC or government official. We walked around freely. We saw mosques everywhere. We saw many hundreds of Uyghur Muslims wearing distinctive clothing, walking, working, and definitely not seeming like they were in fear of being persecuted. In fact, you go to the central area and you see many people, especially older people dancing outside to traditional Uyghur music. We ate in Uyghur restaurants, the food was halal, there was no alcohol available.
All the street signs have both Chinese and Uyghur writing, one sees newspapers, one sees magazines in Uyghur script, so the feeling I got was one of not just ethnic diversity, but also of harmonious relations. If I compare it with Australia, which is a country that I’ve visited several times, the indigenous population in Australia is an oppressed minority who are prevented from living their traditional ways of life, who suffer from a much lower life expectancy than the rest of the population, from much lower educational attainment and outcomes, much higher prison rate and so on. If you go to an Australian town, any Australian town really, you can see that the situation for indigenous people there is disastrous. And the state, the government does very little to help those people. And there is ethnic conflict rather than ethnic harmony. It would be unusual for example, if I went into a cafe in Brisbane, to see a European-Australian and an Indigenous Australian, working together or having, you know, a normal friendly relationship. But it wouldn’t be at all unusual in Urumqi or Kashgar to see a Uyghur person and a Han person working together and being friends.
So yes, I would say in terms of the what I see about Xinjiang in Western media and my personal experience, there’s an enormous gap.
Anna:
It seems that China’s Xinjiang has increasingly become a card played by the West. Recently, China has dismissed a so called Uyghur tribunal set up in the United Kingdom, to hear allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang. What do you make of the legitimacy of the tribunal and the motivation behind it?
Carlos:
Well, I think it’s fairly clear that the so called tribunal has got no basis in international law. It’s part of an ongoing and quite wide ranging and long term propaganda campaign. And in turn, it’s clear that propaganda campaign is part of a US led New Cold War project, which is, is pretty well known that it’s designed to slow down China’s rise, and to try and maintain a unipolar world in which the US leads, in which the US enjoys hegemony, in which the US can structure international relations in order to serve the interests not of humanity but its own interests. If China keeps growing, and it keeps promoting and pushing a system of multipolarity, which is a more democratic framework of international relations, then the US doesn’t get to impose its will on the world any more.
China’s economy is growing, right? China has wiped out extreme poverty, China has shown that it can deal with a huge threat like the pandemic, China is taking the lead in trying to prevent climate breakdown, which is the number one threat facing humanity. And is actually the sort of thing where, in the West, we like to think we’re in charge of dealing with climate breakdown, because we’re more civilized, we’re more enlightened than the rest of the world. But actually, China’s taking the lead on that. And every success that China has is a sort of ideological blow to this capitalist or neoliberal orthodoxy. So that’s really why the US and its allies are obsessed with slandering China, making it look bad, trying to prevent other countries from working with it, trying to slow down its rise, trying to cut it out of of global value chains, trying to prevent it from having access to certain raw materials, and elements of technology, and so on.
The Uyghur tribunal fits into a more generalized setup of information warfare that the US and its allies are waging against China.
The US attacks China for its alleged lack of free speech, and yet the US media is controlled by a handful of shareholder-owned corporations with links to the military-industrial complex. Friends of Socialist China co-editor Danny Haiphong explains.
