As we enter an age of cognitive warfare, a look through the Twitter accounts of Chinese diplomats during the past week provides a fascinating insight into the minds of Chinese government officials.
It shows that “wolf warrior” diplomacy is still the order of the day in Beijing, and that Chinese propagandists are desperately seeking to alter the narrative as Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) increasingly illogical and inhumane “zero COVID-19” policy plunges China deeper into the abyss.
The Twitter page of Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Zhao Lijian (趙立堅) provides an excellent case study. Zhao’s regular briefings at the ministry are laced with anti-Western rhetoric and sarcastic punditry, often delivered with a carefully practiced contemptuous smirk.
A pinned posting at the top of Zhao’s Twitter page shows a distorted map of the world, with whole continents and nations removed, leaving just North America, Western Europe, Australia and Japan. The accompanying text reads: “The international community you always hear about.”
The transparent attempt to discredit the international consensus against Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine is amplified by a posting by Chinese Consul General in Belfast Zhang Meifang (張美芳). A cartoon shows a group of children pushing a large dumpster with the letters “NATO” on its side, brimming with machine guns and rocket launchers, over the edge of a cliff. It is as unclear as it is unsubtle. Is it China’s official position that NATO, a defensive alliance, is the aggressor in an invasion initiated by Russia?
Zhao has also reposted several videos, posted by other Chinese diplomats, of a 26-year-old black man resisting arrest and then being fatally shot by a police officer in Grand Rapids, Michigan, last week. One of the posts features the strapline: “Thanks to the good human rights situation in the US, this young man can never breathe!”
Zhao and his colleagues’ brazen attempt to stoke racial tension in the US is reinforced by the cover image at the top of Zhao’s page, which shows five multiracial hands placed on top of one another in an act of solidarity, and an overlaid text which reads: “This is a time for facts, not fear. This is a time for science, not rumors. This is a time for solidarity, not stigma.”
Zhao and his colleagues’ posts range from clunky propaganda to mendacious trolling and on to the sublimely ridiculous — sometimes displaying a level of ineptitude that beggars belief and that results in a self-defeating own-goal for China.
For example, an infographic Zhao reposted on Friday contrasts the respective GDP of “Taiwan Province” with China’s Fujian Province from 1950 to the present day, using an animated line graph. As the graph moves forward in time through the calamitous Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, Fujian Province’s GDP flatlines, while Taiwan’s launches into the stratosphere.
While the intention is clearly to brag that Fujian Province overtook Taiwan’s GDP in 2019 (if Chinese economic statistics are to be believed), the historic yawning divide between the two economies is a damning indictment of Beijing’s misrule.
Interspersed between the distinctly undiplomatic attacks are posts carrying images and videos displaying a highly sanitized view of China. Pristine countryside vistas are juxtaposed with ultra-modern cityscapes, feats of engineering and thrusting skyscrapers — and tagged with phrases such as “amazing China” and “a secret fairyland.”
The modus operandi is obvious: Accentuate every negative aspect of democratic nations and societies, while simultaneously amplifying every scrap of positive news and information from China.
Whether they realize it or not, China’s diplomats have been reduced to propagandists, forced to peddle flimsy lies and prop up a morally bankrupt and increasingly irrational regime.
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