ESSAY: Balloons, lies and bubbles

Talk of spy balloons is taboo on CCTV, but it can't get enough of the Nord Stream spy saga.

A gargantuan high-tech Chinese balloon careens across the North American continent, unleashing a torrent of heated media coverage almost everywhere in the world but China.

A one-man substack post by American muckracking legend Seymour Hersh purports to explain a mysterious act of sabotage. His exposé explodes in the global media (and makes prime time news everyday for half a month on China’s CCTV) but gets little play in his home country, and not as much as might be expected in Europe.

The way both stories are being played up or played down by one side or the other is indicative of a “perceptual divide” as world sentiment is being herded into one of two camps, aligning either with the US or China.