CCTV FOLLIES 10.13 CHINA SUPPORTS HAMAS
Beijing never criticizes "friends" -Hamas/Syria/Iran axis not to be condemned -Russia wages long, bloody war of invasion without a peep from Beijing -Xi is the toast of the town -Xi's so popular!
China state TV keeps the focus on Gaza. It details Israel’s bombing campaign without once addressing today, or any day in the last week, the horrific Hamas attack inside Israel. The death toll from massacres that killed 1200 Israeli civilians in a matter of hours are folded into aggregrate casualty figures.
CCTV covers half the story with half lies. It’s like telling the story of US naval aggression in the mid-Pacific in 1942 by leaving out Japan and Pearl Harbor entirely.
The casualty figures are shown in aggregate on the screen but the news anchor opens the news announcing Gaza casualties as reported by Gaza’s Ministry of Health.
China has not, and probably will not condemn Hamas. It’s playing an amoral geopolitical game where the only thing that counts is bolstering what Beijing perceives (rightly or wrongly) to be to its petty advantage.
Viewers in China will only see many pictures such as seen below. The massive bombing of Gaza is a major news story and it deserves detailed coverage, it’s simply horrific, and yet, it’s only half the story.
An Israeli was stabbed in Beijing today. It’s not hard to see how the warped and closeted information environment fostered by CCTV news can contribute to tensions.
But I’m jumping ahead to the foreign news which comes at the tail end of the program. Before Chinese viewers get to see Gaza, there is the Xi personality cult to deal with. For the second day in a row, the news cycle is completely dominated by Xi.
Xi Jinping has called on east China's Jiangxi Province to write its chapter in Chinese modernization by tapping into its strengths and improving its weak points.
Xi, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks during his inspection of the province from Oct. 10 to 13.
Xi stressed the importance of emancipating the mind and making pioneering efforts.
Some of the faces are beautiful, it’s almost like a poster, but the underlying reality is grim. This is mandatory leader worship.
Xi is hailed from boats on water.
Xi passes by, causing art students to drop their brushes and stand at attention.
What a refreshing change from yesterday’s news which looked like this:
Inseparable from worship of Xi is worship of the Party, which is only fair, because the Xi is the party and the party is Xi. No term limits! It’s in the constitution! It’s CCTV’s mission to be a mouthpiece for the party, which is the same as being…well you know.
The party’s policy is “inculcation from the cradle”--so these tykes are already veterans.
And now back to skies out of Gaza. This little piece of Palestine, dear friend of China, is under bombardment, cruel is cruel, there’s no getting around that, but to CCTV viewers, it’s happening out of the blue and done for no reason other than the bad character of the Israelis. Massacre? What massacre?
It’s not that it’s all picture of Palestine no pictures of Israel, though the ratio is over ten to one. There are several blurry shots of Israeli tanks and IDF troops, but this one is nice and clear.
The very next frame is back to the bombing, and while the juxtaposition is CCTV’s own, it’s not without innate editorial logic.
Mahmood Abbas, a frequent visitor to China and “friend” of Xi, gets more respectful coverage.
The Palestinian leader meets the King of Jordan
Russia is still conducting its special military operation in Ukraine. The last shot, a concession to fair and balanced coverage, shows Ukraine fighting back.
In other news, China is still crowing about its securing its seat on the UN Human Rights Council, the news of which is a balm to dictators and despots the world round.
And last but not least, little land-locked Laos, locked into the Belt and Road and a Chinese built fast train, has been reduced to a colony of Beijing in everything but name.
Zai jian!
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Trigger warning: THE FOLLOWING IS NOT CCTV NEWS! IT’S UNCENSORED!
Below a list of stories about Peng Lifa from China Story last year:
jinpeili.substack.com/p/is-it-twitter-xis-police-or-both
https://jinpeili.substack.com/p/drowning-sorrows
https://jinpeili.substack.com/p/the-times-they-are-a-changin
https://jinpeili.substack.com/p/xiao-liang-t
Also a special appreciation to Xiao Liang, an artist from Nanchang, who was arrested after creating the digital portrait below by which Peng is known to the world
