CCTV FOLLIES 5.5 RE-RUNS ABOUND
And yet the sun still shines! -Mists still cling to mountains -Reruns abound- Foreign news has distinct Xi slant -Gallic connerie for Xi -Pro-Russia news is cut to help French pretend China is neutral
Xi Jinping leaves Beijing for official visits to France, Serbia and Hungary.
Xi has been doing so much to make China beautiful. Aerial views affirm this fact.
Why the sudden switch to a night scene? Where’s the sun? Has someone important been eclipsed? The tension builds…
CCTV masterfully sets the nocturnal scene, artfully creating a visual continuity to establish the very, very important night shot that comes next.
Didn’t see it coming? You’re not watching enough CCTV!
It is he!
Xi as seen in 2019 singing praise of plants in an overwrought ecological exhibit with tons of colored lights and a huge carbon footprint.
Ordinary Beijing residents and visiting foreigners alike chirp about how amazing it is to actually be experiencing first-hand Xi’s vision for China Ecological Civilization.
Cynics, say what you will, but CCTV mists are really amazing. Steamy. Semi-spiritual.
The mysterious mists are never explained, so feel free to improvise. How about this?
Increasingly, China is bathed in the fog of Xi Jinping Thought…
Whew! Can only take so much of that home-grown personality cult stuff when the spinning globe appears and you find yourself almost happy to hear the bad news from the rest of the world.
But wait! What? The foreign news is happy today? Yes it is! And nowhere is that happiness more evident than in France, Hungary and Serbia, which by happenstance are the three nations being blessed with a magnificent visit from you-know-who.
Xi’s imminent arrival in France is awaited with faux intellectual elan and bated breath.
Given the uniformly glowing responses that CCTV gets wherever it sticks its big microphone, you’d get the impression that the French are as afraid of criticizing Chairman Xi as the timid and obedient Chinese masses, but it’s just classic Gallic diplomacy, or as they say in French: Ce ne sont que des conneries gauloises.
Serbia is riding the Xi Jinping fast train into the future.
To think, this is his second visit here!!!
It’s an extremely important visit!
The enthusiasm is no less effusive on the slowly rolling Danube.
Xi’s Hungary visit is anticipated with ravenous appetites in the home of Goulash Communism.
The rest of the foreign news is entirely Xi-free news, and as such, it can go as negative as the editors care to make it. As for foreign news with a negative valence, one only need look at Gaza for bad news every which way, but even Gaza gets short shrift today. More remarkably, the usual pro-Russian segment, curated by Russia’s Ministry of Defense has been cut from the news cycle entirely.
That’s a big deal if one bears in mind that Russian propaganda has been given ample space at the top of the foreign news on a daily basis since February 24, 2022.
Perhaps Beijing is displeased with Moscow for some unknown reason, but more likely it’s a PR gift to Emmanuel Macron, who is walking the diplomatic tightrope of roundly embracing Xi and all that his rotundity represents, while pretending Xi isn’t the world’s leading enabler of Putin’s vicious war in Ukraine.
The editors in Beijing run through the paces of a handful of foreign stories, content to keep the foreign reports brief, if not light, and entirely free of context or analysis. It’s a light news day, after all.
Israel bombs a Hamas missile installation.
Hamas fires upon IDF troops.
Cuba announces visa-free travel for Chinese citizens!
US service sector contracts in April
The sad but dignified pictures of a semi-empty US shopping mall is what China’s regularly-scheduled America-bashing segment looks like when the news coach calls for a time-out, followed by a change up at the plate. Viewers are pitched a softball.