CHINESE MEDIA AND XENOPHOBIA
"Those trying to hijack public opinion with their "patriotism" harm the country by misleading society and ruining its international image. What they actually peddle is nothing but extreme xenophobia"
"Those trying to hijack public opinion with their "patriotism" harm the country by misleading society and ruining its international image. What they actually peddle is nothing but extreme xenophobia"
So concludes the state-run China Daily in one of several sober, soul-searching articles about a racist attack against foreign nationals in China. The above statement is also a pretty good critique of much of the propaganda produced by CCTV and other state outlets in the name of news but it probably wasn’t intended as such.
China Daily seems to have taken the recent spate of attacks against foreigners in China more to heart than other state media, perhaps in part because it serves a diplomatic function as an arm of external propaganda. It had no less than half a dozen articles about Hu Youping, a Chinese woman who lost her life trying to protect Japanese children from a knife-wielding nationalist.
"Those trying to hijack public opinion with their "patriotism" harm the country by misleading society and ruining its international image. What they actually peddle is nothing but extreme xenophobia"
The authoritative CCTV evening news, in contrast, had nothing on the topic.
The anti-US and anti-Japan bias of Chinese national TV is not new, but it has arguably gotten worse as CCTV producers, under political pressure to show that Xi’s China is a uniquely charmed place, have amplified the “we” vs. “them” dynamic of nightly news coverage to cardboard cut-out, cartoon-like proportions.
If you follow the logic of CCTV News, China is great and everything Xi touches is good. Even the dour-faced leader’s glance counts for something, and pictures of him touring and pointing at things from the archives are endlessly recycled. To bolster the sense that all of China is a beneficiary of the paramount leader’s unique beneficence, it is near impossible for CCTV to report bad news from China.
As a result, the inexorably good news from China is balanced out with predictably bad news from the rest of the world, and while this dichotomy doesn’t reflect the truth, there’s a fairytale-like charm to the notion that China can do no wrong, in sharp contrast to the US and Japan, which can do no right.
And if and when things do get a bit iffy in China, there’s no shortage of tragedy to report on from elsewhere. Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan provide ample grist for that. Other times, major news stories are buried or bumped, subordinated by the need to rail against the US and Japan, even when the story in question has little or no global news value.
“A train carrying hazardous materials derailed and caught fire in the United States” (July 6 news)
Local crime stories in the States, supplemented by extreme weather, train wrecks and toxic leaks are regular features of the Xinwen Lianbo news program.
Japan also offers an attractive target for “gotcha” stories but provides a more limited palette of bad news on most days, so certain stories, like the radioactive waste water at Fukushima, get repeated treatment, typically casting Japan as the poisoner of the world’s seas, typically illustrated with colorful posters carried by a handful of Japanese protesters on a Tokyo side street. The protests are rarely newsworthy, but it’s good practice for CCTV news crews to cover them because they get so little practice covering protests at home.
Sometimes even the ravages of nature appear eager to toe China’s party line.
Earthquakes in Japan are worse than earthquakes in China, even when the death toll suggests otherwise. One reason they look worse and more forlorn is because CCTV avoids airing shots of Japan government agencies providing assistance, whereas China’s coverage of its own quakes is all about providing assistance.
The January 1, 2024 Noto quake featured much more prominently on Chinese TV news than the 12.18 Jishisan earthquake in Gansu which occurred only two weeks before.
Not only did CCTV deploy six correspondents and ship news crews to Ishikawa to do stand-ups next to cracked pavement and broken buildings, but it peddled images of apocalyptic portent in the ten days that followed.
In contrast, China’s own Gansu quake, had more reported casualties but got zero independent reporting and glancing state coverage at best. Japan’s quake was cast as a sad story of government neglect, while China’s minor quake was graced with an upbeat report on the CCP-directed rescue teams for their courage and generosity in helping the people.
State TV news has always been about showing China in the best light possible but recently its bias has gotten a boost by portraying the rest of the world in a cold, dark light.
"The world is undergoing profound changes unseen in a century, but time and situation are in our favor," says Xi Jinping again and again. CCTV viewers know it well, it’s been the part of the spin of the nightly news for years now.
Zhang Youxia, one of Xi’s yes men in the military, put it in less-lofty terms:
"Some countries, for fear that the world may stabilize, deliberately create turmoil, interfere in regional issues, interfere in other countries' internal affairs, and instigate color revolutions. Behind the scenes, they hand out knives and think nothing of provoking people into wars, ensuring that they're the ones who benefit from the chaos."
So long as it is foreigners holding the knives, it is grist for CCTV’s jaundiced line. Shocking visuals of human suffering in Sudan and Gaza are paired with finger-pointing blame games which invariably lead via a trail of breadcrumbs back to the US. Chinese TV blatantly echoes Russian dezinformatsiya; it repeats lurid tales of toxic bio-chemical labs in Ukraine and it airs footage from Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and the Houthis.
The Chinese news is a televised morality tale of sorts, a Manicheaen world of good and bad whipped up by the whims of the party. It’s a self-pat on the back, dissing other lands while singing praise of the motherland.
To resist the will of China is to court bad coverage.
The US tops all offenders, but the UK gets more criticism than the rest of Europe combined. Japan is the most-based Asian nation, with South Korea a close second, while North Korea, Russia and Iran are accorded unwavering respect.
It’s a weird, weird world as seen on CCTV, and while the one-sidedness of the news reaches humorous proportions, it’s serious business. While online forums are the site of the most virulent anti-foreign hate speech, state media, in its own bland way, fuels the flames of hatred by running coded anti-American and anti-Japan stories on a regular basis to better showcase China’s unique culture and political system.
The recent spate of knife attacks on foreigners in China is worrisome. There is nothing at present to link anti-foreign reports on the airwaves to rash violence on the ground. But the ruling authorities have in the past provoked unrest by looking the other way, going so far as to permit fiery speech and permit street demonstrations when the hate and xenophobia targeted Japan or the US.
State media sets the tone, and while China’s news narrators tend to speak in coded terms, China’s domestic audience has long since been primed to connect the dots. Outright TV attacks on foreign individuals, leaders or otherwise, remain rare, in keeping with diplomatic protocol. The state media instead engages in broad brush attacks in depicting a world where the US and Japan are bad countries.
The untamed corners of China’s internet do not necessarily represent the party line. But intolerant posts that are not taken down are, in a sense, officially-tolerated speech because the CCP controls what is and isn’t allowed to be said online.
When it comes to the flagship news, the censorship is even more strict.
Maps of the US showing the latest incidents of gun violence are a regular feature on the news.
“3 dead, 2 injured in shooting in Ohio, USA” (CCTV July 6)
A look at several weeks of CCTV news transcripts reveals nothing on the knife attacks. The odd truth is that a lethal conflict involving Chinese citizens has considerably less chance of being reported on than some random shots fired in Ohio.
CCTV still closes with the usual bad news about its biggest rival: “Multiple shootings on Independence Day in the US” but it’s eased up in its criticisms of Japan, either due to a news lull or political contingencies of the moment.
State TV may have pulled some punches in the aftermath of the Suzhou attack, but it is not shy about letting other countries take a swing. On June 30, CCTV reported: “North Korea strongly condemns joint military exercises between US, Japan and South Korea”
A propaganda trifecta! A news item that slams three countries deemed worthy of China criticism as voiced by a country that China refuses to criticize.
Similar hypocritical echoes can be heard in the June 29 report: “Russia strongly protests Japan's planned military exercises near Russian border.”
What is truly newsworthy and not without emotional impact, is that Hu Youping, the inadvertent Chinese victim of the anti-Japanese attack, has been characterized as a hero in both Japan and China. A hapless avatar of peace, her courageous resistance did not make the grade of CCTV’s evening news.
China Daily had several articles on the topic including one that stated, “Tencent, Baidu, Douyin, NetEase, and iFeng.com — praised Hu's bravery and righteousness. However, they also condemned users who made extreme remarks encouraging confrontations between China and Japan or smeared Hu as being a mole for Japan.”
As for the flagship news program, Russia still gets a free pass in its criminal and insupportable war on Ukraine. Xi still has big plans for shared humanity and China is still the best country in the world, with no close second, so when the chime sounds for the seven o'clock news known as Xinwen Lianbo, brace yourself for more of the same-old, same-old.
Some things just don’t change.
7.8 update
Global Times, which ran an opinion article calling for restraint in hate speech after Japanese in China were targeted, has reverted to type, stoking distrust, revivifying ancient history, demonizing today’s Japan for things that happened over 80 years ago.
Meanwhile, Chinese media is not shy about using knife as an idiom and metaphor.
