Essay: China state TV has a bad Russian accent

And there are many words it still cannot say. As the anniversary of Russia's war of invasion nears, CCTV under Xi still cannot say "war" or "invasion" in deference to Putin. And "Peace" means "war."

It's "the situation," a conflict that spontaneously erupted with no context. It’s all Russia claims this and Ukraine claims that framed by the Kremlin narrative.

Beijing’s already myopic view of the outside world is looking narrower by the day. Increasingly, it has a pronounced Russian accent.

Everyday, for almost a year now, CCTV evening news has included a Ukraine update from Moscow using footage from Russia’s Defense Ministry.

In keeping with Kremlin diktat, the war is never called a war, instead, it is dubbed “the situation” or the “Russo-Ukrainian conflict.”

Russia’s daily updates on the ‘special military operation focus on gleaming weaponry, mostly Russia’s big guns, and what is purported to be combat footage from the cockpit and behind the gun scope. The targets of Russia’s wrath are obscured by billowing smoke and orange flame.

Volodymyr Zelensky almost never gets airtime, and as of this writing, he is still waiting for Xi Jinping to return his call. On most days, Kiev is denied even the pretense of sovereign respect, Although the state media is a notorious stickler for exactitude in nine-dash maps that shore up contested claims of sovereignty, its studio map of Ukraine is tellingly borderless. Ukraine is depicted as a land open to contest, up for grabs. The Donbas, Luhansk, Donetsk bleed imperceptibly into Russia.

CCTV has effectively ceded to Moscow editorial control on Ukraine, granting the aggressors a free pass to invade, pillage, burn and bomb, all the while dressing the terror in euphemisms and pointing the finger elsewhere. The Bucha Massacre didn’t happen. Mariupol was gutted by Azov Nazis. The conflict is blamed on outside forces, mostly the US and NATO, while conspiratorial theorizing about US bio-labs in Ukraine gets ready air-time.

The Kremlin influence is so deep that CCTV openly draws on Russia Today for its worldwide network of “experts” including Tucker Carlson, Scott Ritter, Roger Waters and various basement bloggers. Often there’s a telling smudge in footage where the words “Russia Today” “Sputnik” “TASS” and "RIA Novosti" were rubbed out.

A "fanning the flames" anti-US diatribe is aired almost daily, in which the US, UK and NATO get roundly blamed for causing Ukraine to burn through provocations, meddling, and demented visions of hegemony. Corporate America is getting rich at the expense of peace. The US treats the hapless Ukrainians as cannon fodder, prolonging the day of surrender and peace. Russia has a right to defend itself, doesn’t it?

As if to prove said allegations, even unrelated news from the US tends to be bad news. Not necessarily false news, just gruesome reports cherry-picked to fit Xi’s narrative of the US in decline. Whether it be violent crime, police brutality, abject homelessness, judicial injustice, train wrecks or abject poverty, CCTV is unforgiving in its coverage of the US. The UK gets negative treatment too, but the tone is more mocking.

How can a small, poor country crippled by one strike after another find the time and money to aid Ukraine?

China’s coverage of its place in the world is right out of the technicolor wizardry of the Wizard of Oz. The promised land is blooming and pristine, full of vivid hues, flowers in blossom and a landscape undergoing magical transformation, while the US-led West is cinematic Kansas; a stark, gritty, storm-blown land of suffering rendered in black and gray.

The EU gets more nuanced coverage, especially Germany, often portrayed in sympathetic terms as the victim of gas shortages and industrial decline due to those “unjust and unfair” US sanctions placed on Russia. "Updates" on the Nord Stream pipeline saga are a daily fixture.

Even as China outsources its foreign news analysis to Moscow, it is consolidating party control at home in time-honored, homegrown ways. The personality cult of Xi Jinping is careening out of control, bent on making a united nation under one, a nation of one mind. The Beijing Olympics that got talked about from winter until summer as a “crowning achievement'' of the paramount leader in the lead up to his coronation at the 20th Party Congress in October still get news play.

Content to ignore China's shortcomings and Russia's aggression abroad, CCTV's propaganda has become more assertive.

Not only can the US no longer do anything right, but China, an honorable country on the march and on the rise, guided by the incomparable vision of Xi Jinping, can do no wrong. As for Ukraine, it is a country without agency, a tool of the West. China has yet to acknowledge it was invaded, because the Russian-inflected news still insists on giving Putin a free pass.