China’s state-run media attacks on the United States are the essence of hypocrisy.
China’s General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) regulates and administers state-run print, news, and internet enterprises. All such outlets are carefully managed to ensure that all information conveyed echoes the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) narratives, policies, and diktats, especially those proclaimed by Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
GAPP uses coercion to ensure consistent CCP-endorsed messaging. The Council on Foreign Relations reported that GAPP “uses libel lawsuits, arrests, and other means to force Chinese journalists and media organizations to censor themselves.” Furthermore, GAPP manages the “Great Firewall,” which blocks virtually all foreign websites and social media, such as Facebook and Instagram, to ensure “purity of domestic content” from a communist point of view.
At the direction of GAPP apparatchiks, the primary mission of Chinese state-run media is to relentlessly denigrate and undermine the main enemy of the CCP, that is, the United States of America. Those media are an integral part of the continuing psychological warfare that is one front in Xi’s undeclared war being waged against the United States.
The Chinese media’s psychological warfare includes consistent attacks over time on the foundations of the U.S.-supported post-World War II liberal international order, such as democracy, capitalism, established international law and institutions, and basic human rights. The standard modus operandi is this: Xi pontificates, “wolf warrior” diplomats amplify, and state-run media echo the attacks in a coordinated effort.
A constant countering of these attacks is required to set the record straight and remind Americans and others of the hypocrisies and lies propagated by the Chinese media. After all, a psychological war can only be fought if both sides are fully engaged. Otherwise, the CCP wins by default, to the long-term detriment of the United States and the world in general.
An “editorial” on April 17 from China Daily, headlined “Stain on American soul a human rights issue,” is a case in point. The chutzpah exuded by the editorialist (propagandist) therein is astounding. Let us dissect the article and point out several hypocrisies and lies.
The first sentence is a whopper: “Racism in the United States is not only a ‘stain on its soul’ but also a serious human rights issue that has sparked widespread international concern and condemnation.”
In reality, it could be argued that the United States is the least racist multiracial and multiethnic country in the history of the world. Racial and ethnic demographics continue to change in the United States, as graphically depicted by USA Facts, due to immigration from non-white countries over the past 50 years. For example, “between 2010 and 2021, the Hispanic/Latino population [in the US] had the most growth increasing by 11.9 million.”
Is it the siren call of a “systemically racist U.S. society,” as the CCP infers, that is enticing these people to come to the United States, or is it instead freedom, opportunity, and the absence of racism offered to all regardless of race, color, or creed? Oddly, brown and black racial minority groups in various countries aren’t clamoring to emigrate to communist China in the same numbers as the United States. Could it be the CCP-backed systemic Han Chinese racism that exists in China deters would-be immigrants?
The United States fought a civil war that resulted in the end of slavery in the mid-19th century. The U.S. civil rights movement has been alive and well and is a main component of the Democratic Party coalition. NPR noted last year that “the Pew Research Center combed through the U.S. Census data and found the percentage of the black population that had migrated to the United States had more than tripled over the last 40 years.” Would these people be keen to enter a systemically racist country (as claimed by the American left and the CCP)?
The racial grievance industry and the American left (cheered on by the CCP) have concocted a new category of racism called “microaggressions” to beef up statistics on racism in the United States because overt acts of racism have dramatically declined.
Meanwhile, in China, the CCP has been racially and culturally purifying, reeducating, and persecuting minority populations since taking power in 1949. Racism in China is pervasive and directly supported by the Han Chinese-dominant CCP. As noted by China Chanel, “Han-supremacist and racist-nationalist ideology is the conceptual foundation of modern China, and it is also the reason why even today Chinese officialdom refuses to accept non-Chinese immigrants as citizens.” Uyghurs, Kazakhs, black Africans in China, Tibetans, and other non-Han ethnic groups would certainly agree based on decades of direct experience at the hands of their Chinese persecutors.
Demonstrators supporting Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Hongkongers take part in a protest against the Chinese Communist Party as they march along Regent Street toward the Chinese Embassy in London, on Oct. 1, 2021. Matt Dunham/AP Photo
That anonymous China Daily propagandist is, of course, dead silent on these continuing racist “stains on the soul of China.”
The second sentence in the China Daily article is equally myopic: “US politicians should face the problem and improve the human rights situation in the country.”
The U.S. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1965, and equal employment opportunity has become a tenet to live by for most Americans. U.S. government and commercial enterprises have for nearly 60 years promoted affirmative action as a national policy of racial redress. The U.S. DoJ Civil Rights division has aggressively investigated and prosecuted charges of racism across the land for decades. The Biden administration has even implemented a government-wide policy of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” aimed at further racial redress (although many Americans would argue that these policies have gone too far and actually exacerbate tensions among groups of Americans).
More human rights violations from Xi’s regime from the report: “Authorities in Tibetan areas continue to enforce severe restrictions on freedoms of religion, expression, movement, and assembly.” And on the CCP’s persecution of religion, “state control over religion has increased since 2016, when Xi called for ‘Sinicization’ of religions.”
The report also notes that the Chinese authorities aggressively persecute human rights defenders in China, especially those engaged in public protests: “Authorities continued to harass, detain, and prosecute human rights defenders.”
Protesters hold up white paper to protest against censorship and China’s strict zero-COVID policy, in Beijing, on Nov. 27, 2022. Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
It will be a cold day in hell before the world sees policies of affirmative action, equal employment opportunity, and racial redress implemented by the CCP on behalf of persecuted minority populations in China. The dishonorable scribes at China Daily should focus their concerns about human rights on the CCP and Xi’s jack-booted thugs. Except, of course, that in doing so, they would quickly join the ranks of those being “harassed, detained, and prosecuted” by the authorities!
The next China Daily claim quotes CNN (!), which purportedly “conducted interviews with over 3,000 African Americans, 82 percent of respondents believe that racism is the primary problem facing African Americans.” The responses probably reflect over-sensitivity to microaggressions pushed by academia, the legacy media, and the American left.
Meanwhile, according to Statista, 71.8 percent of NBA players and 56.4 percent of NFL players were African American in 2022. One wonders whether any of those millionaires, as well as the millions of recent black immigrants to the United States cited above and other highly successful black Americans, were included in CNN’s interviews.
Furthermore, one wonders how the people interviewed would have answered the following hypothetical question: Would you prefer to remain in the United States or exchange places with Uyghurs or Tibetans in China?
Concluding Thoughts
China Daily and other state-run media are good at casting aspersions on others—particularly the United States. They drone on and on about alleged serious problems in the United States without ever reflecting on far worse transgressions in communist China. The practice of human rights “with Chinese characteristics” is decidedly different from how human rights are protected and defended in the United States and other civilized countries around the world.
For the atheists at China Daily, verses 3 and 5 from the New Testament book of Matthew say it all: “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Stu Cvrk
Author
Stu Cvrk retired as a captain after serving 30 years in the U.S. Navy in a variety of active and reserve capacities, with considerable operational experience in the Middle East and the Western Pacific. Through education and experience as an oceanographer and systems analyst, Cvrk is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, where he received a classical liberal education that serves as the key foundation for his political commentary.
