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Anti-China Narratives Modes of addressing sources Modes of propaganda Western media bias against China

Mechanisms of hate and propaganda – the ABC (Part 2)

Last month, I exposed three layers of bias that demonstrated the deep seated anti-China culture permeating the ABC. A simple search showed how the ABC inevitably takes an anti-China posture in on-line news stories. The same can easily be demonstrated on their YouTube channel. Although the ABC continues to deny this, it is so easy to demonstrate that one wonders whether they actually care about balance any more.

A deeper dive into a podcast story showed a willingness to support a conspiracy theory thoroughly debunked, over and over again, by experts. Once again, the statistics don’t lie. The number of words supporting the anti-China narrative as a ratio to those countering the narrative was a massive 100:1. Not to mention the framing with a sinister photo.

A further, even more forensic analysis of a 4Corners program on China indicated the depths to which the ABC has sunk in terms of fairness in reporting. Not only was 4Corners highly selective in sources, framed the entire story to evoke sympathy for Australians, but it also ignored oceans of context that could be brought to bear on any of the points being made.

Of course, maybe no-one really gives a shit. Maybe Australians just want a dishonest broadcaster. That would be fine, except that disinformation actually hurts Australia’s prosperity and may ultimately lead to Australia sinking into irrelevancy.

I guess, in the end, I care too much about Australia to let that happen.

But, in this article, I am going to analyse the mechanism by which the players in anti-China, including the ABC, conspire to make you believe that China is really, really bad.

Leading the witness

Beverley O’Connor can be said to have ‘form’ when it comes to China. She has had long interviews with several key anti-China players, such as Adrian Zenz. In her interview with Zenz, she essentially allowed Zenz to speak minutes on end with no challenge. Certainly, there were no tough questions.

O’Connor outdid herself in an interview with Adam Turan. Normally, journalists would maintain a kind of plausible deniability (the art of distancing yourself from a source so you can later deny you said such and such – “they said it, not me”)

But, oddly, C’Connor engages in what is called in TV court drama “leading the witness”. It’s obvious and should be embarrassing.

Turan is giving what might be titled ‘testimony’ about the experience in internment of his relatives. He brings to the narrative a ‘before and after’ set of photos. Now, such click-bait tactics should be enough to alert an astute journalist and a critical reader to this tactic. How many before and after photos have we seen in propaganda rags, carefully selected to give a sense of a ‘great fall’ in the fortunes of a celebrity?

Despite this amateurish technique by Turan, O’Connor leads Turan with “Is there any doubt in your mind that he died as a result of what happened in those camps?”

Now, keep in mind that Turan DID NOT OFFER this reason. He simply said, “There’s a big difference between two yeah and there we see that picture, he was released and then it wasn’t long after that before he passed away.” There are any number of reasons for Turan’s father’s death, but none are offered. Instead, O’Connor leads us to a proposition that internment killed Turan’s father.

Even when O’Connor asks about possible terror activities, it is she, not Turan, who rephrases Turan’s words to give a benign take on his family’s activities.

Turan

From my parents raised four of us we went to Uni, started in the university in Xinjiang is Turkestan and all of us work for the government sectors so we never been involved any terrorist activities.

O’Connor

Just going about your lives like ordinary citizen.

So, no question about ETIM? “Were you ever part of ETIM?” “Did you ever produce or pass on radicalisation materials from ETIM?” “Did any of your family ever train outside China with the ETIM?”

No real questions. Just a continuation of the narrative.

But O’Connor really outdoes herself. Not content to write Turan’s narrative for him, she now calls on a conspiracy theory to enhance the impact.

Turan

… that was my last don’t call me again because I won’t be able to pick up your phone and she said I’m at the, she didn’t say police station, but she said a local council office too. The very helpful young guys like you helping me so assisting me teaching me not to pick up the calls from overseas.

O’Connor

Was it almost like a coded message to you?

Right, so the helpful advice from the guy at the local council (not police – Turan’s words) becomes a “coded message”? What next Beverley? Well, let’s go for “ethnic cleansing”.

Turan

It could be jailed, could be sent to the internment camps. That’s some one of these reasons that China is excusing, you know if you have family members overseas or if you contact if you contact with the people from overseas will be jailed. So they could be jailed. So that’s why they can’t directly contact with them.

O’Connor

Do you see what is happening there is some form of ethnic cleansing?

Did you see that? Internment and jailing = ethnic cleansing.

Now, Turan, as a non-native speaker, might be excused for not quite taking on the connotations of “ethnic cleansing”. The slaughter in Rwanda comes to mind. This is where O’Connor is leading the audience. The horrors of the realities of “ethnic cleansing”.

But, sadly for O’Connor, Turan is a little less sensationalist than she might have hoped for. He moderates this to “cultural genocide”. But there’s no holding back O’Connor in ‘leading the witness’.

“So they’ve separated them from their families and they want to re-educate them to be Han Chinese?” Yes, it’s this little gem. Create a category ‘Han’ to represent all other Chinese people and then accuse China of trying to turn everyone into a Han? What does this even mean? It’s sufficiently vague to be a coverall for any activity that Beijing might do that has a cultural component. I mean, China can build a high speed railway to Xinjiang and the reason can be “Well, that just means Han Chinese can get to Xinjiang more readily and dilute the local population.”

When Turan makes the absolutely laughable claim that the Xinjiang is “The worst human rights violations in human history” O’Connor just let’s that sit, unchallenged. So, Beverley, none of these well documented and verified atrocities came to mind – The Holocaust, Nazi genocide of ethnic Poles, Cambodia, Armenian genocide, Rwandan genocide, Dzungar genocide, Genocide in Bangladesh, Massacres of Hutus during the First Congo War, Romani genocide, Darfur genocide, Bosnia, Queensland Aboriginal genocide, Canadian native children genocide, Rohingyas, Haiti, genocide of Aboriginal Tasmanians?

Sadly, neither O’Connor nor the ABC seem able to reach a level of slef-reflection to recognise both their active part in generating anti-China sentiment and developing consent for conflict with China. The only loser in this is Australia.

Categories
Anti-China Narratives Modes of addressing sources Modes of propaganda Western media bias against China

The anatomy of deceit

Turan

I don’t know Adam Turan. He’s probably a nice guy. He probably does very ordinary things like the rest of us. What troubles me is the message he peddles.

Try this one, for example. It’s fairly characteristic of his consistent support for an independent state in Xinjiang.

Now, note the question marks. These are not questions for which he is polling Twitter for responses. They are rhetorical. The answer is both in the question and in the retweet.

Turan is is employing a propaganda technique called plausible deniability. He can say, “Well, I was just quoting Roth, that well known boss of HRW. How was I to know that the statistics were dodgy?”

Plausible deniability requires that the information be plausible. Of course, the numbers quoted in Roth’s tweet are accurate. So, there’s the plausibility. Except that, without context, these numbers are completely deceitful.

Is this Turan’s intention or is he just happy to retweet misinformation without fact checking? I don’t know. It could be just confirmation bias. The numbers ‘sound’ like they support his ETIM inspired narrative.

I suspect Turan doesn’t care whether the numbers are in context, so long as they have propaganda value. I suspect that he knows that most readers will simply not dig deep to find the truth. They will take the numbers on face value and make the completely absurd, conspiratorial link to Xi Jinping.

Roth

Like Turan, Roth deploys the plausible deniability technique as well. After all, it wasn’t him, but a ‘reputable’ journal that makes this claim. Roth seems to think that presenting facts so they are deceitful is fine. Does make you wonder whether this is also applied to the reports from the organisation he heads. Balance, fairness, integrity of sources? Who gives a shit?

The quote comes from this source:

Between 2012 and 2020 the annual number of asylum-seekers from China rose from 15,362 to 107,864, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. This increase has coincided with the rule of Xi Jinping. (The Economist)

Roth has deniability by retweeting the Economist, and plausibility because he knows the numbers are right – or at least, a quick check of the UNHCR proves it correct. But one element of the story is complete conjecture and Roth almost certainly knows that – the connection with Xi.

Sure, the word used is “coincided”. There you go. Deniability again. “I didn’t say Xi caused it.” But, as every media expert will tell you, simply juxtaposing two unrelated items creates a connection in over-active, pattern seeking human brains.

As Sapolsky so aptly illustrates in Behave: The Best and Worst of Us, “Was that a gun or a phone in that man’s hand when I shot him dead? In the moment, I simply reacted.” Here’s the thing. The associations the brain makes happen in the first second. It takes no time at all for any human brain to create a straight line between asylum seeking skyrocketing and Xi, regardless of the clever use of “coinciding”. After that, it’s a lot of effort for the frontal cortex to undo that connection. We are, literally, wired for associations, many completely unjustified and irrational.

Given Roth’s oversight of reports that roundly condemn China, this straight line suits him just fine. Why question this when you have plausible deniability?

Note how closely to follows this article:

According to UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) figures, the annual number of asylum seekers from China increased from 15,362 to 107,864 between 2012 and 2020. 613,000 Chinese people have applied for asylum in another country since Xi Jinping gained power at the end of 2012.

You see. It wasn’t me who said it. It was Wion. No need to check it out, to see if it is in any way deceitful.

What actually is the situation? Here’s the UNHCR’s take.

68% originate from just five countries.

 

More than two thirds of all refugees under UNHCR’s mandate and Venezuelans displaced abroad come from just five countries (as of end-2020).

 

Syrian Arab Republic 6.7 million
Venezuela 4.0 million
Afghanistan 2.6 million
South Sudan 2.2 million
Myanmar 1.1 million

(UNHCR statistics)

I guess, like me, you’re wondering why there’s no mention of China. Oops, how embarrassing for the Economist, who didn’t check sources. How awkward for Roth, who didn’t bother to put up the figures in context. How painful for Turan, when his narrative is blown out of the water.

The smear against Xi is the real point for Turan, Roth, The Economist and Wion. How does their little accusation stack up? Sadly, it’s bullshit.

Sorry, but this graph, straight out of the UNHCR database, while affirming the asylum numbers given for plausible deniability, actually shows China, in 2013, at Xi’s ascendency, from a base of about 2.5% of the world’s asylum seekers (about 25000 of 1000000), stay on trend with 2.5% in 2020 (100000 of 4000000). More telling, refugee numbers have pretty much stayed constant since Xi took power.

Indeed, the rise is asylum-seekers globally is dramatic. And troubling. And a cause for concern. Nobody is going to deny that. But when you find this same trend across country after country, an intelligent person says, “This is a trend beyond China. It has nothing to do with Xi.”

To illustrate this, take the data for Germany. Look at that. Almost identical trend. So, tell me, can we attribute this to Xi?

But, if you really want to be fair, 0.007% of China’s population (yes, across the whole country) applied for asylum elsewhere. No, the idea that there is a great rush of discontented people out of China is just bullshit. At most, it’s a trickle. Maybe not a figure China wants to boast about, but also not a figure that makes China really stand out. The data says so. The UNHCR has identified the top spots for discontent. You don’t get to simply pluck those figures out of their website and then make up a narrative to suit.

And data without a context is just lies – a deliberate choice to deceive. It doesn’t reflect on the data – it reflects on the author and the ‘retweeter’. It’s their integrity which we need to doubt.

So, if you want to draw a line between Xi and asylum seekers, take one of these two roads – make it fair, in which case you find Xi has no case to answer, especially in Xinjiang (for which there are no statistics) and that the numbers, while not wonderful, are, in context, entirely unremarkable.

Or, take the road of plausible deniability and construct a deceitful picture in which a coincidence becomes a cause, and an opportunity to smear.

I think you can see which road Turan, Roth, The Economist and Wion took.

Categories
Anti-China Narratives Modes of addressing sources Poverty alleviation Western media bias against China

Beyond deradicalisation centres – Beijing takes a wholistic and rational approach to poverty alleviation – Part 1

Introduction: Religion muddies everything

Among western media, academia and social media, the ‘go to’ source for anti-China ‘information’ is Adrian Zenz. He is easily the most quoted and his work most referenced. This status, as some kind of guru, is surprising, considering Zenz’s formal qualifications are in theology, not Chinese history, economics, social policy or political science.

But anyone who has grown up within the religious circles that have surrounded Zenz since his youth will understand immediately how Zenz’s beliefs impact on his view of the world and how being ‘marinated’ in the toxic culture of the cult that is so earnestly anti-China creates a mode of thinking in which the only conclusion, even from the most benign of data or testimony, becomes ‘evidence’ of ‘evil’.

The taxonomy of evil that drives Zenz’s perspective

The world view to which members of this cult subscribe, in one version or another, with insignificant variation, places nearly everybody in the world, with the exception of a lucky few ‘saints’, on a collision course with God. At the top of the ‘taxonomy of evil’ are atheists and ‘atheist nations’. Further down are secularists. Other religions, especially those outside Abrahamic religions, are deception, failing to acknowledge the true God.

Finally, Judaism, Islam and Christianity have a place amongst the enemies of God – Jews for rejecting Christ, Islam for rejecting the Trinity and other Christians for adulterating the message of Jesus and allowing themselves to be tainted by feminism, homosexuality and socialism.

Fortunately for ‘the saints’ God is a jealous God and intends the mass destruction of all his enemies and, depending on the version of the cult’s ‘end times’ thesis, this ushers in 1000 years of glorious reign by Jesus. Saints are spared the holocaust that is predicted by being ushered into heaven during the Rapture.

It may come as a surprise to some that this fanciful set of beliefs could be taken seriously. But Zenz and his ilk are earnest in their beliefs and will pursue the ‘work of God’ with a zeal unmatched by even the world’s greatest revolutionaries. I know that, because I once lived in that world.

In my youth, nothing could evoke a greater sense of dread and fear as the mention of the the two great ‘evil empires’ – USSR and China. Every event was seen through the Cold War lens, but for my family, the geopolitical explanations of the actions of communists was not just about politics or economics – it was about a spiritual realm in which evil was dominating.

Within this cultish moral frame, any objective analysis of the actions of any agent, global or personal, was impossible. Communist and homosexuals had an inherent, sinister and common aim – to destroy the world. This plays out in the ‘work’ of Zenz, where even the most benign and unremarkable of actions, events or data are interpreted as evidence of evil.

A particular mode of dealing with evidence

But, a further characteristic of this cultish environment is the mode of research. I can remember interminable arguments over single words and passages of the Biblical text. ‘Verses’ were liberally cherry-picked to support a thesis and rejecting literal interpretations of texts was considered corrupt. The divine motives of God were unimpeachable – the logic was that the thesis was bequeathed by God to the saintly and any evidence, either external or textual, was massaged to fit that thesis.

This mode is clear in all of Zenz’s anti-China projects. Alternative explanations are not countenanced. The only explanation is that there is a evil nation driven by an evil government under the spell of an evil doctrine. This drives every interpretation of the sources to which Zenz refers.

Cherry picking evidence is considered entirely legitimate. The essential meaning of texts or testimony or any inconsistencies are simply ignored. Once again, this is Zenz’s mode in his anti-China papers – identified over and over again by those of us who care about academic integrity and who challenge the anti-China narrative.

Viewing the same evidence without the prejudice

I have decided to review one of Zenz’s ‘academic’ papers published in the Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 12, December 2019 titled “Beyond the Camps: Beijing’s Long-Term Scheme of Coercive Labor, Poverty Alleviation and Social Control in Xinjiang” and to include all of Adrian Zenz’s sources as my sources – but without his ‘blinkered’ perspective.

This is Part 1 of a 6 part series.