China’s Communist Party and Its American Media Enablers

https://intpolicydigest.org/2020/05/26/china-s-communist-party-and-its-american-media-enablers/

by jamesdd • 6 years ago

83 51 6 years ago

Barrin923• 6 years ago

The article has a very strong "throw enough sh__ and see how much of it sticks" tone to it. Mark Zuckerberg asking Xi for a baby name or American entertainment producers trying to play friendly with the Chinese market isn't really 'enabling the communist party' in any meaningful sense of the word. And Chinese media replaying some CNN clip isn't really evidence of anything either given that you can take everything out of context.

The one thing from the article I'd agree with is bad is Bloomberg interferring with the journalists reporting at his own company. There should be a strict line between Bloombergs other business interests and the editorial at the newspaper.

Otherwise I think there's a lot of confusion in the article between the conflation of the private market changing products to be popular in China, which is fine and simply reflects their status as a consumer, and actual propaganda efforts.

woutr_be3• 6 years ago

American entertainment producers trying to play friendly with the Chinese market isn't really 'enabling the communist party' in any meaningful sense of the word

I think this is where a lot of people would disagree. Once companies give in to demands of censorship or anything that goes against our Western values, you're basically letting China know that they can get away with it. And to me, that's directly enabling their behaviour.

On the other side, if you don't give in to their demands, you're essentially missing out on a huge market, so most companies pick money over morals.

There's a difference between changing products to be popular in China, and censoring words to be allowed to operate in China. Sadly for a lot of companies, one cannot go without the other.

0823498723498722• 6 years ago

As a capitalist in a third world country, it seems like in principle a bit of competition ought to be good for both the 2nd and 1st largest economies. Remember the Avis "we try harder" campaign?

KONAir• 6 years ago

The entertainment industry in a globalized market will act according to demands (and regulations if any left) in the market and nothing else. It is fascinating to watch as popcultures "values" slowly shift towards the bigger market that is China and create an awkward set of synthesized values (most recent and talked about being new Star Wars movies).

bsder2• 6 years ago

Otherwise I think there's a lot of confusion in the article between the conflation of the private market changing products to be popular in China, which is fine and simply reflects their status as a consumer

I, personally, have a problem with this.

It's part of the reason why Hollywood movies have devolved into such pablum--you can't risk pissing of China now that 1/2 of your income is due to the Chinese release.

I no longer consider doing business with China to be "neutral". China doesn't regard it this way either--China is more than happy to throw it's weight around against American businesses--see Blizzard.

So we should treat them reciprocally. It's time to disconnect from China.

Barrin923• 6 years ago

It's part of the reason why Hollywood movies have devolved into such pablum--you can't risk pissing of China now that 1/2 of your income is due to the Chinese release.

You also could never afford to piss America off, which is why every other protagonist in hollywood movies is some Tom Cruise lookalike who combats people who speak English in a broken Russian accent.

Just seems normal to me, the only difference is that the other 95% of the world population now have enough cash to vote with their wallets and American companies learn what it's like to operate in a world where different cultures have different values.

Sure you can disconnect from everyone, but that doesn't sound wise long term, in particular not for Hollywood.

rmrfstar2• 6 years ago

There's a monopoly angle here too [1].

I remember doing a face-palm when I watched "Gravity." The whole conflict centers around a cascade of space-junk caused by Russia shooting it's own spy satellite. In the movie, the Chinese space station saves the day. In reality, China actually shot down it's own satellite, rendering it's orbit and adjacent orbits unusable for the foreseeable future. [3]

I'm all for international cooperation, but we have to engage with reality.

[1] https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/its-time-to-break-up-disn...

[2] https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/how-bill-clinton-and-amer...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti-satellite_mi...

dntbnmpls• 6 years ago

The article has a very strong "throw enough sh__ and see how much of it sticks" tone to it.

It's intpolicydigest. What did you expect? What you don't know what intpolicydigest is? Yeah me either.

But the article is just the rehash of the same propaganda you see all over social media and "news" sites like foxnews, breitbart, etc.

That china has some pull in media due to its potential lucrative market isn't news. But the idea that they have enablers is laughable. If they had enablers, we wouldn't have had nonstop propaganda about ughyurs, organs, coronavirus, etc for months on end. Israel, Saudi Arabia and britain have enablers in our media. China is on the outside looking in. But I have a sneaking suspicions intpolicydigest isn't going to run hitpieces on israel or saudi arabia.

Speaking of enablers, I would love to see who the enablers of "intpolicydigest" are.

airocker5• 6 years ago

Now I know why Jin Yang is this adorable and Dinesh Chugtai is Pakistani.

airocker5• 6 years ago

Why the downvotes? If Dinesh Chugtai was Indian, how would the Chinese audience take it? By the name he sounds Indian. It's a business decision but it is what it is! I just started watching the show and love it btw.

willis9362• 6 years ago

If we assume the character was modified to fit the actor who was chosen for the role, then why change him from Pakistani to Indian? Dinesh’s actor, Kumail Nanjiani, even made a popular (and good) movie related to Pakistani culture in contemporary times: The Big Sick.

It’s a bit of a stretch to think that the show creators chose Kumail because he was Pakistani rather than Indian. He’s a talented comedian and, at the time, unknown. The showrunners were smart to pick him up.

nxc183• 6 years ago

It’s so exhausting having to live through this ridiculous propaganda war. Everyone seems to suck here, but there’s so much finger pointing. The people on the US side of the isle seem to be especially frantic now that it’s abundantly clear they dropped the ball about 100,000 times (underestimate) and trashed their economy in the process.

Can we stop pointing fingers and just take a break ffs? Everything China does the US does, sometimes with variations in degree but most often just with a different label (occasionally with different timelines, but it’s hard to take seriously the idea that US 70 years ago should just be off the hook while we roast China).

nickff• 6 years ago

Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis...

More to the point, you're engaging in whataboutism, and the fact that one group acted poorly a few generations ago does not excuse current behaviour by another group.

nxc183• 6 years ago

The internment camps are still in living memory fwiw.

I don’t know if it’s whataboutism so much as recognizing that China is back to business and the US really isn’t, China published the genetic sequence and made substantial contributions to fighting the disease while the CDC was busy producing faulty test kits, and the US has been systematically undermining the global health system while trying to put blame on the WHO (actively forfeiting our influence there).

I don’t think it makes sense to shit on China for doing a better job than the US at taking care of it’s people (except minorities, but the US isn’t exactly a model there either).

Just to clarify, I’m not about excuses, but I can’t support hysterically pointing fingers when we aren’t even attempting to get our own house in order.

jimmaswell2• 6 years ago

I feel like I'm in the Twilight zone seeing these kinds of equivalencies made online. "China does organ harvesting and brutally supresses the entire populace's rights and did Tiananman Square and arrests and interrogates you for criticizing the police but we had internment camps in WW2 so look in a mirror and stop talking about China" ..no, I'm not going to "stop roasting" China just because my country, like every country, has an imperfect past. At best that's a defense mechanism to feel smug about being silent on crimes against humanity.

Criticize the American covid response all you want but spreading this false equivalence that sounds deep unless you think about it is outright dangerous and a shameful disservice to the citizens of Hong Kong and everyone else impacted by the Chinese government.

nxc183• 6 years ago

Yeah, there’s lots of bad on both sides.

Here in the US we have crimes like Driving While Black. There was just a high profile execution the other day that made headlines, but most fly under the radar.

We also just killed 100,000 people, minimum, through deliberate incompetence, so there’s that. Technically it’s the past, but in practical terms it’s the present. I’ll remind you that Tiananmen Square was quite a while ago.

Rights are relative, people in China don’t have them, people in the US kind of have them sometimes, assuming they’re the right color or have enough money. In broad strokes it’s better in the US, for now.

I personally like to count the foreign deaths and foreign intervention when evaluating countries-the US really likes interfering with our neighbors, and kills lots of people in the Middle East - 200,000+ innocent civilians. But they’re foreign, so they’re not really people, right? https://theintercept.com/2018/11/19/civilian-casualties-us-w... I won’t even begin with the non-lethal interventions, or more subtle interventions like giving arms to authoritarian regimes and/or terrorists.

But I guess China spies, so that’s really bad. It would be terrible if they stole the NSA’s idea and interfered with network equipment. They do like stealing IP. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa...

The US does a disservice to the world by not being better in the present. We can’t hold China accountable when we don’t hold ourselves accountable.

tarsinge2• 6 years ago

The first part of your comment is my sentiment watching this from Europe. I disagree with the second part though.

jillesvangurp• 6 years ago

The premise of this article is that the US is the victim of Chinese incompetency. The opening sentence more or less tries to state that as a fact. Basically, the authors are parroting Trump here.

The reality is that Wuhan has been open for business again for two months or so after China dealt swiftly and efficiently with the pandemic while the US was still in denial about having a crisis while at the same time experiencing the crippling effects on the economy. If you want to use the word incompetence in relation to this pandemic, there's no need to look beyond Washington.

This article is the Republican narrative that this thing that happened on their watch isn't their fault at all because evil foreigners tricked them. It's a blatant deflection of any form of responsibility.

Like most of the world, the US was getting all the signals that bad shit was going down late last year, early confirmations that it was going to be really bad in January, and the rest is just plain incompetent governance, opportunistic posturing by populist morons, wishful thinking, and a generally unprecedented level of ineptness throughout layers of government that Republicans have had no small part in helping to deconstruct in the last decades. If you want to point fingers, use a mirror.

tarsinge2• 6 years ago

I’m amazed this is downvoted. Two wrong don’t make a right, China was incompetent, and yes the US (Trump) were incompetent too. As an European I agree with you, the article is Trump parroting/propaganda.

bryanrasmussen• 6 years ago

especially as one of the things pretty much everyone expects from a competent government is to not allow themselves to be tricked by evil foreigners.

People may disagree about how much power the government should exert over internal processes of the country, but protecting the country from evil foreigners is pretty much job 1 in most theories of governance.

dgzl• 6 years ago

Yes unfortunately Americans have rights and our federal government doesn't have authority to micro-manage our life like a Sim game. So sad.

screye• 6 years ago

The article may be narrative, but you are parroting a similarly false narrative.

The way China dealt with Wuhan was that of the most extreme surveillance state and restricting every fundamental human right there was. The state claimed private property for its own. Arguably the most draconian lockdown seen in the last century anywhere. No democratic country has that sort of power.

We now know, that Chinese authorities did all of the following:

1. Silenced the messenger, ie. the first doctors who came out with news of this virus

2. Lied to the WHO about human to human transmission

3. Deliberately delayed information about the full scope of the epidemic in their nation, for weeks, while international flights were still running.

No one here is arguing that Trump did not completely mismanage this situation. But the main culprit of this crisis was elsewhere. Trump was the idiot at the gates that let in the Trojan horse. China was the one that constructed it.

killjoywashere• 6 years ago

Is there a bot that can look up news organizations for us and report basic facts, like

Long name: International Policy Digest

ISSN: 2332-9416

Founder: John Lyman

Founded in: 2011

Crunchbase: not found

Wikipedia: not found

abroter• 6 years ago

you guys don't live in China, you know nothing about China, I don't know where did you get these information about China. But you can say what you think, that's your freedom.

willis9362• 6 years ago

I’ve not seen such blanket downvoting in a comments section in a while. Is this a genuinely unpopular topic, are the comments unpopular, or is there brigading going on?

TimTheTinker2• 6 years ago

I suspect a lot of commenters and voters in this thread are from mainland China.

It's astonishing to hear Chinese citizens' opinion of their government, even those who have emigrated elsewhere. The look of shock and disbelief when you relate commonly known events of the last 10 years is sad and underscores the power of propaganda.

blaser-waffle• 6 years ago

Ethno-centrism is a thing, often subconscious. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnocentrism

As an American living abroad, I take offense, if in a very minor sense, when people criticize the US. Doubly so since a lot of the foreign critics have no idea wtf they're talking about.

If I'm a Chinese guy in Vancouver I'm not going to be crazy about the CCP... but also not crazy about a bunch of round-eyes spouting off.

DiogenesKynikos• 6 years ago

The fact that so many Chinese people's opinions of their country differ so markedly from what you would expect, based on what you read in Western media, should at least lead to you reevaluate your own views. What you're saying is that Chinese people who have lived in the West, who have seen Western coverage of China, nevertheless are much more sympathetic to their government than you would expect. Doesn't that pique your interest?

I'm not going to paint a rosy picture of China, but the view you get in most Western media is extremely heavily distorted, and almost completely out-of-touch with what is actually going on in China, what most people in China care about, and so on.

China’s Communist Party and Its American Media Enablers

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