Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu- one of the most influential philosophers of statecraft- has famously said that it is better to attack the enemy’s mind than to fortified cities. Even after hundreds of years of Tzu death, the Chinese government follows the principal.
After Xi Jinping came to power, he gave the inward-looking country global ambition. The Chinese government aggressively promoted its Communist political system and ‘Communist with Chinese characteristic’ model of the political economy to the world. To increase its global influence, the country started buying the media across the world to attack the enemy’s mind, just as Sun Tzu advised.
The Communist government spends millions of dollars every year to buy favorable press in countries around the world, especially in Western nations. China has adopted a multi-pronged strategy for this. On one front, the country sponsors China watch section- article about China, written by its state journalists, and pays the newspapers to publish these articles.
Many influential newspapers like The Daily Telegraph, Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times have China sponsored section. The favorable section is not only run globally influential English newspapers but those in Central and Eastern Europe also carry out a China section, for which the Chinese government pays them billions.
On the other, the country ‘trains’ journalists from poorer regions like South Asian and Sub-Saharan Africa to propagate Chinese ideals in their countries. Since 2016, every year, 100 journalists, mostly from poor South Asian and African countries, get ‘training’ under the fellowship program.
Moreover, the Communist government spends billions of dollars on social media advertising to promote favorable coverage of China on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other popular social media sites.
Thanks to billions of dollars the Communist government spends to buy favorable coverage in influential media houses, China was darling of global liberal media in the last few years. The media houses and journalists always paid back the debt by carrying out positive stories about the Chinese political system and its companies.
But all this effort by China got wasted in one blow through Coronavirus disease. The highly contagious virus which originated in Wuhan has infected 24 lakh people and killed 1.65 lakh so far. Covid-19 has done disastrous damage in the life and economy across the world, especially in United States and Europe- the countries where media has most pro-China.
With the rising anti-China sentiment among the masses, the media in Western countries, especially in Europe and Australia, has turned its back to the Communist government, and longer remains loyal to billions of dollars worth advertisement. Most of these newspapers have stopped China section sponsored by the Communist government.
The Daily Telegraph, highly influential British daily which has been known as “a mouthpiece for Boris Johnson” has ended the China section under which it published story of Global Times- Communist government’s English language mouthpiece- for which it used to be paid 750,000 pounds every year. The newspaper also deleted many articles which had headlines such as: “Why are some framing China’s heroic efforts to stop coronavirus as inhumane?”; “Traditional Chinese medicine ‘helps fight coronavirus’”; and “Coronavirus outbreak is not an opportunity to score points against China”.
Since then the newspaper has published many stories critical of China such as one titled “The Left have become China’s useful covidiots”. The Wall Street Journal, which also ran China section where it published content favorable to China, has not updated the section for decades. NYT also discontinued similar section and said that the management has made a decision “to stop accepting branded content ads from state-run media, which includes China Daily”.
In the last few days, many European media houses like Express UK, Germany’s Bild, French and Italian media, have published articles critical of China.
Germany’s largest tabloid newspaper, Bild, joined this attack by drawing up an invoice of Euro 149 billion (130 billion pounds) to be paid as repatriation. The China state media responded to the article and said that it “stirs up xenophobia and nationalism”, to which Bild Editor-in-Chief Julian Reichelt retorted and said, “We asked in our newspaper Bild whether China should pay for the massive economic damage the coronavirus is inflicting worldwide.
“Xi Jinping, your government and your scientists had to know long ago that coronavirus is highly infectious, but you left the world in the dark about it.”
It took millions of dollars and years of effort for China to buy favorable press across the world and change the public opinion in its favor, but all of this got destroyed in one blow, thanks to its stupid cover-up of Coronavirus disease which lakhs of lives and trillions of dollars to the global economy. After Coronavirus, China, its economy, its international prestige, and favorable public opinion among the global audience, is never going to be the same, for bad.