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Comment by briefcomment | Hacker News Reader

What do you think are examples of Chinese propaganda? If it was good, I don't think we'd be able to tell.

Tourism has always been a way of propaganda.

Look into what are sold as the most attractive places to visit in a country. See that those places always sell a narrative as to why they're important for the country and unique in the world.

The US tourism industry basically sells NYC, Disney, Las Vegas and LA. NYC's best-known landmark? The Statue of Liberty, selling a narrative of a country of industrious immigrants. Disney? It's basically 50% of children's cultural consumption all around the world. Las Vegas, LA? Consumption and media.

For the record, the CIA used to sponsor a lot of artists and musicians around the world in the 70s as a way of promoting art the idea of the US a place of cultural and technological refinement, much in the same way that the soviets pretty much gave away math and engineering university books of the highest caliber.

What does the Chinese cultural industry sell? The Wall of China, properties associated with imperial dynasties, and more recently industry fairs.

China allows tourism, but I don’t think its present leadership considers it among the major ways to win hearts and minds. Restrictions on where foreigners are allowed to sleep at night remain in place, tourists are subject to the Great Firewall during their time in the country unless they know how to get around that, and some parts of the country that were quite open in the late 20th century and early millennium (Xinjiang, Tibet) are now much harder to access. Most of the post-Soviet countries hungry for tourism income and extension of soft power eventually lifted those kinds of hassles on visitors.

The US has few historical monuments.

But it has national parks. There’s also only one Grand Canyon and only so many Death Valleys.

I'd argue there are many centuries-old historical monuments in the US, they're just primarily in one region, The Atlantic coast.

This is my favorite example:

https://twitter.com/chenweihua/status/1334561058799964164

I agree that good propaganda wouldn't be easily discernable as propaganda.

I'm skeptical that the same organizations that run the shitty Twitter fake accounts can simultaneously run actually effective programs. It'd be like Apple simultaneously being Apple and also running a shitty Etsy storefront that sells amateurish coffee cozies.

I don't see why we couldn't have both good and bad propaganda. It would be a good way to throw people off, like you in this case. Regardless, there are probably many somewhat independent groups participating, of various ability. I doubt this is being done by just one micromanaged group.

I suspect that HN-oriented propaganda will look more like academic publications, VC investors and job offers.

Here's a medium post describing how they've been recruiting Western YouTubers: https://medium.com/swlh/how-china-is-influencing-youtubers-i...

https://www.youtube.com/c/%E5%A4%A7%E6%A0%91%E5%90%9BTreeMan...

https://www.youtube.com/c/%E6%BB%87%E8%A5%BF%E5%B0%8F%E5%93%...

>> What do you think are examples of Chinese propaganda?

How about cancel culture? It may have started in the US, but I'm sure they're happy to stoke the flames. Or what about the phenomenon a teenagers thinking they're transgender? Sure some people are, but among teenagers today it's becoming sort of a fad (cult even) and it's heavily promoted on TikTok and other social media. Anything to create sharp divides of is something they might promote even if they didn't start it, it doesn't have to be pro-China propaganda.

Study in China programs

Promotion of the world covid lockdowns. If you read the literature from the attorneys that have analyzed the timeline (Michael P Senger, Reiner Fuellmich et al), the idea of the lockdown came directly from western academics directly influenced by China.

lockdowns in responses to pandemics have been around since medieval times. The quarantine is probably the oldest social measure against disease (in fact the word derives from the Italian phrase for '40 days' because that's how long Venician ships needed to stay isolated at ports). You think the fact that people in different places came up with the idea of "people spread diseases, so people need to stay in their homes" at the same time is some sort of 21st century academic influence campaign?

There's a difference between quarantining the sick and a lockdown of the general public. There has not been any serious peer-reviewed literature on locking down a population in modern history. I do not think jumping straight to a global lockdown on a whim because "China did it" is responsible and justified? If you do the research, you'll see that all the health experts in Germany who were the first to advocate for the lockdowns and PCR tests did so based on Chinese propaganda. If you go through the timeline of how the lockdown came to be, it is VERY suspect and reeks of malign Chinese influence.

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