Reality Check: Falsehoods in US Perceptions of China
mfa.gov.cn
mfa.gov.cn
This document is also INSANE.
It blames the US for the decline of things like the Native American population since 1492 but then says all claims about Uyghur human rights violations are fabricated. It quotes Covid numbers for itself that are clearly made up. China cannot be making fentanyl because all drugs are illegal in China (and even if they were, it's the US's fault for letting it in). Any alliances the US forms is an act of aggression, but we should also leave Russia alone. At one point they defend the "inseparable bond" that the CPC has with its people.
"Yes, we spy on all of our citizens all of the time. But you know how Facebook moved data from the EU to the US? Isn't that messed up?"
Anything that is deniable is denied. Anything the party does is justified. There is an official answer for anything, no matter how thin the connection is. They are reading all of our news and controversies and regurgitating them all without understanding any of it.
> The dysfunctional American-style democracy has triggered a trust crisis. Public commitments to the people come with behind-the-scene deals. Political infighting, money politics, and vetocracy make it virtually impossible for quality governance to be delivered as aspired by the general public. Americans are increasingly disillusioned with the US politics and pessimistic about the American-style democracy.
Let us not lose sight of the key thing here. The fact that we are free to openly discuss the faults of our own system is being used against us. We should not let anyone, ourselves included, be deluded into thinking that the side with the most bad/depressing news is losing. Totalitarian, oppressive governments always have the best news.
"It quotes Covid numbers for itself that are clearly made up."
This document was published in June 2022. At that time, China really did have essentially zero CoVID cases.
Recall that after the initial outbreak in Wuhan, China completely stamped out the virus (by about April 2020) and closed its borders to prevent the virus from re-entering. The only way to get back into China was to go through 2-3 weeks of quarantine, and I'm not talking about "go home and promise not to meet anyone." You got off the plane, were given an immediate PCR test in the airport terminal (in addition to the PCR test you had to take before boarding the plane), and then were put on a bus to go to your special quarantine hotel. You stayed in your room for the entire duration of the quarantine, with regular PCR testing and food/water deliveries to your door. But once you got out of quarantine, you were in a zero-CoVID bubble.
It was kind of surreal that there was this massive country that literally had zero CoVID for long stretches of time (punctuated by local outbreaks that were met with massive containment/testing/tracing/quarantine efforts), and a lot of people outside had a hard time believing it. However, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand and a few other places did roughly the same thing. Somehow, people had an easier time accepting that Taiwan's zero-CoVID policy (which was very similar to the policy on the mainland) was successful.
This all changed rapidly at the very end of 2022, when the zero-CoVID policy was dropped, and most people in China were infected within a span of about two months. But in June 2022, when this document was published, there really was basically no CoVID in China.
Domestic affairs?? China, Taiwan isn't yours anymore!