The Chinese government's concerted PR and military strategy

The Chinese media, war, and economic machine is working because many talented people work in a concerted and devoted manner. This seems to be something that Japan and the US understand but Europe - and especially the UK voting for Brexit - fails to grasp.

China is now not only the second biggest economy of the world but also has one of the most powerful armys and it is not afraid to rely on it to put pressure on business partners and neighbours, as well as countries far from its waters.


The country's highest leadership also understands how important good PR work is and is not shy when having to spend on journalists, internet commenters, academics, diplomats, and even foreign specialists to defend its interests and emphasize a narrative which shows China in a good light.

The true face of the country's current leadership is easy to decipher: it is a hawkish, aggressive band, bent on gaining more power and territory. The current military and party leadership of China won't be a good friend of the UK just because they offer them a decent reciprocal trade pact. In fact, what the UK largely fails to admit is that is has historically played the largest role in the plundering of China during the second half of the 19th century and this isn't forgotten by the Chinese. If the British Empire hadn't forced concessions in several ports and wouldn't have highlighted the weakness of the imperial system in China, the demise of that system could have been slower and more peaceful. Also, other states like the Russian, the Americans, the French, the Dutch, the Germans and the Japanese - who all held concessions and were present with their military - would have had a much harder time in China. Not to mention that the Japanese incursions in the 1920s and 1930s would have likely been impossible.

You can read a great description of government sanctioned tabloid activity, covering the Global Times, here in the Quartz. It shows that the Chinese government keeps the public opinion in China under close control. People are forced to think what the government wants them to think because they don't have free access to impartial information, nor to any criticism of the system.

What I write is also confirmed by the Chinese government's insistence after Brexit to have an even larger access to sensitive technology and energy sectors in the UK. A good example is the Chinese ambassadors address over the Hinkley Point nuclear development. Such smaller and medium sized countries like the UK on its own will be more easily influenced and bought by China in the future. That is one of the reasons why the Brexit decision was disastrous. The UK is already home to many shadowy Russian operations. Now it might become the dwelling of characters who want to strike in the middle of Europe, but were repelled so far by the EU's common foreign policies.

Another example of how even Chinese academics - who are no doubt intelligent and very capable professional researchers - can be recruited by the government and military leadership is a paper by Dr. Xue Li and Xu Yanzhuo in the Diplomat. They warm up the misty-cloudy suggestion designed to deceive that China has been misunderstood, it is a peaceful growing giant, following Buddhist and Taoist teachings when making decisions. This is as false as it can be, as has been evidenced by China's behavior in Tibet, in north-west China, and when cracking down on thousands of protests and demonstrations. It is also obvious that this is false, when we take a look at the way Chinese diplomacy handles the South-China issue, and how the military is now trying to raise the pressure in the East-China sea.

Update in 2018 August: Now that Xi is on the top until his death China has sadly returned to a capitalist-emperor system. Trump and Putin are dreaming of the same, Erdogan has achieved the same, and Orban is dreaming of it. If the country's economy keeps growing as it is now, there won't be any stopping the military-diplomatic bulldozer.

Chinese government diplomacy and rhetorics

I love articles like these.  Chinese Premier Li told Japanese Foreign Minister Kishida that the Japanese side should stick to the path of peaceful development, and match deeds with its words that China's peaceful development is an opportunity.

This is a rhetorical game the Chinese government plays every single time it is possible: it relies on the ignorance of most people about China's current power, and on the strong memory of the Japanese occupation of Chinese territories. Never mind that the occupation was more than 70 years ago, by a different political system that does not exists in Japan anymore, and that subsequent governments have apologized for it several times. Most people don't know these things and the Chinese PR specialists understand and use this fact to bend the truth the way it suits their bosses best.
Think also of the adjective 'peaceful'. China is one of the few countries which has actually annexed other independent countries and territories to itself since WWII. Tibet, the North-Eastern territories, and some other smaller areas are occupied by it. It is rapidly building military centers in the South-China Sea, it opposes the independence of Taiwan, and is already attacking all democratic institutions on Hong Kong. China's military spending now is second after the US, and has been continuously rising year by year. It is developing its own fighter jets, aircraft carriers, tanks, special advanced weapon systems, and has the capacity to destroy orbiting satellites. The government suppresses thousands of protests every year. It is still regular in China for people to disappear, to be bullied and even imprisoned for having different views from high ranking party members. This country claims to be peaceful.

The funniest bit is that the Chinese government's members and puppets always accuse Japan of aggression. While Japan committed war crimes during WWII, and did occupy several countries, it lost the war, was occupied for seven years itself, and has since been one of the most peaceful countries in the world, only maintaining self-defence forces until last summer. No countries invaded.

Successive Japanese governments, private people, researchers, and public figures have apologized several times for the crimes committed by a long ago gone Japanese government and a long ago gone army. Japan invested heavily in the rebuilding of China, and much of China's industrial capacity and economic ability has to be thanked for to Japan.

Just two further things to notice: I think Japan, and everyone else whose money China is growing on - Europe, the US, Australia, etc. - do see opportunity in the peaceful growth of China. But nobody sees an opportunity in the growth of an aggressive bully. This will of course hit worst the normal, working average Chinese citizens: their government is gambling with their security and good lives. The average person in China is like anywhere else: they care about job security, family, kids, education, health, friends, fun, and so on. The Chinese government is the culprit and has to be checked by collective action, now.

In light of all this, I don't think a single word of the Chinese government can be taken to mean literally what it does. The call for respect and peacefulness is basically a threat. A threat, that if other countries don't comply with their demands they will push in non-peaceful ways. This has to be seen as a real issue and treated as such.

Neglecting the bad guys

This year was pretty much about douchebags being on the rise, employing the same media strategy. The strategy has been described by hundreds of experts in interviews, studies, reports, etc. and it can be summarized like this:
'Do something so outrageous that everybody talks about you. No matter what it is. Appeal to the most radical and crazy people. You will find followers, and even sane people will feel that they need to take a position on your view. Hence, you can shape the debate and the positions, get a lot of attention and due to conformism even convert people to follow you.'
This is what ISIS did, this is what Trump does, and this is what Fidesz is doing in Hungary.

I've written before that one of the main points of defeating entities and people who employ this strategy is not to react to them. Well, two things on that. First, I have violated that rule myself. Fidesz did manage to get me so annoyed that I wrote about them again. I promise I won't do that anymore, unless something truly significant happens. The other one was, that when I wrote 'don't react to them' I meant not to get into a debate with them. and not to write about them, not to report on them in the media. But of course we should take practical steps to counter them and defeat them.
So, from now on I'll mostly focus on suggestions on how to do that.