My Take | How Xi Jinping became the real-life Dr Evil through the mainstream Western media
- Endless negative news stories and opinion pieces about how bad China is in almost every way, from the serious to the ludicrous, from within its own borders to the world stage, are bound to shape public perception
Almost nine in 10 Americans (89 per cent) consider China a competitor or enemy, rather than a partner, according to the authoritative Pew Research.
Commenting, Winston Lord, a US ambassador to China in the 1980s, said Beijing only had itself to blame.
“The shift is caused by China’s actions under Xi [Jinping], the repression at home, the more aggressive approach abroad and intrusions in societies, including our own,” Lord said. “It has turned off not only Americans, but also Europeans and Australians.”
Lord was once one of Henry Kissinger’s bright young proteges. There is no dispute that he understands China-US relations better than most. He may have half a point. But there is also the other half, which is that if you are bombarded with negative stories about a country, day in and day out, year after year, to an absurd degree by the mainstream media, you too would think that country is just about the worst on Earth.
I was inspired to write this column by an alternative take, “How the threat of China was made in the USA”, from AJ+, a web channel of Al-Jazeera, which helps explain why the perception – “China is bad, period!” – is so widespread. Just consider some of the endless headlines cited in the news clip. They amount to subgenres of China news and analysis, with their own templates and preset assumptions and narratives; you just need to slot in different names for people and countries, time periods and numerical figures. Seemingly inexhaustible, they come out in mind-numbing regularity and rapidity, in this era of 24-hour non-stop news cycles. The following is just a tiny sample.
The Chinese government is bad
“Xi Jinping Is Rewriting China’s History”, The New York Times, November 15, 2021