China Bashing
How the propaganda wontons get made
Source: The Taipei Times
The prevalence of gratuitous China bashing would be astonishing if not for the realization that bringing down the communist giant is the end goal of U.S. foreign policy. We are continually offered varying reasons why China’s defeat would be a good thing: they are communists which threaten our fabulous way of life under late stage capitalism; they are too successful economically on the world stage; they are too successful diplomatically on the world stage; and/or they are too technologically advanced for the U.S. to ever hope to catch up.
Source: “China is national security threat number one” Wall St. Journal
Sometimes the China bashing is overt. On May 31 Pete Hegseth gave a speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue 2025 so belligerent the transcript was removed from the Pentagon’s website (you can still see it on Youtube). During the Biden administration, China had been upgraded from "competitor" to "pacing threat" (whatever that means) and has now progressed, according to Hegseth, to an "imminent threat".
Of course U.S.-aligned nations Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, and South Korea must be pressured to ramp up their budgets for purchasing U.S. weapon systems. This will provide "deterrence" i.e. provocation and "resilience" i.e. ability to sustain a hot war against China. (I’m wondering how South Korea’s election of opposition leader Lee Jae-myung this week could play a role in breaking up the alliance; Lee has already announced he’ll pursue diplomacy with North Korea.)
Who will play the role of Ukraine in the proxy war against China? Taiwan seems most likely as we are repeatedly told by corporate media that China plans a land invasion [of a territory that is already theirs.]
Source: Portland Press Herald
But most people in the U.S. care very little about foreign policy and only pay attention to happenings closer to home. Cue the avalanche of stories about crimes that involve Chinese nationals in the U.S., from industrial espionage to illegal weed grows. The Portland Press Herald is currently running with “How a former lawmaker grew weed with alleged Chinese crime groups in rural Maine” which mentions Chinese 19 times in an article that purports to share how
a web of shell companies and illegal grows allegedly linked to Chinese organized crime traces its start to one former Democratic legislator, his cannabis consulting business, and his chain of central Maine dispensaries
The article is the latest in a series of at least six on the same topic, the underpinning of which is that Chinese business interests have been too successful at exploiting loopholes in state law in order to turn big profits. So are we to fear China’s successful communism — with its eradication of extreme poverty and outstanding national train system — or its successful entrepreneurs? Doesn’t matter, so long as we hate and fear anything labeled “Chinese.”
Source: The Sun
Harvard University recently fell afoul of the current administration and had all its foreign students’ visas canceled because of outspoken opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza but also (per the Department of Homeland Security):
This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus..
Harvard’s leadership further facilitated, and engaged in coordinated activity with the CCP, including hosting and training members of a CCP paramilitary group complicit in the Uyghur genocide.
Before there were illegal weed grows to blame on the Chinese, there was the gross canard of the Uyghur “genocide”. A search for that phrase will return millions of headlines from corporate media outlets who received the memo suggesting they feign concern for a Muslim minority group in China’s autonomous region of Xinjiang. More targeted searching is required to discover some truth through the cloud of propaganda. A good place to start: Silk & Steel Podcast creator Carl Zha’s explainer on how thousands of Uyghurs were recruited to fight the Assad government in Syria. An excerpt:
One of the interesting things about the Uyghurs.. they're saying that they're going to go back to China now that they've gotten all of this battle experience. That they've been fighting and, now that they've liberated “Syria,” that China is next..
How convenient.
China’s space program is a direct threat to Pentagon plans for full spectrum dominance. Source: Science
Whether the threat of the hour is TikTok, an errant weather balloon, or COVID-19 you can be sure that the corporate press will trace it back to scary, scary China. But here’s what underlies the real threat China poses, this iconic quote allegedly sourced in Kenya: "Every time China visits we get a hospital, every time Britain visits we get a lecture." China’s Bridge and Road Initiative builds infrastructure across the globe, and as the “C” in BRICS+ organizes economic cooperation outside the sphere of U.S.-Anglo finance.
And that is a crime that cannot be forgiven.