US warns of Chinese disinformation. China says that’s disinformation By Mengchen Zhang, Teele Rebane and Heather Chen, CNN Published 3:20 AM EDT, Sun October 1, 2023
A US State Department report that accuses the Chinese government of expanding disinformation efforts is “in itself disinformation,” Beijing’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs claimed Saturday.
The ministry shot back after the State Department issued a striking report this week in which it accused the Chinese government of expanding efforts to control information and to disseminate propaganda and disinformation that promotes “digital authoritarianism” in China and around the world.
The US report, issued by the Global Engagement Center on Thursday, alleged that China spends billions of dollars a year on foreign information manipulation and warned that Chinese leader Xi Jinping had “significantly expanded” efforts to “shape the global information environment.”
It also underlined US concerns about China as a main military competitor and key rival in the battle over ideas and global disinformation.
Two days later, China hit back.
“The relevant center of the US State Department which concocted the report is engaged in propaganda and infiltration in the name of ‘global engagement’ – it is a source of disinformation and the command center of ‘perception warfare’,” the ministry said on Saturday.
Referring to wars in Iraq and Syria as well as US reports alleging human rights abuses in China’s Xinjiang as examples, the ministry claimed that the US is “an ‘empire of lies’ through and through.”
“No matter how the US tries to pin the label of ‘disinformation’ on other countries, more and more people in the world have already seen through the US’s ugly attempt to perpetuate its supremacy by weaving lies into ‘emperor’s new clothes’ and smearing others,” the ministry said.
I’ve inspected enough of China’s foreign policy statements on my own to come to the conclusion that they aren’t trustworthy; I don’t need the US state department to tell me that.
Governments lie to save face or achieve their aims all the time. Authoritarian governments do it even more because there is even less accountability than there is in liberal democracies.
Okay, so why is America focusing on Chinese misinformation? Again, are they especially untrustworthy?
Because the bulk of China’s foreign policy goals are at odds with the United States’ foreign policy goals.
Fair enough, but I think that proves China’s point - America treating China like an especially bad purveyor of misinformation is, itself, misinformation. They’re just another country.