
China’s Soft-Power Fail: Condemning Hong Kong’s Protests - hardmaru
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/20/business/china-hong-kong-social-media-soft-power.html
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dirtyid
>But instead of making China’s case, Beijing’s ham-handed international
efforts have largely failed to sway world public opinion.

The author conflates world with a small handful of western countries that
actively propagandizes against Chinese interests. However, it is true China is
remarkably bad at foreign propaganda, but still somehow managed to garnish
more support than condemnation for XinJiang camps, from predominantly Muslim
nations no less. China will never build enough soft power will to sway Western
populations as long as she's positioned by as existential competitor or
potential adversary to the West. The piece also contrasts Chinese with Russian
approach without acknowledging that the Russian aim is to divide foreign
audiences not unite domestic ones. It's certainly not designed for ideological
change - even perfect state propaganda program isn't going to make activating
latent cross-cultural suspicions or outright sinophobia disappear anymore than
people are going to turn pro-Russia when Russia pitted alt-right with BLM
protesters.

~~~
joelx
Russia is currently far more effective at creating lies and false narratives
to influence western opinion than the Chinese... However, the Chinese now see
the power the Russians have and will rapidly improve.

We need a total war approach to this new information warfare.

~~~
mycall
There is a new offensive with our military intelligence to attack these
misinformation tactics from foreign lands. It will not be pretty.

[https://www.lawfareblog.com/todays-headlines-and-
commentary-...](https://www.lawfareblog.com/todays-headlines-and-
commentary-1855)

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zerocrates
I was all ready to come impotently complain about the colloquial usage of
"Fail" as a noun in a serious context like this but I see that it's "Failure"
in the actual headline. Did the Times change it?

On a more substantive note, it's interesting that, despite embedding
idlewords' tweet on the subject, the gloss on the article is more about
China's actions and not really at all about the complicity of the American
social media networks being "targeted."

The Firewall kind of works against China in this space, I guess. Activity
originating from China on Twitter is far more unambiguously recognizable as
state-directed than it is in many other places.

~~~
_bxg1
OP may have run out of character space

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ETHisso2017
Censorship breeds bad PR. Without an adversarial environment to train against,
it's hard to generate propaganda narratives that resonate.

~~~
Nasrudith
It is also thing with many if not all dictatorships go very "local optimized"
PR even if it makes them look like completely delusional idiots
internationally to those outside their target audience.

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jkingsbery
"Its propaganda outlets make Chinese leaders look like bullies."

I'm curious about how this is perceived in China. From other things I"ve read,
plenty of people within China believe what the government is pushing - curious
if that's actually true or if that's just from a biased selection of
reactions.

~~~
tuxpenguine
I am a western educated mainlander who reads both Chinese and Western new.
Here is my answer to your question.

The Chinese population is huge so it is hard to lump them all in one basket,
but here are the different types of people that I encounter.

1) People fueled by Chinese nationalistic sentiments, they believe that the
Chinese way of development is superior. They believe the model has a long term
vision and it makes decisions faster than western liberal democracies. They
know about the Tiananmen square, but they think the government did a good
thing by sacrificing a small number of people to achieve a long period of
economic prosperity and stability. There are a significant portion of educated
Chinese elites who believes in this, partially because they are usually the
beneficiaries of the development mode, partially because they are only
receiving news and entertainments from the Chinese media, which is quite a
bubble in itself. People who do not benefit from this development model also
fall into this category due to a self defensive mechanism. They can't change
their country easily, and it slowly becomes a Stockholm syndrome. They have to
justify why they are ruled by a legitimate government. In the western media,
these kind of people are much over represented because they are usually the
loudest. If they spread their rhetoric, they don't have to bear the
consequences.

2) People who are pro democracy, they are much more skeptic of the Chinese
government, but they can't speak out in anyway for the fear of retribution.
They are severely under represented in the westerm media. There are government
tentacles everywhere in the world to report you if you speak out against your
government.

3) People whose political interest is completely paralyzed. Due to the
constant bombarding of useless rhetoric shown in mainland media. They know it
is probably not true, but they can't change it, so they might as well focus on
their economic interest and learn how to navigate within the system, which is
still full of opportunities. I would say this is probably the majority.

~~~
mytailorisrich
Even people who are in favour of democracy will rally against any HK protest
that has even a whiff of being independentist or of having foreign forces
behind it.

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ptidhomme
\- You're a propagandist ! \- No, you are ! \- etc...

Nothing new in news manufacturing there.

~~~
woodandsteel
So is it your view it's all propaganda, and as a consequence there is no way
to determine what the truth is? Or do you have some sources you consider
reliable?

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ptidhomme
It is my view that mass media is largely biased, yes.

Sometimes you can get some reliable information from local sources that have
not a primary stake on the matters (humanitarian NGOs for example).

Many times there's no way to know the truth : e.g. is there CIA involvement
(or any agency of the country you like) ?

You are left to identify patterns for yourself, given a diversity of news
sources, but keeping in mind what is the particular agenda of each.

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aussiegreenie
Forget softpower, Hong Kong protests are an existential crisis for the CCP and
Xi in particular.

Xi Jinping will not survive HK. Every day that the protest goes on
demonstrates the impotence of the CCP.

Even with the great firewall, people are reading that large protests are
occurring by "terrorists".

China will need to murder thousands and will destroy 20 years are economic
growth, if the choice is between losing control of a major city or committing
mass murder.

Xi looks invulnerable at the moment but he is hated and feared withing the CCP
due to his lifetime appointment. No one is forgetting that he looks weak
globally and the Chinese Grand Strategy (One Belt One Road) is also failing.

There is no good ending, either China commits mass murder or major CCP leaders
are arrested or shot.

~~~
ETHisso2017
Not sure whether this is sarcasm or you genuinely believe this, but the
Chinese narrative has centered on the ability of the local police to control
there situation. Plus, the Chinese government doesn't mind peaceful protests
in HK

