The ‘Chinese killed Jesus Christ’ post is a farce, but why it was allowed to spread on X is worth a closer look, "Cognitive Warfare"

Photo: VCG

Plunge into madness

Editor's Note:

"Cognitive Warfare" has become a new form of confrontation between states, and a new security threat. With new technological means, it sets agendas and spreads disinformation, to change people's perceptions and thus alter their self-identity. Launching cognitive warfare against China is an important means for Western anti-China forces to attack and discredit the country. 

Some politicians and media outlets have publicly smeared China's image by propagating false narratives in an attempt to incite and provoke dissatisfaction with China among people in certain countries. These means all serve the US strategy to contain China's rise and maintain its hegemony. The Global Times is publishing a series of articles to reveal the intrigues of the US-led West's China-targeted cognitive warfare, and expose its lies and vicious intentions. 

In the 14th installment in the series, the Global Times looks into how the US government and major social media platforms connive to spread anti-China slander online, as a non-obvious cognitive warfare trick that incites hostile sentiment toward China among ordinary US people.

People walk on a street in New York City, the US. Photo： VCG

Seeing unfriendly content toward China on today's US social media platforms is not uncommon, although some of them have reached the level of laughable absurdity. Dom Lucre, a US political commentator, recently wrote a controversial post on X (formally known as Twitter), in which he inexplicably claimed that the "Chinese killed Jesus Christ." This inexplicable post soon went viral online. Many X users seemed to have followed suit by fabricating rumors about "the Chinese," creating a wave of disinformation attacking Chinese people in recent days.

How did this campaign come about? Was it just the innocent dark humor of some individuals online, or a branch of the US' growing cognitive warfare against China to further deepen misunderstanding and hostility among Americans toward Chinese people? What roles do the US government and social media platforms play in such seemingly unofficially-initiated disinformation campaigns?

Dark humor?

"The Chinese killed Jesus Christ. This isn't a conspiracy. This isn't racist. This is history." The ridiculous post by Lucre on March 16 has since garnered over 3.5 million views and 1,500 forwards, much more than his other daily posts.

This was not the only ridiculous Chinese-themed post by Lucre that month. Earlier on March 9, he posted that "The Chinese control Hollywood. That's why every show they own can make fun of Jesus Christ and describe it as comedy…The Chinese [have] weaponized the American media against Christians." 

"China really controls the world," "China (is) allowed to legally mingle [sic] in American elections," "FBI caught five Chinese men dancing during 9/11"… Within a week, Lucre had posted several bizarre accusations against China and Chinese people, triggering widespread discussions on X.

So what was the motive behind it?

Some users commented that they guessed the posts were a form of "dark humor" satire by Lucre to "mock" the bans of US social media platforms like X on negative content about Jews as it appears Lucre had simply replaced the word "Jews" with "Chinese" in his post. Sharing personal experiences of Jew-related posts being deleted, they suggested that the platforms usually block or restrict posts attacking certain groups of people like Jews or Muslims, but seemingly allow similar content when directed at Chinese people, if not encourage them.

Superficially, Lucre's posts were a performance-art-like satire to highlight how different groups are treated on US social media platforms, and Chinese people unfortunately became a tool and the victims of such "satire."

However, as an increasing number of X users followed suit to fabricate and spread rumors defaming Chinese people, some anti-China forces thus seized on the opportunity to further muddy the waters with fake evidence to "support" the ridiculous claims. This "dark humor" farce has resulted in the inundation of disinformation that demonizes Chinese people.

There were more than 2,000 X posts containing the keywords "Chinese killed Jesus" within a week after Lucre's original post on March 16, showed online media monitoring company Meltwater. Instead of attaching so-called "background information" to Lucre's related posts, X seemed to have not blocked or clarified any of the forwarded posts, allowing them to keep going viral and mislead the public.

Obviously, the disinformation was spread under X's inaction and connivance, said Li Haidong, a professor at the China Foreign Affairs University. "X can hardly escape the blame," he told the Global Times.

Long-term connivance

US social media platforms have long connived with and acquiesced to anti-China misinformation, "a very vicious act" that is backed or promoted by some politicians and government agencies in the US, Li said.

By indulging the false accusations against China online and deliberately elevating a few statements - no matter how absurd they are - to ignite a sort of public hostility toward China and its people, these platforms and politicians attempt to foment unfriendly consensus against Chinese people at the social level, so as to set off an anti-China sentiment among the general US public, noted Li.

The "Chinese virus" smear during the COVID-19 pandemic was a typical cognitive campaign that started on social media and was fueled by the US government and politicians. Meltwater data showed that the terms "Chinese virus" first appeared on social media platforms and in some news coverage around early January 2020, and surged in late March, soon after former US president Donald Trump used similar labels in his X posts

The US government was obviously happy to see these insulting words flooding social media, and actively joined the COVID-19 cognitive campaign that smeared China and obfuscated the facts. 

The so-called "Great Translation Movement" in early 2022, a malicious smear campaign against China on Russia-Ukraine issues on X, was also a vivid instance in which US social media platforms connived to spread rumors and hateful, discriminatory remarks against Chinese people. By translating cherry-picked, niche, and radical content from the Chinese internet into multiple languages, and spreading said translations on overseas social media platforms, participants of the "movement" attempted to portray Chinese people as an arrogant, populist, and cruel group, which maliciously misled the public. 

Disappointingly, during this "movement," X kept turning a blind eye to the rumors and attacks against Chinese people.

Some politicians are currently trying to take it a step further. On April 11, some members of the US House and Senate introduced the Open Translation Center Act, a bill to establish a federally funded research center that translates documents from countries like China and Russia, so as to "better understand threats" from these countries, they claimed.

One of the main initiators, Mike Gallagher, is infamous for his extreme anti-China attitude. 

Li analyzed that this bill is not to promote mutual understanding between China and the US, but to aggravate the US people's unfriendly attitude toward China. "The 'Open Translation Center' and the 'Great Translation Movement' are issues in two different fields, but they are similar in nature," he told the Global Times.

Sadly, negative content forms the majority of Chinese-related posts found on US social media platforms, with the continued connivance of the platforms and the US government. Meltwater showed that so far this year, among the posts containing "Chinese" on some major platforms including X and Facebook that were released in the US, negative, neutral, and positive sentiment stood at 26.8, 59.3, and 13.8 percent respectively.

A main battlefield

The US' cognitive warfare against China is evolving from simply distorting information about China to falsifying knowledge about China - in other words, turning misinformation to "common sense" that attempts to change people's basic knowledge and understanding of China, said Dong Guanpeng, dean of the National Institute of Public Relations and Strategic Communication, Communication University of China.

Falsifying knowledge about China is much nastier than fabricating misinformation, Dong noted. "It may mislead global audiences, particularly the young ones, during their formation of perceptions and judgments about China," he told the Global Times.

Lucre's "dark humor" posts have, to some extent, misled a few X users, who forwarded their complaints about the "misdeeds" of Chinese people that Lucre mentioned. Some Chinese observers worry that, for the less knowledgeable young netizens who are unaware of such "ironic narration," these ridiculous posts may eventually become a part of their initial cognition of China and its people.

Worse still, apart from indulging in the spread of rumors, US politicians and social media platforms have also created fake accounts to proactively make up and spread content discrediting China, and even banned pro-China posts and blocked pro-China accounts.

Earlier in 2019, during the riots in Hong Kong, many users criticized Facebook and X for suppressing their posts that support the central Chinese government.  According to CNN's report, X blocked more than 900 accounts in that same period, and was followed by Facebook. These accounts were closed for posting content "undermining" the rioters in Hong Kong. 

It is no wonder that social media has become a main battlefield for the US' cognitive warfare against China, said Li.

And the cognitive warfare has shaped or influenced US people's view of China to a certain extent. A Gallup poll released in March showed that 41 percent of Americans name China as the US' greatest enemy today, making it the top perceived US adversary for the fourth straight year. 

Yet the "greatest enemy" was created by the US itself with its meaningless hostility and panic.

 "The US has since (Huawei) spiraled into a full-blown outbreak of Sinophobia - a strong word that I don't use lightly," Stephen S. Roach, a faculty member at Yale University and former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, wrote in his article "American Sinophobia" published in March.

 "...Excessive fear of China conveniently masks many of America's own self-inflicted problems," Roach wrote. "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," he quoted a line from US president Franklin Roosevelt's 1933 inaugural address, concluding that "amid today's Sinophobic frenzy, that message is well worth remembering."

Photo: Global Times

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Firms’ legal battle against US ‘forced labor’ slur necessary

 

Photo: Vitaly Podvitsk

The legal battle between Chinese laser printer manufacturer Ninestar and the US government has received wide attention, and the unfolding of the thorny legal dispute surrounding the case has further revealed how brazen Washington is in implementing trade bullying by placing the label of so-called forced labor on China. 

Ninestar Corporation

After Ninestar and its seven subsidiaries were put on a list under the US' so-called Uygur Forced Labor Protection Act (UFLPA), the company sued the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force, a multi-agency body led by the US Department of Homeland Security, in the US Court of International Trade, accusing it of acting in an "arbitrary and capricious manner in violation of US law" and arguing that the listing decision was taken "without offering any explanation or justification."

Now the legal fight is heating up, in part over who shares the burden of proof and the reliability of the evidence, the South China Morning Post reported on Thursday.

In a December filing, Ninestar claimed that the US government's decision lacked evidence and "applied a low standard of proof," and its basis was "retroactive." The company also asked the court to suspend the implementation of the government's action.

While the ultimate outcome of the case is unclear, it has already played a role in exposing the US roughness and lack of supporting evidence, letting the world know how brazen Washington could be in using lies to suppress Xinjiang industries and Chinese manufacturing.

It is no secret that the so-called forced labor and genocide claims in Xinjiang are utter lies made up by radical politicians, media and think tank scholars in the US and the West.

In recent years, Xinjiang has made great achievements in manufacturing development. In particular, large-scale mechanized production has become increasingly popular in most areas in the region, with the mechanization rate of Xinjiang's cotton sector at about 90 percent.

So how is "forced labor" possible? In the context of China-US tensions, playing the "Xinjiang card" is actually nothing but another tool the US has used to contain China's development. It wants to deprive local people of employment, creating de facto "forced unemployment" and thus disrupting the steady growth of Chinese manufacturing.

This is the fundamental reason why the UFLPA, turning a blind eye to the basic principle of the modern rule of law - the presumption of innocence - exercises the controversial presumption clause that requires enforcement authorities to presume that all goods "mined, produced, or manufactured" in whole or in part in Xinjiang are made with "forced labor" while forcing companies to incriminate themselves.

Because of this lie, products made in Xinjiang are collectively targeted and discriminated against by Western supply chains. If this is not a violation of the international trade order, then what is?

Even as Washington is obsessed about catering to its domestic political environment and strategic needs to suppress Chinese manufacturing, it is still important for Ninestar to defend its interests by resorting to legal action. Whatever the outcome of the case, Chinese companies need to have their voices heard.

Even if litigation is costly and doesn't guarantee winning the case, we still believe that more Chinese companies should seek clarity and challenge trade rules that carry political intentions through legal means.

Chinese companies should not accept this. We also hope that relevant industry associations provide more legal assistance and support to companies that were blacklisted by such unfair trade measures

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How Fake News Shapes World Order: Atrocity Fabrication and its Consequences

Atrocity fabrication – the invention and reporting of atrocities committed by an adversary without knowledge that they ever occurred – has a centuries-long history at the heart of propaganda and power politics as an effective means of moving public and international opinion. Its use can provide pretext for a range of hostile measures against its targets, transforming in the public eye wars of unprovoked aggression into wars of liberation of the oppressed, or turning blockades to starve enemy civilians into humane efforts to pressure abusive governments under the moralistic label of sanctions. As it plays a large and growing role in global conflict in the 21st century understanding atrocity fabrication and the consistent means by and ends to which it has been used has become crucial to comprehending geopolitical events in the present day.

This book elucidates the seldom explored but central role played by atrocity fabrication in eleven major conflicts from the 1950s to the present day: from Korea, Vietnam and Cuba during the Cold War to Iraq, Libya and the emerging Sino-U.S. cold war more recently. It highlights the many variations of atrocity fabrication, the strong consistencies in how atrocity fabrication is used, and the consequences it has for the populations of the targeted countries, The book demonstrates the roles played by media and both government and non-governmental organizations in misleading the public as to the actuality of these highly publicized events. The emerging trend towards this mode of action, and the deep implications this has for world order, make an understanding of its history particularly critical.

West uses ‘atrocity fabrications’ to demonize enemies

 

• Horrific false narratives are concocted to create animosity towards rivals, says 500-page study from top University of London researcher

• Technique has been used by West for more than a century, using “fake news” to shape world order

• China has been a major victim, with “Tiananmen Square massacre” and genocide of Uyghurs as examples of events that never happened

• Tales are spread by allegedly “independent” think tanks, NGOs and media firms, discreetly financed by the U.S.

U.S. GOVERNMENT BODIES working with the western media created a massive “atrocity fabrication” industry to discredit China and other perceived enemies of the west, says a stunning new book to be published next month.

Horrific tales of torture and genocide were manufactured to be spread by the press in a technique developed by western powers over decades to demonize countries including Vietnam, Cuba, North Korea, China, and others, says “Atrocity Fabrication and its Consequences: How Fake News Shapes World Order” by A.B. Abrams, a geopolitical specialist and academic based in London. 

The widely spread narrative talks of more than six million dead, but not a single documented case has been found.

This atrocity fabrications process has been used in numerous locations around the world over decades, but recently culminated in a dramatically fake genocide in Xinjiang – in which the allegedly genocided group, rather than being wiped out, actually expanded ten times faster than the population of the people alleged to be perpetrators. 

“One of the key objectives of Western efforts to fabricate the narrative of a Chinese genocide was to turn global opinion against Beijing and unite the international community behind the West in its confrontation with China,” the book says.

WORLD HAS BEEN MISLED

2010-2018 Source: Global Times

The astonishing 500-page study by A. B. Abrams of the University of London shows exactly how the world has been misled by a series of deceptive techniques, developed over many years: and how what we read about China and Iran and other places today is directly related to famously fraudulent news stories like the “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq and the machine-gunning of students at Tiananmen Square, both of which were false stories from western intelligence sources published widely in the media.

“Xinjiang’s Uyghur population were the latest Kuwaiti incubator babies, the latest American civilians killed in Cuban terrorist attacks, the latest Filipino civilians brutalised by the Huks or Syrian victims of their government’s chemical weapons,” Abrams writes. “They were Park Yeonmi forced to walk across three mountains and bury her father, Iraqi dissidents fed live into human shredders, students run over by tanks in Tiananmen Square, or Libyan women raped by Gaddafi’s black African mercenaries.

“What all these alleged victims had in common was that the crimes against them were never actually committed but were very widely publicised to build narratives which furthered Western foreign policy objectives.”

[ Scroll down to read more of the present story, or click here for a report about what really happened at Tiananmen Square in 1989 to open in a new window. ] 

 

The real Xinjiang is no giant prison, but a place that attracts more than 10 million visitors a month. Image: Panoramio

Abrams’ superb work will be published next month [March 2023], but advance copies have been sent to the present writer and others. The book is described by top independent journalist Max Blumenthal as “a devas­tating exposé of the interventionist clique that has weaponized human rights in order to destabilize enemy nations and immiserate their populations”.

Frighteningly, the fake stories often end up triggering violence, creating very real harm to real individuals, and causing huge amounts of undeserved reputational damage to communities perceived as enemies of the west.

FAKE NEWS SHAPES GLOBAL THINKING

Abrams is a highly respected scholar, known for his superb research-led work into geopolitical relations, and his ability to see through the thick fog of media noise. In painstaking detail, with sources carefully cited, this new book tells precisely how the western world uses the media to shape global thinking by creating false narratives and weaponizing concepts such as human rights to demonize rivals. 

 

Xinjiang, a once poverty-stricken region, has seen its GDP more than double since 2010. Health ratings have climbed steeply.

How does the atrocity fabrication technique work? Hostile people in allegedly “independent” human rights groups discreetly financed by the United States government fabricate stories of grotesque atrocities which are widely circulated by the world’s biggest media, including the BBC, Reuters, and the New York Times.

Abrams traces the development of the atrocity fabrication technique over centuries in multiple countries right up to the present day, but in this article, we’ll take a deeper look at just one example: his analysis of the current narrative of “concentration camps” in China. 

 

China has raised Uyghur life expectancy to higher than that of many Western nations. Image: Unsplash

The north-western part of China is painted as the site of a horrific genocide, involving millions of people tortured or murdered in a massive network of camps.

For comparison, the notoriously massive Los Angeles County Jail, which covers a land area almost twice the size of the state of Delaware, holds about 19,000 prisoners. The media asks us to believe that China has jails for three to six million people: literally the size of small countries. New Zealand has a population of about five million.

But it’s abundantly clear to everyone who visits Xinjiang or just sees the constant flow of videos from that community on Chinese TikTok that there has clearly been no such event. Just like people everywhere, they post videos of themselves dancing, eating, partying, getting married, and so on. Nobody could live such normal lives if a huge number of members of their community were being tortured and murdered in concentration camps. The narrative is clearly fake. So where did the horror stories come from?

“These claims relied overwhelmingly on U.S. government-funded anti-China groups dominated by hard­line Uyghur dissidents with Islamist or separatist positions such as the World Uyghur Congress, the Uyghur Human Rights and Democracy Foundation and the Uyghur American Association,” the book says.

“These were all heavily funded by the U.S. Congress through the National Endowment for Democracy, which had been closely affiliated with the CIA since its foundation and tasked with carrying out overtly what the agency had formerly done alone and more covertly.” 

 

The CIA spin-off NED spends millions on anti-government groups around the world

THE INNOCENT ARE HARMED

What is really shocking is that the fabricating of atrocities often leads to harm for the innocent: the Chinese community, for example, is unfairly demonized worldwide as cruel and barbarous, while blameless Uyghurs in China have been made unemployable for no fault of their own. 

 

Jerry Grey: retired London police officer who moved to China was not scared to speak out for his new community.

Ordinary individuals who speak out are also targeted. Jerry Grey (above), a retired London police officer, spent time in Xinjiang and wrote an honest description of life in the province, debunking Western media allegations of death camps. “This is absolute rubbish – there are not a million Uyghurs in concentration camps, that is just total baloney,” he wrote. 

 

Canadian Daniel Dumbrill, outraged by the false coverage of the 2019 Hong Kong riots, has become a popular commentator.

Daniel Dumbrill (above), a brewer-turned-commentator, did something similar. “We’re expected to believe that the population of Uyghurs is being eradicated. It’s a ridiculous statement whether it is in a literal sense or even a cultural sense,” he said.

They and others like them were punished harshly for telling the truth. Many western reporters attacked these individuals as paid agents of Beijing in front of audiences of millions, without a scrap of evidence. “The BBC, for one, equat­ed such questioning of the Western narrative with ‘spreading Communist Party disinformation’ and strongly implied the need for policing to restrict such expats’ reach on YouTube and other social media platforms,” Abrams says in the book.

Ironically, Grey and Dumbrill were telling the truth free of charge, while BBC journalists collected fat salaries for spreading “news reports” which consisted of fabricated atrocities. 

 

UK state-financed BBC journalists attacked ordinary people who dared to say positive things about China.

HOW THE PROCESS BEGAN

It is fascinating to look back at how the process began in the case of the Xinjiang fabrications. The book notes that many countries had to find ways to deal with Islamist terrorists. (Most preferred not to follow the western response of invading the wrong country and causing large numbers of deaths.)

China’s efforts to deal with extremist Islamist terrorists were to implement deradicalization programs, a route also chosen by Indonesia and France. However, western media and governments chose to present the Chinese version as unique. “The Chinese pro­gram saw a metanarrative created around it by Western NGOs and media outlets that was very far removed from any verifiable real­ity on the ground, and was based on highly dubious and in many cases entirely fabricated source materials,” Abrams says.

This misrepresentation of the facts was used to provide excuses to attack China on economic and other fronts. “As China emerged as an unprecedentedly potent challenger to Western power, this narrative sought to vilify and provide pretext for hostile actions against it,” Abrams writes. 

 

Millions jailed? CHRD interviewed eight unnamed people and extrapolated numbers.

Journalists were encouraged to print horrific reports about a massive network of Nazi-like death camps for the “genocide” of innocent victims, using stories from groups such as the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders. The CHRD website presents itself as a group of Chinese individuals rising up within the Chinese nation; but in reality, it is actually based in the US and “is heavily funded by the U.S. Congress through the NED, re­ceiving approximately US$500,000 annually”, the book says. CHRD listed its address as the Washington D.C. office of Human Rights Watch, a similar group that weaponizes the concept of “human rights” to attack China.

RECYCLED METHODS

How did they fool so many people so well? Practice and long experience. In particular, the west recycled the same atrocity fabrication techniques they had used to demonize North Korea against China—specifically “using emotional but highly inconsistent female defector testimonies”.

For example, the BBC and CNN for days made their top story the tale of Tursunay Ziawudun, presented as a concentration camp survivor with nightmarish stories. You can’t read the reports without feeling hate bubbling up for the Chinese.

But for anyone who makes the effort to dig deeper, a problem quickly emerges: she has been interviewed many times, and told very different stories every time, with the accounts becoming increasingly extreme. In 2017 and 2018 interviews, she described her time in the detention center thus: “To be honest, it wasn’t that bad. We had our phones. We had meals in the canteens. Other than being forced to stay there, everything was fine.” She also said: “I wasn’t beaten or abused. The hardest part was mental.”

However, the BBC newsroom shockingly chose not to tell its audience about these earlier interviews, presenting only a very different horror-movie-like story that mysteriously emerged after she had travelled to the United States as a guest of a NED-funded NGO. In the new version, she was “removed from the cells ‘every night’ and raped by masked Chinese men, and that she was tortured, gang-raped and had her genitals electrocuted”. Her cell mates “disappeared”. 

 

This meme by the present writer compares the dramatic difference in her stories.

Many of these “torture-porn” stories presented as news reports by the BBC and CNN were so extreme that even anti-China campaigners expressed discomfort, and tried to distance themselves. “You cannot write a news story claiming systematic rape based on three eyewitness ac­counts, not all of whom are reliable,” wrote Gene Bunin, who runs the Xinjiang Victims Database. “You just can’t and the BBC should know better. Take that from someone who’s been dealing with testimonies 24/7 for the past two years now.” 

 

U.S. academic Ma Haiyun, a harsh critic of China’s government, admitted he could no longer even discuss whether the stories were true. “In the current political climate, if you publicly state that there is no genocide in Xinjiang, it will affect your reputation to the point where if I said this, half of my friends would cut me off,” he wrote. In other words, the truth could not even be mentioned, let alone debated, even by anti-China campaigners.

OPPOSITE OF A PRISON

A common argument was that there must be a genocide in China, because why else would the Chinese refuse to allow anyone to enter the area? The western media followed the CIA-founded Radio Free Asia’s line in presenting Xinjiang as a giant prison, a locked-off place filled with oppressed people. This was the opposite of the truth. More than 150 million tourists visit the region every year, mostly domestic visitors but with some foreigners, making it one of the world’s top tourist spots in terms of numbers of visitors. Many stay in Uyghur-run hotels and make a point of eating Uyghur foods.

Worryingly, there were clearly cases in which the western media did not just report a false narrative, but seemed to actively enable the deception of their own audiences. Abrams noted how an image showing the details of Tursunay Ziawudun’s passport created a problem for the new narrative she was pushing. Instead of investigating this crucial discrepancy, CNN reporters covered it up by blurring the key part of the image.

Abrams’ book also notes the real story behind the image of a large group of men used by the Guardian and almost every other media outlet to present Uyghur concentration camp victims. But, as this writer pointed out two years ago, it really shows a 2017 group of people in a rehabilitation center gathering to listen to a Muslim speaker. 

 

Misused picture shows people listening to a Muslim speaker at a rehabilitation center from 2017.

SERIAL DECEIVER REWARDED

What about all those pictures on Twitter of Uyghurs being horrible harmed or mistreated? To answer that question for one’s self, consider the case of Arslan Hidayat. This Australia-based anti-China campaigner’s standard technique was to take pictures of people in misery from anywhere he could find them and then re-label them as Uyghurs being tortured by Chinese, for mass diffusion on the internet. When confronted, he would admit that this type of falsification was common among activists such as himself—and then do the same trick again.

You would think that such a person would immediately have sacrificed all credibility. The opposite is true: he was quoted as a legitimate source by the BBC, the Guardian, CNN, AFP, Al-Jazeera, TRT WORLD, and numerous others. Today he has been rewarded for his skills in deception by being given a salaried position at Campaign for Uyghurs, one of many, er, “independent” anti-China propaganda groups.

Moral compass? What moral compass? Dear reader, keep reading. It gets worse.

HARMING, NOT HELPING

One of the most depressing reports in the book is what happened to Esquel Group, run by a popular family in Hong Kong. This company, one of the world’s most successful shirt makers, happily employed 400 Uyghur workers, and many so enjoyed working there that they become long term staff. It was the sort of win-win situation that gives business people a good name.

Yet the company was unfairly put on a blacklist of “slave labor” firms by the US Commerce Department. This made exports difficult, harming the company and its employees. “In response Esquel invited U.S. Commerce Department staff to visit the facilities in Xinjiang with free and open access but received no response,” Abrams writes. For Esquel staff, it was puzzling – it was as if their accusers didn’t want to know the truth. 

 

Spinning mill in Changji, northern Xinjiang. Image: Esquel

“When it [Esquel] subsequently invited independent labour audit specialists to visit the facilities in Xinjiang and carry out unstructured interviews with randomly selected Uyghur workers, every instance found no evidence of the forced labour or coercion being alleged by Western sources,” Abrams writes.

But what could be done? For all its talk of “rules-based order”, the western government-media machine ignores even the most basic concepts of right and wrong .

Other companies, seeing cases like this, simply stop hiring Uyghurs. When companies are punished for doing the right thing, firms take fright. Western media and government are literally making Uyghurs unemployable while pretending to help them. 

 

The media’s fake stories ended up harming businesses in Xinjiang by preventing exports.

OTHER VISITORS REACT DIFFERENTLY

 

Muslims who visit tell a different story

What will be the outcome of this difficult situation? In Abrams’ opinion, it is clear that the Xinjiang genocide narrative has been swallowed by western countries, but he notes the majority of the world’s population is clearly sceptical.

Numerous middle eastern and Asian countries have sent envoys to Xinjiang and come away satisfied by what they have seen. Nepalese ambassador Leela Mani Paudyal noted after her visit: “The vocational education and training centres in Xinjiang are not ‘concentration camps’ as described by some Western media, but schools to help those in­fluenced by extreme thoughts to eliminate the harmful thoughts and learn vocational skills . . . This anti-terrorism example is worthy of learning by many countries.”

ATROCITY FABRICATIONS HURT EAST AND WEST

In the long run, it is very clear that the atrocity fabrications of the west are harmful and divisive to everyone, whether the narratives are focused on Xinjiang, Tibet, or on other parts of the world. Western governments and media have put so much time and energy into their overblown atrocity tales that it will be difficult for them to backtrack to more moderate positions. As a result, it is inevitable that there were be a sharp drop in trust levels for western governments and media. 

 

Nightmarish stories create needless animosity.

“The significant investment the west’s information networks have put behind the Xinjiang fabrication, including assets such as Human Rights Watch, the BBC and RFA, means that pressing this narrative too far, and limited international receptivity to it, may well erode Western international credibility when commenting on humanitarian issues beyond a point of no return.”

Some might say that the mainstream media’s reputation is already beyond repair. Time will tell.

Abrams’ excellent book will be out in March. It is highly recommended. 

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'We lied, we cheated, we stole', ‘the Glory of American experiment’ by US Secretary of State/Ex-CIA director Mike Pompeo

Lies, racism and AI: IT experts point to serious flaws in ChatGPT

 

 ChatGPT may have blown away many who have asked questions of it, but scientists are far less enthusiastic. Lacking data privacy, wrong information and an apparent built-in racism are just a few of the concerns some experts have with the latest 'breakthrough' in AI. — Photo: Frank Rumpenhorst/dpa

BERLIN: ChatGPT may have blown away many who have asked questions of it, but scientists are far less enthusiastic. Lacking data privacy, wrong information and an apparent built-in racism are just a few of the concerns some experts have with the latest 'breakthrough' in AI.

With great precision, it can create speeches and tell stories – and in just a matter of seconds. The AI software ChatGPT introduced late last year by the US company OpenAI is arguably today's number-one worldwide IT topic.

But the language bot, into which untold masses of data have been fed, is not only an object of amazement, but also some scepticism.

Scientists and AI experts have been taking a close look at ChatGPT, and have begun issuing warnings about major issues – data protection, data security flaws, hate speech, fake news.

"At the moment, there's all this hype," commented Ruth Stock-Homburg, founder of Germany's Leap in Time Lab research centre and a Darmstadt Technical University business administration professor. "I have the feeling that this system is scarcely being looked at critically."

"You can manipulate this system"

ChatGPT has a very broad range of applications. In a kind of chat field a user can, among others, ask it questions and receive answers. Task assignments are also possible – for example on the basis of some fundamental information ChatGPT can write a letter or even an essay.

In a project conducted together with the Darmstadt Technical University, the Leap in Time Lab spent seven weeks sending thousands of queries to the system to ferret out any possible weak points. "You can manipulate this system," Stock-Homburg says.

In a recent presentation, doctoral candidate and AI language expert Sven Schultze highlighted the weak points of the text bot. Alongside a penchant for racist expressions, it has an approach to sourcing information that is either erroneous or non-existent, Schultze says. A question posed about climate change produced a link to an internet page about diabetes.

"As a general rule the case is that the sources and/or the scientific studies do not even exist," he said. The software is based on data from the year 2021. Accordingly, it identifies world leaders from then and does not know about the war in Ukraine.

"It can then also happen that it simply lies or, for very specialised topics, invents information," Schultze said.

Sources are not simple to trace

He noted for example that with direct questions containing criminal content there do exist security instructions and mechanisms. "But with a few tricks you can circumvent the AI and security instructions," Schultze said.

With another approach, you can get the software to show how to generate fraudulent emails. It will also immediately explain three ways that scammers use the so-called "grandchild trick" on older people.

ChatGPT also can provide a how-to for breaking into a home, with the helpful advice that if you bump into the owner you can use weapons or physical force on them.

Ute Schmid, Chair of Cognitive Systems at the Otto Friedrich University in Bamberg, says that above all the challenge is that we can't find out how the AI reaches its conclusions. "A deeper problem with the GPT3 model lies in the fact that it is not possible to trace when and how which sources made their way into the respective statements," she said.

Despite such grave shortcomings, Schmidt still argues that the focus should not just concern the mistakes or possible misuse of the new system, the latter prospect being students having their homework or research papers written by the software. "Rather, I think that we should ask ourselves, what chances are presented us with such AI systems?"

Researchers in general advocate how AI can expand – possibly even promote – our competencies, and not limit them. "This means that in the area of education I must also ask myself – as perhaps was the case 30 years ago with pocket calculators – how can I shape education with AI systems like ChatGPT?"

Data privacy concerns

All the same, concerns remain about data security and protecting data. "What can be said is that ChatGPT takes in a variety of data from the user, stores and processes it and then at a given time trains this model accordingly," says Christian Holthaus, a certified data protection expert in Frankfurt. The problem is that all the servers are located in the United States.

"This is the actual problem – if you do not succeed in establishing this technology in Europe, or to have your own," Holthaus said. In the foreseeable future there will be no data protection-compliant solution. Adds Stock-Homburg about European Union data protection regulations: "This system here is regarded as rather critical."

ChatGPT was developed by OpenAI, one of the leading AI firms in the US. Software giant Microsoft invested US$1bil (RM4.25bil) in the company back in 2019 and recently announced plans to pump further billions into it. The concern aims to make ChatGPT available to users of its own cloud service Azure and the Microsoft Office package.

"Still an immature system"

Stock-Homburg says that at the moment ChatGPT is more for private users to toy around with – and by no means something for the business sector or security-relevant areas. "We have no idea how we should be deal with this as yet still immature system," she said.

Oliver Brock, Professor of Robotics and Biology Laboratory at the Technical University Berlin, sees no "breakthrough" yet in AI research. Firstly, development of AI does not go by leaps and bounds, but is a continuing process. Secondly, the project only represents a small part of AI research.

But ChatGPT might be regarded as a breakthrough in another area – the interface between humans and the internet. "The way in which, with a great deal of computing effort, these huge amounts of data from the internet are made accessible to a broad public intuitively and in natural language can be called a breakthrough," says Brock. – dpa    

By Oliver Pietschmann, Christoph Dernbach

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How US media, liberal or conservative, turn Beijing Winter Olympics into another feather in their anti-China campaign cap

 

#Beijing2022 Opening Ceremony! | Full Replay

The Media Center of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games Photo: VCG The Media Center of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games Photo: VCG

The Beijing Winter Olympics successfully closed on Sunday. The sports event, "truly exceptional" as International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach described at Sunday's closing ceremony, showed the world not only the excellent performances of Olympians, but also how China overcame challenges to offer the participants high-quality facilities and services amid the global COVID-19 pandemic.
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Nonetheless, observers said it's sad that many foreign audiences, who usually receive information from some biased Western media outlets, the US media in particular, hardly knew about the Beijing Winter Games in an authentic and objective way.
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How did some influential American media outlets cover the Beijing Winter Olympics, when the US sees China as a strategic rival? The Global Times selected six US media outlets that represent different interest groups in the country, and collected and analyzed their recent coverage related to the Beijing Winter Games, trying to learn about the US media's strategy concerning the Games and the possible prejudice behind it.
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The selected six media outlets were CNN, The New York Times (NYT), Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Fox News, National Public Radio (NPR), and USA Today.
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Media's 'China agenda' of Beijing Olympics
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By using online media monitoring tools, the Global Times reporters collected media coverage related to the Beijing Winter Games in February, particularly the week of February 14-21, focusing on coverage from CNN, NYT, WSJ, Fox News, NPR, and USA Today.
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These six major media outlets presented a very mixed tone in their discourse of the closing ceremony of the Winter Games on Monday night.
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In the titles of articles published by these US media outlets, most of the pieces included negative adjectives such as "rocky", "strange", "unwelcomed", "controversial", and "overshadowed by a doping scandal" in describing the Games, the Global Times reporters found. There were a lot references to alleged "human rights violations" and "excessively strict quarantine policies" in their review, though some articles provided a relatively objective picture of the well-designed and touching details of the closing ceremony.
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The sour grapes mentality exhibited by US media is on full display in these articles. NPR, for instance, even preposterously tagged the Games as "the most controversial, most unwelcoming Olympics of our lifetime" in an opinion piece by its staff.
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https://money.yahoo.com/most-controversial-most-unwelcoming-olympics-150319010.html
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US politics and media observers tend to classify CNN and NYT as the liberal media (or "left-wing"), WSJ and Fox as conservative media (or "right-wing"), while NPR and USA Today as relatively moderate media (or "center"). American media outlets with different editorial objectives speak for different groups in the US, while they usually stand together against other countries for US national interests.
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Looking back the past week, CNN, a typical "left-wing" media outlet known for its mostly liberal views, published some 73 articles covering the Beijing Winter Games from February 14 to 21. Fourteen of the articles were related to China or Chinese athletes, found he Global Times.
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Among the 14 articles, four were positive overall, covering the performances of Chinese gold medalists such as figure skaters Sui Wenjing and Han Cong.
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Three of the 14 articles were written in negative tones, which made far-fetched links between the sporting event and China's relationship with other countries. In a February 19 article reporting on a "doping scandal" about Russian skater Kamila Valieva, CNN frequently mentioned Ukraine's "border tension" and the "close ties" between China and Russia.
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The NYT is another mainstream media publication popular among US liberalists. The Global Times found that between February 14 and 21, it produced about 211 pieces covering the Beijing Winter Games, 30 pieces of which are related to China and Chinese athletes.
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The NYT reported on the Games with much broader views than CNN did. Among the 30 pieces, 12 were positive overall and covered not only Chinese gold medalists, but also the various cuisines provided at the Olympic Village, and China's speed trains near the Village.
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However, in its six pieces written in a negative tone, the NYT seemed to make bigger efforts in smearing China with strange, baseless accusations. In a February 19 article reporting on a "doping scandal" about Russian skater Kamila Valieva, CNN frequently mentioned Ukraine's "border tension" and the "close ties" between China and Russia, trying to hint at China being behind the Ukrainian crisis. That was neither true nor related to the Beijing Winter Olympics in the slightest, noted Chinese international relations and media experts.
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The WSJ, a center-right US-based media publication, published 28 reports on the Beijing Winter Olympics between February 14 and February 21, 13 pieces of which are related to China and Chinese athletes.
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Only two of the reports were relatively positive, focusing on Gu and China's record-breaking gold medal haul.
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Five had negative tones, involving claims of China's "data surveillance of athletes" and "dismal ratings for the Winter Olympics" that were patently untrue or have been repeatedly refuted.
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FOX, a typical right-wing media outlet in the US, ran about 143 stories between February 14 and February 21, 31 of which were closely related to Chinese athletes or China.
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FOX reported on international athletes' positive comments about the Winter Olympics, including praise for the quality of the ice rink in Beijing's Olympic Village, the efficient closed-loop quarantine measures, the popular Chinese food in the Village, high-tech elements, and stories of Chinese athletes' valiant efforts.
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Gu Ailing of Team China competes in the women's freestyle skiing halfpipe event on February 18. Gu became one of the favorite topics of American media outlets about the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games. Photo: Cui Meng/GT
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However, some of the articles forcefully conflated the Games with unrelated political issues such as the situation in the island of Taiwan and alleged "human rights concerns" in Xinjiang, despite repeated calls from mainstream international voices to avoid politicizing the Games.
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In a piece titled "Beijing Olympics get political with Taiwan, Uyghur questions", FOX repeatedly peppered the piece with political issues, and hyped the question "if IOC uniforms and other IOC garments were produced by Uygur labor - or from Xinjiang cotton."
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Being regarded as a centrist media outlet by many, NPR published some 72 articles on the Beijing Olympics between February 14 and 21, and 10 of the articles were related to the host country China, and Chinese athletes.
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Of the 10 articles, only one was relatively positive, narrating the positive impact that Gu has had on more young girls participating in winter sports.
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The rest of the articles, while trying to maintain a relatively objective stance, included two direct attacks on China for "politicizing the Olympics" and "deplorable" restrictions imposed by the country's quarantine policies.
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USA TODAY, another US media among centrists, ran 105 stories about the Beijing Olympics from February 14 to 21, of which 10 were directly related to Chinese athletes or the organizers.
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Three of the articles were the relatively neutral coverage of the performance of Chinese athletes on the field. One article on February 18, however, was written in a biased and negative tone, intentionally quoting an individual athlete as saying the Beijing Olympics "terrible,", the Global Times found.
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Correspondents and their predetermined perspectives
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Many influential US media outlets sent correspondents to cover the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics. At least 10 corresponds appear to be Chinese Americans or come from an Asian background.
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Looking into their stories, however, most of the correspondents acted not as bridges linking Chinese and American audience, but as barriers that deepened misunderstandings between the two.
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Amy Qin of the NYT, for instance, is a name familiar to many Chinese readers. This Asia-based correspondent regularly covers Chinese politics and society, and many of her stories have, in the past, sparked controversy laced with bias and misinformation, such a COVID-19 origins tracing piece that was published in June 2021.
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Qin wrote at least 12 stories during the Beijing Olympics, reporting from the opening ceremony and Chinese athletes, to China's dynamic zero-COVID policy and winter sports popularity, as shown by the NYT website. In a February 19 article covering the skiing development in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, she blatantly mentioned the "genocide" rumor at the end, eclipsing any bright spots regarding skiing development in the region that may have been mentioned in her article.
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With a cross-cultural background herself, Qin seems particularly interested in American-born athletes of Chinese descents, and what the current China-US "rivalry" has done to the group. On February 16, she wrote that Nathan Chen, a Chinese American figure skater who won gold at the Olympics, was "ignored" by the Chinese public in a seeming attempt to criticize the so-called "resurgent nationalism" among "[Chinese] citizens."
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US correspondents in China have been a window for Americans to know more about the country. Unfortunately, "most [US correspondents in China] are actually tools to play up the negative image of China that caters to the American elites," Li Haidong, a professor from the Institute of International Relations of the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times.
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Nonetheless, in the era of the great boom of social media, these correspondents and the US mainstream media, can no longer dominate China-related discourse, as social media have increasingly become a popular way for people to follow Olympic-related topics, which indeed poses a challenge to the monopoly of traditional mainstream media in depicting China, Li said.
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Despite the widespread "political boycott" against the Games played up by the US mainstream media, Americans are not fooled and many still genuinely enjoyed watching the Games across numerous social media platforms and shared what they are fond of or the Games' most captivating moments. That's a reality, but also a story that never gets told, Vipinder Jaswal, founder of the US-based PR company Vippi Media, told the Global Times in a previous interview.
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Jaswal said that the mainstream media and politicians coming against the Games have the greatest function to negatively influence people and disseminate some type of propaganda, but people were largely not fooled.
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Narration full of bias and lies
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The collected data showed that in general, positive coverage of US media mostly focused on relatively light topics in specific sports or social areas, including Chinese athletes winning medals, and international athletes enjoying delicious meals at the Olympic Village.
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Many of its negative coverage, ridiculously, had little to do with the Games. These articles were usually related to politics and economy, and clichés that alluded to "problems" in China that actually don't exist, such the "Xinjiang forced labor" accusation. Regardless of the fact that much of the fake news has been clarified by Chinese government, US media rehashed them, lashing them to the Winter Olympics for eye-grabbing sensationalism.
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Discourse on the Games in the mainstream US media, whether liberal or conservative, has yet to get rid of the "gloom filter" that was projected in their typical coverage full of prejudice against China's development, observers said Although American media outlets with different editorial objectives speak for different groups in the US, they usually stand together against China for US national interests, they noted
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They are still trying to use the US political elitist narrative of human rights standards as a weapon to attack the Games, Li told the Global Times.This ideology-oriented reporting approach inevitably leads to bias in the US media's reporting on China, and it ends up further away from the "independence" and "transparency" advocated by Western news ethics, said Li.

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