Western media bias against China deplorable, dangerous; Anti-China RSF has more actors than audience in its play against China

lustration: Chen Xia/GT 

 

 

 Western media bias against China deplorable, dangerous 

 

For years, the unspoken truth about Western media is that their veneer of objectivity has come off a long time ago. While touting themselves as the epitome of trustworthiness and honesty, some media practitioners in the West have no qualms about propagating lies against China.

As the coordinated anti-China smear campaign is gaining steam, more intrepid journalists with a conscience are calling it out despite the tremendous pressure to silence them.

In one of the most excoriating rebukes against Western media's manipulation of the public opinion against China, Javier Garcia, head of the office of the EFE News Agency of Spain in Beijing, announced earlier this week that he would soon leave journalism, as the flagrant information manipulation by Western media "has taken a good dose of my enthusiasm for this profession."

The departure of journalists like Garcia is a giant loss to the industry, which is in dire need of introspection. For those who choose to stay and disagree with the highly biased and distorted reporting on China, they are usually confronted with a monolithic propaganda structure in the West to ignore, silence and discredit them.

The past few years have seen a lot of deplorable cases where anyone who dared to maintain objective and impartial positions on China were accused of being on the payroll of the Chinese government or even worse.

While they are working arduously to suppress impartial information and hoping it to pay off, some media in the West, especially in the United States, should expect that the chickens will come home to roost, as their own political order is at risk.

Even James Murdoch, son of right-wing media mogul Rupert Murdoch who owns FOX News, castigated U.S. media for amplifying disinformation that successfully sowed falsehoods.

"Those outlets that propagate lies to their audience have unleashed insidious and uncontrollable forces that will be with us for years," he told the Financial Times shortly after the U.S. Congress riot in early January.

For those Western media who are still slandering China's peaceful development, it is time for them to think twice. Enditem Xinhua

 

Source link

 

Anti-China RSF has more actors than audience in its play against China

The French-based organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) launched its Journalism Trust Initiative (JTI) transparency tool designed to "identify and reward trustworthy news sources" to combat false information. This online program requires the media to first conduct a self-assessment, which involves an internal check of conformity with the "JTI Standard." Next, the results may be "voluntarily disclosed to the public." The final stage of the process is an external evaluation by a third-party to certify a media as "trustworthy news sources." The supporters of JTI are basically Western news and social organizations, including major US internet companies and the "Association of Taiwan Journalists." Chinese and Russian news organizations are not involved.

The RSF describes JTI as "a game-changing transparency tool." However, the spread of information on the internet is based on another set of logic different from traditional media. It is questionable whether tradition media, with its declining influence, can regain the public's attention and influence by adding the tags of credibility.

The idea of JTI appeared in 2018. After the official launch in May, there was basically no actual response in the communication industry. Information about the project and how it operates is hard to come by on the internet.

I have again picked up such a topic that almost no one cares about, because the RSF is very anti-China. When it launched JTI, it obviously took the China factor into account, hoping that this online program, once becomes influential, can form another barrier to prevent Chinese voices from being heard in the international public opinion field. Its failure is destined.

Being full of ideological fanaticism, Western organizations such as RSF are fully hostile toward China, a socialist country. No matter what they do now, they will always regard damaging China as one of their goals. The world they want to shape is a spiritual kingdom irreconcilable with China. By forming and rewriting various "rules" and "standards," they will draw a gap between the world and China to demonstrate China's "self-isolation" which is incompatible with the so-called universal values.

In fact, the RSF is one of the worst liars in the contemporary world, and it has been committed to building an alliance of lies about China. Practice is the sole criterion for testing truth. The reality of China's vigorous development is a strong proof that China's path is not wrong. In their annual "world press freedom index," China is always listed at the bottom. But the public opinion field in China can always discover and expose various problems in time and generate public opinion and pressure to solve these problems.

In contrast, the public opinion field of the US and other Western countries has almost done nothing to promote solutions to their national problems. The concept of "freedom of the press" has long been hallowed out by them, becoming the lipstick on Western countries' face. By listing China's "press freedom index" at bottom, they aim at boosting their own morale and entertaining themselves.

On some fundamental issues in today's world, the Western public opinion regards position, instead of objectivity, as their priority. They do not hesitate to call white black. The COVID-19 epidemic has repeatedly caused humanitarian disasters in Western countries, but Western public opinion agencies have collectively regarded China, a country that has successfully fought the epidemic, as their first target of attack. The US and several other Western countries who have been waging wars have labeled China, a country that has not fought a war in several decades, a "threat" to world peace. Not only did US warships declare "freedom of navigation" by repeatedly crossing the Taiwan Straits, but even British warships have done the same despite being so far away from home. Obviously this is a provocation and a cheap trick, but it is falsely praised as "rules." Has the eyeballs and conscience of the Western media been dug out together?

The RSF is one of the many Western organizations that have smeared China the most. They have supported almost all attacks against China. They realized that it's not fun enough to oppose small countries. They believe they can have enough audience, show off as much as they want and set off unprecedentedly huge ideological storms by cursing China. Thus, they can finally find themselves something to do and develop a "career" that the entire West will fully support.

The RSF cannot control the internet. As I previously mentioned, a Western NGO cannot modify and reset the logic of the spread of false information on the internet. What the organization is really interested in is to create troubles for China, and it is much easier for them to find political and economic sponsorship by doing this. Their starting points may differ, but their political explanations to the West, especially to the US, will ultimately fall on creating an iron curtain of public opinion against China. This is the "value of their times" for Western ruling groups.

It seems that JTI has become an awkward play with more actors than audience. But organizations like the RSF are cheeky. Like a wild dog, it will haunt the road ahead of China from time to time. Therefore, we must carry a stick in our luggage when forging ahead.

Source link

By Hu Xijin 

    The author is editor-in-chief of the Global Times. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn

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Western media bias against China deplorable, dangerous; Anti-China RSF has more actors than audience in its play against China

lustration: Chen Xia/GT 

 

 

 Western media bias against China deplorable, dangerous 

 

For years, the unspoken truth about Western media is that their veneer of objectivity has come off a long time ago. While touting themselves as the epitome of trustworthiness and honesty, some media practitioners in the West have no qualms about propagating lies against China.

As the coordinated anti-China smear campaign is gaining steam, more intrepid journalists with a conscience are calling it out despite the tremendous pressure to silence them.

In one of the most excoriating rebukes against Western media's manipulation of the public opinion against China, Javier Garcia, head of the office of the EFE News Agency of Spain in Beijing, announced earlier this week that he would soon leave journalism, as the flagrant information manipulation by Western media "has taken a good dose of my enthusiasm for this profession."

The departure of journalists like Garcia is a giant loss to the industry, which is in dire need of introspection. For those who choose to stay and disagree with the highly biased and distorted reporting on China, they are usually confronted with a monolithic propaganda structure in the West to ignore, silence and discredit them.

The past few years have seen a lot of deplorable cases where anyone who dared to maintain objective and impartial positions on China were accused of being on the payroll of the Chinese government or even worse.

While they are working arduously to suppress impartial information and hoping it to pay off, some media in the West, especially in the United States, should expect that the chickens will come home to roost, as their own political order is at risk.

Even James Murdoch, son of right-wing media mogul Rupert Murdoch who owns FOX News, castigated U.S. media for amplifying disinformation that successfully sowed falsehoods.

"Those outlets that propagate lies to their audience have unleashed insidious and uncontrollable forces that will be with us for years," he told the Financial Times shortly after the U.S. Congress riot in early January.

For those Western media who are still slandering China's peaceful development, it is time for them to think twice. Enditem Xinhua

 

Source link

 

Anti-China RSF has more actors than audience in its play against China

The French-based organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) launched its Journalism Trust Initiative (JTI) transparency tool designed to "identify and reward trustworthy news sources" to combat false information. This online program requires the media to first conduct a self-assessment, which involves an internal check of conformity with the "JTI Standard." Next, the results may be "voluntarily disclosed to the public." The final stage of the process is an external evaluation by a third-party to certify a media as "trustworthy news sources." The supporters of JTI are basically Western news and social organizations, including major US internet companies and the "Association of Taiwan Journalists." Chinese and Russian news organizations are not involved.

The RSF describes JTI as "a game-changing transparency tool." However, the spread of information on the internet is based on another set of logic different from traditional media. It is questionable whether tradition media, with its declining influence, can regain the public's attention and influence by adding the tags of credibility.

The idea of JTI appeared in 2018. After the official launch in May, there was basically no actual response in the communication industry. Information about the project and how it operates is hard to come by on the internet.

I have again picked up such a topic that almost no one cares about, because the RSF is very anti-China. When it launched JTI, it obviously took the China factor into account, hoping that this online program, once becomes influential, can form another barrier to prevent Chinese voices from being heard in the international public opinion field. Its failure is destined.

Being full of ideological fanaticism, Western organizations such as RSF are fully hostile toward China, a socialist country. No matter what they do now, they will always regard damaging China as one of their goals. The world they want to shape is a spiritual kingdom irreconcilable with China. By forming and rewriting various "rules" and "standards," they will draw a gap between the world and China to demonstrate China's "self-isolation" which is incompatible with the so-called universal values.

In fact, the RSF is one of the worst liars in the contemporary world, and it has been committed to building an alliance of lies about China. Practice is the sole criterion for testing truth. The reality of China's vigorous development is a strong proof that China's path is not wrong. In their annual "world press freedom index," China is always listed at the bottom. But the public opinion field in China can always discover and expose various problems in time and generate public opinion and pressure to solve these problems.

In contrast, the public opinion field of the US and other Western countries has almost done nothing to promote solutions to their national problems. The concept of "freedom of the press" has long been hallowed out by them, becoming the lipstick on Western countries' face. By listing China's "press freedom index" at bottom, they aim at boosting their own morale and entertaining themselves.

On some fundamental issues in today's world, the Western public opinion regards position, instead of objectivity, as their priority. They do not hesitate to call white black. The COVID-19 epidemic has repeatedly caused humanitarian disasters in Western countries, but Western public opinion agencies have collectively regarded China, a country that has successfully fought the epidemic, as their first target of attack. The US and several other Western countries who have been waging wars have labeled China, a country that has not fought a war in several decades, a "threat" to world peace. Not only did US warships declare "freedom of navigation" by repeatedly crossing the Taiwan Straits, but even British warships have done the same despite being so far away from home. Obviously this is a provocation and a cheap trick, but it is falsely praised as "rules." Has the eyeballs and conscience of the Western media been dug out together?

The RSF is one of the many Western organizations that have smeared China the most. They have supported almost all attacks against China. They realized that it's not fun enough to oppose small countries. They believe they can have enough audience, show off as much as they want and set off unprecedentedly huge ideological storms by cursing China. Thus, they can finally find themselves something to do and develop a "career" that the entire West will fully support.

The RSF cannot control the internet. As I previously mentioned, a Western NGO cannot modify and reset the logic of the spread of false information on the internet. What the organization is really interested in is to create troubles for China, and it is much easier for them to find political and economic sponsorship by doing this. Their starting points may differ, but their political explanations to the West, especially to the US, will ultimately fall on creating an iron curtain of public opinion against China. This is the "value of their times" for Western ruling groups.

It seems that JTI has become an awkward play with more actors than audience. But organizations like the RSF are cheeky. Like a wild dog, it will haunt the road ahead of China from time to time. Therefore, we must carry a stick in our luggage when forging ahead.

Source link

By Hu Xijin 

    The author is editor-in-chief of the Global Times. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn

Related posts:

 

West-backed color revolution a ‘top threat’ to China's national, political security

  

 

 

Smear campaign serving

The US has found the world order quickly shifting and is feeling uneasy with the challenge from China. Beautiful diversity : Today, 

 

Inside America's Meddling Machine destabilizing the world order

NED, the US-Funded Org Interfering in Elections Across the Globe 

 

Splashing $10m a year to split and subvert China, US govt-backed foundation unabashedly reveals funding scheme

 

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

 

Moral vacuum at the heart of modernity, now embodied in US laws!

  ` ` MAN and nature are running out of time. That’s the core message of the UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change ...

Moral vacuum at the heart of modernity, now embodied in US laws!

` In short, historically it was the Church that gave the moral blessing for colonisation, slavery and genocide during the Age of Globalisation. The tragedy is that the Doctrine of Discovery is now embodied in US laws.

West-backed color revolution a ‘top threat’ to China's national, political security

.

The sixth National Security Education Day falls on Thursday, with the Chinese national security agency releasing a series of cases related to the threat against China's political security. Experts on international intelligence and security said under the intensifying China-US competition, foreign hostile forces have increased efforts to target the political security of China rather than merely conducting regular espionage activities.

The law enforcement cases released by relevant national security agencies this year are different from the past, which specifically focus on the political security issue, including suspects who have colluded with foreign anti-China forces that try to subvert the state power. Some of them are related to the Hong Kong turmoil in 2019, which try to expand the Western-backed color revolution from the special administrative region to the mainland.

"When we talk about national security, people will normally think of foreign espionage activities that target China's military and economic intelligence. But now many recent cases show that the internal and external anti-China forces are colluding with each other," Li Wei, an expert on national security and anti-terrorism at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, told the Global Times.

"This shows that the foreign hostile forces are strengthening their efforts to promote 'color revolution', to damage the political security of our country," Li said, stressing that this has become the primary national security challenge that China is facing at the moment.

Regular espionage activities targeting military and economic intelligence aim to help relevant countries in their negotiations or competition with China, "but the color revolution that directly targets our political security is trying to harm the stability and public order in our country, so it's much more serious and destructive," said a Chinese expert on international intelligence who asked for anonymity.

Technically, a color revolution is a "smarter measure" to help Western countries, especially the US, destabilize or overthrow a country, the expert said. "After the Iraq War, the US and its allies have been more reluctant to dispatch ground troops because direct military operation will cause casualties to their soldiers and other unpredictable costs. But using social media networks, NGOs, and 'diplomats' to mobilize, train, fund and organize local people against the government will cost less and is easier to create chaos."

Humanitarian disaster: the truth of US-initiated wars 

"We can see many similar cases in Syria, Libya, Venezuela, Ukraine and Belarus. The main actors in those countries are local people guided by Western proxies, and Western military forces normally serve as a supporting role, and sometimes they don't even show up," he said.

Chinese analysts said the US and its allies dare not directly launch military operations against nuclear-armed major powers, like China and Russia, or their neighboring countries. So after a series of ineffective approaches like the trade war, military pressure and propaganda stigmatization, the color revolution is being used a major tactic to disrupt China's development, and it seems like is the last card that the US can play to stop China from realizing great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

More aggression

In one case among the recently released law enforcement cases that aim to promote national security education, a student surnamed Tian who studied journalism at a university in North China's Hebei Province has become a "cub reporter" in China working for a mainstream Western media. Tian established an anti-China website in 2018 and cooked up and spread a huge amount of disinformation and political rumors.

In April 2019, Tian was invited to visit a Western country, and has engaged with more than 20 hostile foreign groups and more than a dozen officials of the host country to receive direct instruction, which requires Tian to provide "evidence" that could be used to stigmatize China. Tian's acts have seriously harmed China's political security, and he was arrested in June 2019, according to information provided by state security agencies.

Li said this is a typical case of the US and Western anti-China forces infiltrating and inciting Chinese students and using them to serve the ideological warfare against China.

"Working for Western media outlets is not a problem, but if using the profession of a journalist as a cover to conduct activities to harm national security is a crime," Li said, noting that not all employees in Western media outlets are spies, but there are some Western journalists backed by Western politicians and intelligence agencies.

In cooking-up rumors about "genocide" and "forced labor" in China's Xinjiang, Western media are playing an important role, Li noted. "Just like this case, those 'journalists' are receiving funding and training in other countries, and implementing the tactic of anti-China politicians to destabilize China."


.
On Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said at the routine press conference that in 2020, the US ambassador to Turkey met with the head of the local ETIM (East Turkestan Islamic Movement) branch.

The ETIM, or Turkistan Islamic Party, is an extremist, terrorist and separatist organization that challenges China's sovereignty and stability in Xinjiang. The UN Security Council Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee has listed ETIM as a terrorist organization since 2002.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry played a video segment at the press conference, which showed Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator, revealing in a 2015 interview that "a lot of these people are taken out (from Xinjiang) by the Gladio operatives...they are trained, they are armed and then they are sent back."

Putting things together, one cannot help but wonder, what did the US ambassador to Turkey talk about with the head of anti-China force? What is Operation Gladio? Does the US intend to cause trouble in Xinjiang?" Zhao said.

According to the released information, in the past, some arrested former senior officials in Xinjiang said they even colluded with foreign separatist forces to conduct or tolerate terrorist attacks in the region, and use textbooks with extremist content in local schools, which brought serious damage to the national unity and political security.

Hong Kong frontline

Hong Kong is another frontline of China's national security and political security. Since the national security law for Hong Kong took effect in June 2020, foreign forces behind months-long anti-government riots in the city since June 2019 have begun to waver, given that offenders would face severe sentences — as high as life imprisonment. The law would also cut off "the invisible hands" behind the chaos caused by foreign troublemakers, experts said.

It's not surprising to many that Western forces used Hong Kong's open city status to incite color revolution through various channels, including media outlets, student unions, political parties and labor unions by funding, training, advising them or organizing illegal assemblies, protests and riots, all tactics that could be found in the 2019 turmoil.

The implementation of the national security law helped Hong Kong restore social order, plugging the loopholes in local security laws, Chris Tang Ping-keung, Commissioner of Police, told the Global Times on Wednesday, as the law has been functioning as an effective deterrence to those lawbreakers who endanger national security.

Since the implementation of the national security law for Hong Kong, 100 people have been arrested by the Hong Kong Police Force for suspected of endangering national security, Tang said.

Safeguarding national security is regarded as the top priority for the Commissioner of Police for 2021, which is also among the top four tasks for the HKPF. The police team will continue collecting and analyzing national security-related intelligence, investigating in criminal cases endangering national security and conducting intelligence-driven operations to prevent acts endangering the national security, Tang noted.

"The HKPF will also enhance cooperation with all institutions and stakeholders in safeguarding national security and earn more public trust and support," he said.

To facilitate public participation in safeguarding national security, the HKPF national security department has launched a hotline for reporting relevant non-emergency cases since November 5, 2020.

Nasty acts will backfire

Apart from targeting Xinjiang and Hong Kong which are traditional geopolitical hotspots, foreign hostile forces are also keen to use issues like LGBT, feminism and environmentalism which are easy to stir heated discussions on social media via disinformation and rumors to create problems by instigating conflicts between specific groups in China, said the anonymous expert on international intelligence.

Fortunately, this kind of practice is unable to cause a significant impact or escalate into a massive color revolution, since with the modernization and development of China, the majority of Chinese netizens are able to discuss these issues with a mature and reasonable attitude, and legal civil organizations on LGBT or environment protection will distance themselves from hostile foreign intervention, the expert said.

"Those extremists backed by Western forces have been marginalized in our society and their illegal activities online and offline will be managed and controlled effectively by relevant law-enforcement agencies," he noted.

Ironically, the US has found that some of its approaches to push color revolution worldwide could backfire, and the rise of Trumpism and intensifying Black Lives Matter movement and the Capitol Hill riot have seriously undermined its image and credibility when it tries to promote color revolutions in other countries, the expert said.

International cooperation

The Western-backed color revolution is a common threat faced by China and many countries including Russia, and countries in Central Asia, Middle East, Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America. So defending political security now also requires international cooperation, analysts said.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said at a press conference after his meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in March that the two countries will jointly oppose color revolutions and safeguard their national sovereignty and political security.

"Fighting color revolutions is an important task for China and Russia to not just protect themselves but also safeguard regional peace and stability. The two countries could cooperate on intelligence sharing, joint operations against Western illegal NGOs that would create disinformation to hype instability and cybersecurity," Yang Jin, an expert at the Institute of Russian, Eastern European and Central Asian Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times

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Anyone without a scales over his eyes and who has not succumbed to cerebral shampooing by the West will have realised by now that large parts of its media are biased, if not outright antagonistic, in their reporting of |"China.

FROM the riots in Hong Kong last year, whitewashed as peaceful pro-democracy protests, to the lockdown of Wuhan and other Chinese cities, derided as draconian and an abuse of human rights, the sting was always there, and often not even hidden in between the lines.

All this will be denied, of course, and not just by those media owners and employees but also the readers and viewers who swear by them. It is futile to debate them, such is their ideological bias that they leave themselves no room for doubt, much less introspection. They are entitled to their reading of China, of course, as are their critics to theirs.

It is perfectly understandable that Western media, especially those that publish and broadcast in English, will want to push what they believe is the interest of the West. No one should expect them to speak up for China and other non-Western nations. Or question the liberal democracy dogmas they have grown up with.

To be fair, there are also not a few among them who genuinely believe that what they do is also for the good of the Chinese suffering under the yoke of a totalitarian regime. And so they have gone at it full tilt, especially the Anglophone media.

It would be foolish for people in this part of the world not to see all this for what it really is - a war, not yet a shooting one but a war by other means nonetheless. Only the wilfully blind will fail to see that it is being waged by the United States and some of its allies to stymie a rising China just so they can hold on to their global hegemony.

Demonising and then isolating China, through disinformation and misinformation, is just one of the means. In the relentless pursuit of that goal, truth, to paraphrase what Hiram Johnson, US Senator for California, first said in 1918, has become the first casualty of this war. So much for the self-serving cant about these media being “respected” providers of fair, objective and balanced coverage.

Does all that matter? I submit that it does, to the millions in Singapore, Malaysia and many other former British colonies who have relied all these years on the English-language global media for their news, analyses and commentaries.

It’s time they woke up, if they have not already done so, to the fact that their understanding of what is happening in China, and, for that matter, many other places from Syria to Venezuela, is being shaped by those media with an unholy agenda.This awakening cannot come too soon as some Western media are piling on the pressure by echoing the spurious demands of anti-China politicians that Beijing must pay for the damage caused by the Covid-19 virus which it has set loose on the world.

If allowed to escalate and proliferate, this incitement of people whose lives are being devastated by the pandemic, is sure to result in more racist attacks against people of Chinese ethnicity, particularly in Western countries. It may well spin out of control into an armed confrontation between two sides, very possibly in the South China Sea.

But what can ordinary readers and viewers do? Well, they can send these media organisations a message. Those who have no problem taking pen to paper should write a protest note to them each time they spot a deliberate distortion - or to their respective regulator.

Nothing will come out of it, for sure, but those who are neither pro- nor anti-China but believe in fair play have to take a stand against deliberate bias and make it clear they will not stand for it.

It is in their enlightened self-interest to do so; if these media can target China now, then they can just as easily turn on their country next and cause damage, as was the case for Hong Kong when the Anglophone media turned a blind eye to all the fire-bombing, vandalism and vicious attacks against innocent citizens, and glorified the perpetrators as freedom fighters.

For those not inclined to write, they can just stop reading or viewing biased media. There are Singaporeans who have cancelled their subscription of The New York Times and ceased watching CNN over the slanted coverage of the Hong Kong riots. Yes, they care enough for Hong Kong and, more importantly, for fair play.

Sure, protesting this way may be inconvenient for those who are monolingual in English as there are few other media organisations that can rival the top Western players in global coverage and reach.

According to Comscore, the audience research agency, as at July last year, CNN had 166 million unique multi-platform visitors, BBC 148 million, Yahoo 117 million and FoxNews.com 111 million.

But choices in English are still there - Al Jazeera, which says it has more than 65 bureaus around the world and whose Arabic, English and other language networks have a combined reach into more than 220 million households; and CGTN, China’s global television network, which says its free-to-air English service reaches 85 million viewers in over 100 countries.

Admittedly, Al Jazeera and CGTN are nowhere near CNN or the BBC in reach and brand value but any fair-minded reader/viewer who has followed their work for a sustained period knows their products are nothing to sniff at.

Anecdotal accounts suggest that CGTN and, in particular, its presenter Liu Xin are gaining traction among the better educated in Singapore because of their measured and fact-based approach to presenting news and commentaries.

The accent of this commentary is on biased reporting of China. If readers and viewers are reluctant to forgo following Anglophone media despite their thinly veiled bias against China and other non-allied powers like Iran, then the least they can do is to also watch or read nascent competitors for balance.

And not to forget: their own English language national or regional media, too - whether it be the South China Morning Post, The Star in Malaysia or The Straits Times and Channel NewsAsia in Singapore. They make no self-glorifying claims to being the gold standard for good journalism but they do try to be objective, fair and balanced.

Individually, each may not have the resources of the existing global players. But in this regard, there is no reason why they cannot pool resources where possible and compete on the world’s media stage. Fair, constructive competition cannot be bad for media consumers. And the English-language media landscape deserves more than just the Anglo-Saxon narrative.

By Leslie Fong, a former editor of The Straits Times. The views here are his own. Source link

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The US Navy said on April 21 that the USS America and two other vessels entered the South China Sea. In the face of the raging coronavirus epidemic in the US, Washington has shown no intention to halt pressuring China on the South China Sea issue.

Provoking human civilization must be rejected

The racist remarks about the novel coronavirus and the subsequent racial discrimination, racial contradictions and racial conflicts are all blatant provocations against modern civilization that should be resisted by the international community. All responsible media in the world should firmly adhere to justice and jointly protect the basic values of human civilization. 

 Respect for science will win COVID-19 fight

There is no way either of our countries can deal with transnational challenges like pandemics or climate change acting alon

Global cooperation will plug loopholes the US creates

Cooperation is the most effective solution to fix that loophole. But if the world cannot keep a sober head on this, there will probably be a more profound crisis waiting for humanity after the pandemic is gone.  

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IN recent weeks, some anti-China governments and lawyers have been hyping up unreasonable demands for compensation to the tune of billions – and even trillions – from Beijing for the origin and spread of Covid-19.

China has become an easy target in the current global public health catastrophe just because the first novel coronavirus case was reported in Wuhan in the mainland.

This anti-China campaign to press for hefty compensation is getting more intense as Western politicians lend credence to the movement.

The first case was fired off by a Florida attorney, who filed a federal class-action lawsuit on March 12 against the Chinese government, accusing it of “a slow early response” to the coronavirus crisis in China that caused “injury and incalculable harm” to business and people totalling US$6bil (RM26.2bil).

On April 18, US President Donald Trump added fuel to the fire when he warned that China could face consequences for the Covid-19 pandemic.

“If they were knowingly responsible, yeah, I mean, then sure there should be consequences,” Trump was quoted by Reuters as saying at a daily media briefing.

He did not state the actions the United States might take.

Trump and his senior aides have been accusing China for a lack of transparency in dealing with the coronavirus spread in its Wuhan province, after failing to gain support from scientists in his earlier exertion that the virus had originated from China.

China has repeatedly denied all allegations.

US allies – the UK, France, Australia and India – have joined in the fray to incriminate China.

Most recently, Germany’s largest newspaper, Bild, published a €149bil itemised “invoice” that Beijing “owes” Berlin from the impact of Covid-19.

It is obvious that with the pandemic engulfing over 200 countries, some governments that have failed to contain the virus spread in their backyard are looking for a scapegoat.

Many Western countries have been pointing fingers at China.

Although China has wiped out its epidemic and is helping other countries fight the battle, it continues to face a ruthless barrage of vicious allegations and accusations.

Besides using China as a scapegoat, the US and West are seen as taking the opportunity to smear China and discredit the Communist Party of China (CPC) led by President Xi Jinping.

To them, it is unthinkable that the CPC was able to mobilise 1.4 billion Chinese nationals to stay indoor for two months from January to March until the virus was contained.

Hence, instead of choosing the global cooperation advocated by Beijing, Trump is constantly picking on China with old and new accusations.

As the US is facing a presidential election in November, bashing China is seen as a strategy to gain electoral support as past surveys have shown that many Americans dislike the CPC.

But by focussing on geopolitics, Trump is allowing the deadly virus to creep into all corners of the United States.

The United States is now the worst-hit nation in the current pandemic.

Covid-19 has infected 905,333 people and killed 51,949 across the country as of Saturday, according the Johns Hopkins University.

Globally, infections have shot passed 2.82 million with death toll at over 197,500 as of Saturday, according to the official website of World Health Organisation (WHO).

Science man: Dr Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has refuted Trump’s theory that the coronavirus came from a lab in Wuhan. — AP

Origin of Covid-19

Up to now, the origin of the virus is still a mystery – at least in the world of science.

Although Wuhan was the first to report the new virus, recent studies on genomes show that Covid-19 could have originated in the United States or elsewhere.

While Trump has now switched his rhetoric to whether the virus had emanated from a lab in Wuhan.

The WHO officials and Trump’s own White House advisers have refuted this hypothesis.

The WHO has repeatedly said that “from all available evidence, the novel coronavirus was not manipulated or constructed in a laboratory.”

Dr Anthony Fauci, the leading infectious disease expert in the White House, has rejected Trump’s allegations too.

Before this, a group of researchers have already written in the journal Nature Medicine: “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.”

Repeated blame on China

Since the talk on origin and lab conspiracy do not hold water, then what else can Beijing be faulted on?

Chinese leaders have been repeatedly accused of “not being transparent, covering up and suppressing information” in the early stage of the outbreak by Trump and his Western allies.

Although China has admitted there were early missteps and underestimation of public risks during the initial stage, it had quickly acted to inform the WHO and scientists in the United States soon after.

“This miscalculation did not hinder the communication between Chinese and foreign scientists. All data were sent out, including a thesis by Chinese scholars in international academic journals,” said China’s Global Times.

On Jan 20, China made public its findings on human-to-human transmissions.

Global Times argued: “At the global level, the time lost could have been compensated by taking resolute measures. This was especially true for those countries far from China.”

Wuhan locked down its city in the early hours of Jan 23, and from then onwards, China rapidly mobilised. Harsh measures to prevent contagion were criticised but the country struggled on.

And by early March, China had brought the situation in China under control.

In fact, the accusation that Beijing had delayed in informing the world about Covid-19 has been refuted by WHO and Western scientists.

Scientists in China have won international praise for hitting several key milestones in understanding the novel, fast-moving virus, according to research and innovation forum Science/Business on April 7.

Ian Jones, professor of biomedical sciences at Reading University, told its newsletter: “We will never know if faster action in those first days could have averted the outbreak. Despite the initial slow reaction, there has been a very open dialogue since and many research findings from the Chinese experience are now appearing.”

Dr Zhang Jixian, the first doctor to report Covid-19 cases to Wuhan authorities on Dec 27, defended Beijing by stating authorities had responded promptly after getting her report.

In an interview on April 18 with CGTV, the director of the department of respiratory and critical care medicine at the Hubei Provincial Hospital showed records of a medical consultation of seven Covid-19 patients at the early stage.

A vendor at the Huanan Seafood Market, who was sent to the hospital on Dec 27, 2019, showed the severest symptoms among the seven.

“I reported to the district at noon on Dec 27, and they came to conduct an epidemiological survey that afternoon and collected patients’ blood samples and throat swabs,” Zhang said.

As the hospital in which Zhang works could not identify the source of infection, expert help from the district level and provincial CDC was sought.

“They reacted quite quickly,” Zhang recalled.

“I suspected it could be a kind of infectious disease, but did not expect the virus to spread like this – so infectious and serious, and affecting so many areas.”

On Jan 3, China formally reported the situation to the WHO and other countries, including the United States.

Does the case against China hold water?

Hostile groups may file charges against China, but are these grounded on norms and legal principles?

It is an international practice that a sovereign or a government cannot be sued.

It is obvious from the reasons cited against China thus far that most have been based on imaginary assumptions and baseless allegations.

Even if the virus had originated from Wuhan, China should not be made to compensate the world, as virus knows no boundary and country. It can emerge anytime and anywhere.

When the H1N1 pandemic, which started in the United States in 2009 claimed an estimated over 200,000 lives worldwide, there was no claim against Washington.

Did Washington compensate the world for the economic and financial loss to investors and countries resulting from the collapse of the Lehman Brothers of the US in September 2008?

When the Ebola broke out in West Africa, the world behaved in a sympathetic and civil manner.

By the same token, China – the first victim of the pandemic – should not be assaulted.

Perhaps, governments attacking China should reflect on what they had not done after witnessing China suffer in January.

Hannan Hussain, a security analyst at the London School of Economics, comments “there is no case against China as Beijing has concrete information-sharing reference points”, including sharing the genome sequence of Covid-19 in January.

“Washington lacks similar precedents, given its removal of key CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) officials that were tasked with the tracking, investigation and containment of diseases in China,” he wrote in the South China Morning Post recently.

Reuters revealed on March 26 that the Trump administration had cut its staff presence at the CDC in Beijing by two-thirds over the past two years.

While the “lion-mouth” claims against China may eventually turn out to be a waste of time, the West and their proxies will achieve their motive of smearing China.

China-bashing will continue.

This should not come as a surprise, given that the United States and the West have often wanted to contain the rise of China, which has become the world’s second-largest economy and is now the only enviable country focusing on rebuilding its virus-battered economy.

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