The effects of Chinese propaganda infecting the liberal media establishment has been documented. Sadly, but not shockingly, some of the major networks don’t care. We had CNN cite the website for the People’s Liberation Army of Communist China to take swipes at President Trump’s response to the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak. It doesn’t matter. If it attacks Trump because "orange man…bad," then use it. That’s where we are right now. Trump has truly broken the minds of liberal America to the point where they now willy nilly share communist propaganda in the hopes that it will persuade voters to vote this guy out in November. It only adds another in-kind contribution to Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign. It’s truly becoming a pathetic exercise. And it always ends with a rake to the face for liberals—always. And it seems the real Chinese virus—their odious propaganda—has infected Politico, who actually wrote a story saying that Trump’s COVID-19 response was bad…because Chinese social media said so:
"Chinese social media is a highly imperfect lens... particularly given the ruling Communist Party’s power and proclivity to punish dissenting voices." - @Politico
— jerylbier (@JerylBier) May 4, 2020
But, heck, let's base an entire article on it and put it front and center on the website!https://t.co/9dNlNvkxPk pic.twitter.com/Fj16j7d09M
On March 29, President Donald Trump stood in the Rose Garden and offered a coronavirus forecast: “If we have between 100,000 and 200,000 [deaths],” he told a reporter, “we all, together, have done a very good job.”
The president meant it as self-congratulation; he’d been shown a projected American death toll as high as 2.2 million. But in China, the statement landed very differently. On Weibo, the country’s equivalent of Twitter, Trump’s declaration sounded like an astonishing statement of defeat by China’s major geopolitical rival.
[…]
As coronavirus has spread outward from its Wuhan origins, the Chinese government has worked hard to spin an initial embarrassment into a win for its international image, with mixed success. But to Chinese authorities, the audience at home is the one that really matters, and among that vast cohort, the verdict is unsparing: China has outperformed, while America has disastrously faltered. It’s a sentiment shared by even educated, internationalized Chinese observers — the very group once inclined to look to America as an exemplar.
[…]
Chinese social media is a highly imperfect lens into widespread public sentiment, full of hot tempers, trolls, and the ever-present specter of censorship, particularly given the ruling Communist Party’s power and proclivity to punish dissenting voices. It is emphatically not real life; American visitors to China generally describe encountering warmth, or at least respect, even during times of high tension between the countries.
Yet Chinese social media is also a crucial indicator of sentiment among the ultra plugged-in young, as well as a battlefield on which Chinese citizens — within strict limits, and often in code — air out differing views of the Party and the world. As recently as February 7, Chinese social media heaved with resentment at Chinese authorities following the death of doctor Li Wenliang, who had endured police harassment for sharing early news of the new virus. That outcry, too broad and too deep to censor, appeared then to herald one of the most frontal challenges to Party legitimacy since the 1989 Tiananmen uprising.
Now, however, a scant two months later, a new narrative predominates inside China. Yingyi Ma, an associate professor of sociology at Syracuse University and author of a recent book on Chinese students in the United States, described an about-face among that relatively affluent group. Now, “Chinese international students in the U.S overwhelmingly consider China a safer place, with [their] government more competently handling the crisis than the American government. That is why so many Chinese students have returned home,” Ma told POLITICO, “despite the high risk of international travel and the enormous difficulty in buying airplane tickets.”
Ok, so Chinese propaganda is effective. I’m shocked at this development. My eyes can’t roll any harder. What’s next? An expose about how everything written about the US in North Korea is accurate? For a press corps that was obsessed with Russian interference, they’re very willing to spread the lies from another nation’s politburo. Also, who cares what China thinks?
President Trump created a task force, shut down incoming travel from Chines and Europe, eased FDA regulations to increase testing capacity, backed social distancing, and created a new COVID-19 test. He mobilized industries to create hospital gowns, medical masks, ventilators, and hand sanitizers, though most didn’t need a reminder from the government to do their part. Trump’s response has been aggressive, proactive, and transparent. China sat on its hands for nearly a week when they knew this virus, which looks like a lab experiment gone awry, would become a pandemic. They strong-armed their doctors from doing the right thing and informing the public. They’ve disappeared vloggers and other medical staffers who tried to raise awareness and report on the conditions on the ground. They failed miserably at containment.
This is China’s fault, so their social media can say whatever it wants. It still doesn’t negate the fact that China is the reason the world is in such a dire mess.
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