A US State Department report that accuses the Chinese government of expanding disinformation efforts is “in itself disinformation,” Beijing’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs claimed Saturday.
A US State Department report that accuses the Chinese government of expanding disinformation efforts is “in itself disinformation,” Beijing’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs claimed Saturday.
The ministry shot back after the State Department issued a striking report this week in which it accused the Chinese government of expanding efforts to control information and to disseminate propaganda and disinformation that promotes “digital authoritarianism” in China and around the world.
The US report, issued by the Global Engagement Center on Thursday, alleged that China spends billions of dollars a year on foreign information manipulation and warned that Chinese leader Xi Jinping had “significantly expanded” efforts to “shape the global information environment.”
It also underlined US concerns about China as a main military competitor and key rival in the battle over ideas and global disinformation.
This is funny. It also reflects in Lemmy. For example, take this tankie comment claiming "zelensky made having peace negotiations with putin ILLEGAL", based on an article which says "Zelensky’s decree released Tuesday declares that holding negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin has become impossible after his decision to annex four regions of Ukraine."
Then watch how mods from lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml ban users and delete comments which question their narrative.
Cherry on top: A user from this curated bubble remarks that "Nobody actually has any argument against this", because of course they are shielded from comments who pointed out the inaccuracy of the claim, and don't question it themselves.
Had to open the links up in web version to see the difference. Ngl, it's something I expected lemmygrad to do. I'm glad to be on lemm.ee. I love the admins and their transparency and how their policies are democratically decided like when we voted to defederate Threads.
I also think there is nothing wrong with stuff like this and it's what lemmy was made for. If one instance doesn't like something, they can remove it, other instances may still want to see it, if members don't like it, they can move or have their own instance but can still interact. It's the beauty of decentralization.
They are correct though whether you want to accept that or not. Zelensky has rejected peace talks because he is deranged and thinks he can take back Crimea. This user just put that in a weird way saying it's illegal.
Although he has made opposition parties illegal, and reporting against the war illegal as well. He has arrested a US citizen named Gonzalo Lira for his reporting
Zelensky has rejected peace talks because he is deranged and thinks he can take back Crimea.
Zelensky had been talking a lot with Russia while Crimea was occupied, while they already occupied parts of Luhansk and Donetsk (by proxy). Even after the 2022 there were talks, you might remember the pictures of delegations sitting around a table in Belarus.
If you had read the article in question (or in fact OP's comment) you would've seen that it said:
Zelensky’s decree released Tuesday declares that holding negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin has become impossible after his decision to annex four regions of Ukraine.
Now, I will grant that yes of course that was a political move. He was known to be a Russia-friendly president, elected (among other things) because people thought Poroshenko was too heavy-handed. Such a declaration simply makes clear to the Ukrainian people that he's drawing a line in the sand, that his patience with Russia has ended.
And can you fucking blame him Russia just annexed four regions. How much talking do you think, say, Vietnam would do if China annexed four of their provinces or whatever they're called.
I mean, it's relevant to the article. It's not "but America" when "US" is the beginning of the headline... ?? 🤨
I'm not saying that the US State Dept report is false, but it also absolutely would not be the first time the state department has put out a false report. And they intentionally release reports - true or false - in a concerted effort to shape information and public opinion.
America absolutely spends countless taxpayer dollars on propaganda, and CNN, which is part of a multi-billion-dollar corporation that serves the interests of shareholders, advertisers, and lawmakers is absolutely part of that propaganda machine.
Again, not saying China is the good guy or that we should take their word here. But the US also isn't the good guy, and I think we should take State Dept. press releases with a grain of salt.
The comment you replied to was perfectly relevant and accurate, and was just someone making a quip about US propaganda efforts.
But apparently a Canadian knows better, so keep telling us about how US propaganda isn't relevant in world politics, thanks.
The US has found a really good dog whistle for "opinions and facts I disagree with." Everything is disinformation! Some of it is Democrat disinformation ("fake news"), some of it is Republican disinformation ("wrong"), and some of it is foreign disinformation ("makes other country look good and America look bad"). Welcome to the state of modern American journalism, I guess.
For what it's worth, China doesn't really need to spend billions of dollars on disinformation abroad because (1) The Great Firewall exists (so foreign disinformation has no domestic impact), (2) China has almost always adopted the "actions speak louder than words" strategy that better aligns with Chinese culture, and (3) China has also taken that view on foreign policy in that it uses the actions of other countries to determine their positions rather than their stated views.
Frankly, a lot of people are applying Western views on Chinese culture without taking a step back and asking themselves WHY there's such a big gap between what they expect and reality.
A significant contributor to the deadliest man-made disaster in the history of mankind was domestic disinformation in China.
Edit: I misread the comment and didn't see the preceding word 'foreign'. In hindsight my original comment doesn't make sense given this context. I don't agree with OP's comment though. They seem to rely on the idea that, 'China is special and unique (unlike you troglodytes)', as an explanation for how the government behaves in international politics.
I think a different poster explained the CCP's sophisticated methodology better: "no u".
The only reason why they would block "foreign disinformation" is absolutely not so that they don't need to spread misinformation themselves. It's so that their disinformation has no competition.
there was a post on reddit over the weekend around a current political issue (upcoming referendum vote) on a clearly photoshopped/stock image of ballot paper, but all the 'No' voter comments were filled with commentary on the users handwriting being 'childish', followed by heaps of upvotes. overseas trolls exposed so blatently easily they couldnt tell what was a joke and what wasnt, despite the polls indicating 'no' is ahead, really made it obvious how the overwhelming position online of 'no' is driven in a great bulk by overseas influence (hi russia/china)
I feel like we could all save a lot of money on diplomats and ministers by just getting a bunch of toddlers to shout "no u" at each other until the end of time.
The ministry shot back after the State Department issued a striking report this week in which it accused the Chinese government of expanding efforts to control information and to disseminate propaganda and disinformation that promotes “digital authoritarianism” in China and around the world.
The US report, issued by the Global Engagement Center on Thursday, alleged that China spends billions of dollars a year on foreign information manipulation and warned that Chinese leader Xi Jinping had “significantly expanded” efforts to “shape the global information environment.”
It also underlined US concerns about China as a main military competitor and key rival in the battle over ideas and global disinformation.
“The relevant center of the US State Department which concocted the report is engaged in propaganda and infiltration in the name of ‘global engagement’ – it is a source of disinformation and the command center of ‘perception warfare’,” the ministry said on Saturday.
Referring to wars in Iraq and Syria as well as US reports alleging human rights abuses in China’s Xinjiang as examples, the ministry claimed that the US is “an ‘empire of lies’ through and through.”
“No matter how the US tries to pin the label of ‘disinformation’ on other countries, more and more people in the world have already seen through the US’s ugly attempt to perpetuate its supremacy by weaving lies into ‘emperor’s new clothes’ and smearing others,” the ministry said.
The original article contains 263 words, the summary contains 232 words. Saved 12%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I feel like this would be easier to settle if the report came with specific examples of narratives originating from Chinese troll farms with metadata supporting their general origin.
Shit even pegging it to tankies known to be sympathetic to the CCP would probably be sufficient