China's propaganda machine highlights other countries' mistakes while suppressing its own, fuelling anger toward foreigners and domestic critics alike.
Trevor Noah, the host of “The Daily Show,” has won praise on the Chinese internet for his searing criticism of the Trump administration’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic. So has Jerry Kowal, an American who makes Chinese-language videos chronicling the dire situation in New York.
Then the United States and other countries bungled their own responses, and China’s propaganda machine saw an opportunity. Even if the stories were true, they didn’t represent the full picture. Chinese children like me pitied Americans even when almost all of China lived in poverty. How much would we have envied them if we had known that most could eat meat whenever they liked?
The website of Global Times, a tabloid controlled by the Communist Party, added Chinese subtitles to a video from Noah’s show that featured President Donald Trump and many Fox News personalities, showing how for weeks they played down the risks of the coronavirus. “Is he ‘kissing the ass’ of China?” another social media blog post asked rhetorically. “No, he’s just telling the truth.”
The online backlash has been so severe, Fang Fang wrote on Weibo, that it reminds her of the Cultural Revolution, the decade of political violence and chaos that she saw as a child. The only comfort, she wrote, is that “this type of Cultural Revolution is only conducted in cyberspace.”
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