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.
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.
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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
You can always tell where disinformation is coming from when they don't allow you to talk about whether what they are saying is or isn't disinformation. And I say this knowing how draconian some moderators have become regarding handling of disinformation because that ends up fostering an environment of disinformation itself, just one that begins growing as a seed from another recess.
The real threat isn't good faith discourse, it's the propaganda disinformation factories that try to turn money into a way to subvert societies by twisting and corrupting social media and the people they convince to leave good faith discourse.
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.
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.