2015-05-19

Social Mood and Sino-American Relations

China sentiment is turning negative well before the presidential election heats up and when the economy is seemingly doing well. This may be the best relations will be in the coming years if social mood deteriorates and the economy weakens.

The Worrying Rise of Anti-China Discourse in the US
The third and most disturbing new discourse is the ‘punishing China’ discourse. It comes in various forms. One recent report from the Council of Foreign Relations argues that China needs to be balanced. Perhaps the message is that China, after all, is just another Soviet Union and it is now time for the U.S. to face the reality by firmly balancing China. Otherwise, China will dominate Asia one day. Another more radical report by two right-wing leaning scholars calls for a new ‘peaceful evolution’ approach to China. These scholars Dan Blumenthal and William Inboden,argue that the U.S. should actively assist those Chinese people who fight for democracy and freedom and in so doing the CCP would be brought down — hence, peace and stability for Asia.

Army Newspaper: We Can Absolutely Not Allow the Internet Become a Lost Territory of People’s Minds
The online ideological struggle may no have gunfire and smoke, but it is full of “the blood and gore of civilizations”, it essentially is an opposition between two kinds of systems and two kinds of value views, and is a life-and-death contest between the enemy and ourselves. Foreign forces use this convenient tool of the Internet to build “value traps”, implement a “cultural cold war”, and foster “a fifth column”, befouling leaders, vilifying heroes, mocking the system and attacks against the army may be said to have reached a state of unbridled brazenness, making the Internet into “concession” to peddle Western ideology. The former director of the Central Documentary Research Centre Pang Xianzhi hit the nail on the head when he pointed out that: “whoever talks about Marxism or talks about revolutionary traditions is said to be ‘Leftist’, and is not allowed to hold their heads high. Even the people’s democratic dictatorship is made into a ‘Leftist’ thing by some people. Whoever criticizes mistaken words, is crowned with a hat of “Cultural Revolutionary Mass Criticism”, and attacked.”

What is regrettable and distressing is that, in the face of enemies “massing great armies” and launching savage attacks, some Party members and cadres “love to stroke their own feathers”, and act as “enlightened gentlemen”, they do not dare to stand up and fight with their banners flying clearly; there are also some people’s whose backsides aren’t sitting straight, they “eat the Communist Party’s rice, and then smash the Communist Party’s pot”, they rashly criticize Party media for “hitting people with a big ideological stick”. In reality, however, some Western countries are wielding the big ideological stick, and don’t even try and cover this up a little bit; in carrying out “invisible propaganda”, they are more energetic, more adept and less concerned about means than anyone else. Western anti-China forces deliberately provoke ideological conflict, they want to muddy the water, make us confuse our own position, and bind our own hands and feet, lose the online battlefield, lose discourse power and lose people’s hearts.

...In the present and future periods, it will be difficult to fundamentally change the situation of Western monopolization of online hegemony, and its occupancy of the superior position in online information dissemination. The circumstances of online struggle are grave, complex and long-term, it is still generally the case that the enemy is strong and we are weak, the enemy is attacking and we are defending. Are we “mid-stream water” or is “the current flowing East”; are we “silent lambs” or are we “valiant warriors”, a time has come to choose, and a time where we must counterattack firmly. The “main force” must be brought onto the “main battlefield”. Only if our Army keeps close pace and stands in the front ranks, and counterattacks well, will it be possible to defend “online sovereignty” and build an “online Great Wall”!

China Tells Schools to Suppress Western Ideas, With One Big Exception
Four years ago, he told a prominent government advisory panel that restricting the use of Western teaching materials was wrongheaded. “No matter how many foreign resources we import, we won’t be at risk, because we’re on Chinese soil,” he said, according to a March 2011 article in the state-run Jinghua Times newspaper.

Referring to the hundreds of thousands of Chinese students who have gone overseas to study, he added, “We even sent so many people abroad and they weren’t affected in the nest of capitalism, so why fear they would be affected here?”
Chinese overseas students absorb Western thinking and Western ideas are popular in the cosmopolitan cities because the CCP offers its citizens no value system. Marxism is dead, capitalism is only an economic system and traditional religion is suppressed. The recent protests by Westernized feminists in China is evidence of American values creeping into the country.

Despite Release, Feminists’ Case Shows China’s Hostility Toward Civic Action
The women — Li Tingting, 25; Zheng Churan, 25; Wei Tingting, 26; Wang Man, 33; and Ms. Wu, 30 — are up-and-coming leaders in a new generation of feminists pushing for gender equality, an area in which China still trails Western nations by significant measures. The question now is whether these women, their feminist compatriots and advocates involved in other causes will curb their activities out of fear. The five women in particular would run a high risk of being prosecuted.

“In keeping with the Xi Jinping government’s extreme hostility towards independent civil society, a formal prosecution will serve the dual purposes of discouraging activism — no matter how legal, no matter how mild, no matter whether the issue has been discussed in the state press — and of leaving people wondering about where the red lines are really drawn in challenging the government,” said Sophie Richardson, China director of Human Rights Watch.
Russia has hit on a strategy that may work. It banned NGOs (China already bans them) and has turned to Orthodox Christianity as an antidote to American secularism. Orthodox Christianity was relentlessly attacked by the communists, so it is battle hardened to secular attack. China is getting it from both ends: American missionaries spread Christianity to people hungry for meaning and American universities spread progressivism. China's CCP is unarmed in a fight over religion and it is completely exposed to attacks from the left.

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