Opinion | Deconstructing an anti-China article, bit by bit
By Tom Fowdy
As Chinese New Year finally passes for 2024, Beijing's diplomatic engagement on the international stage resumes. As reported in the British press, Foreign Minister Yi is to meet with British Foreign Secretary Lord David Cameron, a figure of course who is loathed in this field by the media because of his "pro-engagement" legacy during his tenure as Prime Minister. To this end, an article in the Guardian caught my attention, headlined: "David Cameron to have first meeting with Chinese foreign minister."
On reading this piece, I was taken back, although not really surprised, about how negative the article proved to be, and how many anti-China talking points it had aggressively shoehorned in its contents in its broader depiction of Beijing and the scenario of Sino-British relations. Thus, I thought I'd take the opportunity to use this piece to go through my findings.
- "Cameron has come under pressure over his links to China since becoming foreign secretary, and he faces calls to raise human rights and national security concerns at his meeting with Wang."
Who exactly are these human rights and national security concerns being driven by? And why do they have to be the focus of UK-China talks? It goes without saying that this agenda of course is conceived in Washington and imposed on Britain, yet it is ultimately the follow-up point that helps us elaborate this position.
- Luke de Pulford, the executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, said: "The Foreign Office has been slow to realize that when Beijing says it wants win-win diplomacy, it means China wins twice."Cameron needs to show that the blinkers are off, and raise British citizen Jimmy Lai's show trial, Beijing's support for Putin's war, and anti-Uyghur atrocities in Xinjiang, which flood the UK market with slavery-tainted goods."
It is never mentioned, nor given any scrutiny or reference in the press, that the organization hitherto known as "IPAC" is a rabble of Anti-China zealots and fanatics, who coordinate to propagandize a Sinophobic agenda across multiple countries. De Pulford for one, was a key instigator in the driving of the "Westminster spy scandal" story, which implicated and show-trialled an innocent man who was never charged. Why was he "guilty" according to Pulford, because he had "nuanced" views, as he quoted.
However, this is not all. IPAC as an organisation is funded by the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and Taiwan. It is not an impartial organisation, yet is frequently and repeatedly cited as an authoritative and credible source on China matters when it is pushing a deliberatively hostile agenda. Here, De Pulford's quote and his organisation go unchallenged, but critically Cameron's views on China do not.
- The trial of the British citizen and newspaper founder Jimmy Lai, who has been charged in Hong Kong with colluding with foreign forces to endanger national security, is being closely watched amid concerns about the growing influence of Beijing in the former British colony.
While the author mentions that Lai is accused of "colluding with foreign forces" it frames this accusation as being superficial and a show trial, whipping up fear of "Beijing's influence" in a former colony, which is now, believe it or not, its own sovereign territory, who does it have no right to influence it? Does it mention that Lai met with multiple senior members of the Trump administration, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo? This collusion is not a conspiracy it was in plain sight.
- Last autumn, weeks before he was made foreign secretary, Cameron was paid to fly to Dubai and Abu Dhabi and drum up foreign investment in a controversial Chinese-funded port city in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Critics have branded the development an example of Chinese debt-trap diplomacy.
Again, the article repeats a well-known anti-China article without offering any nuance, clarity, or challenge to this particular view. It fails to disclose that the "debt trap" is a highly politicized and hysterical term that has no basis in empirical fact. Japan in fact is a larger holder of Sri Lanka's national debt than China, and the majority of its debt in turn is owned by private lenders. The country's sovereign debt crisis in 2022 was not in fact caused by China, but by the rapid appreciation of the US dollar and its interest rates which has a ripple effect throughout the global financial system.
- UK-China relations have deteriorated since 2018 after Beijing's crackdown on democratic freedoms in Hong Kong, concerns about human rights abuses against the Uyghur community in Xinjiang and national security worries about Chinese involvement in UK critical infrastructure.
The United States, starting with the Trump administration, deliberately pushed these narratives with the goal of undermining the British relationship with China. The only "concerns" about "Chinese involvement in UK critical infrastructure" were those that came from the US itself and subsequentially coerced the UK government to change course, there was no issue beforehand. In which case, we see again how, as representative of the article in general, these "talking points" are created, perpetuated and then relayed as assumed fact in order to create a "guided reality" to control and undermine Britain's relationship with China.
Thus, how mainstream journalism is completely compromised in the process.
The author is a well-seasoned writer and analyst with a large portfolio related to China topics, especially in the field of politics, international relations and more. He graduated with an Msc. in Chinese Studies from Oxford University in 2018.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
Read more articles by Tom Fowdy:
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