Opinion | The CIA revelations to destabilize China are what I always knew

By Tom Fowdy

Last week extraordinary revelations were published in Reuters that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) under the Trump administration conducted a concerted campaign to try and "destabilize" the country and provoke a revolt against Xi Jinping, while also initiating a deliberate campaign of negative news against Beijing in conjunction with the mainstream media. That should an acknowledgment could be published in the Western media so soon (as opposed to decades) after it happened comes as a huge surprise, although it is believed the motivations behind such a leak is a partisan struggle to try and discredit Trump in the electoral arena.

However, for me this story comes as no surprise, it is what I always knew and publicly stated: The United States, particularly the CIA, deliberately shapes and cultivates narratives in the bid to undermine enemy states, influences media cycles, and of course pushes negative publicity against the target countries. I have been saying this effectively for years, but few people believed me, and moreover should I add, it has not truly stopped with Trump. The US has been waging a relentless propaganda war against China across a wide range of issues, and most notably this manifested itself in relentless hammering of the Xinjiang issue during the years of that administration. Their goal? To turn public opinion against Beijing, close down political space for more engagement with China, and manufacture consent for a new Cold War.

The year 2018 was a turning point. The Trump administration had, on entering office, made North Korea its immediate foreign policy goal, which it described as "maximum pressure." It was following Trump's meeting with Kim Jong-un in Singapore of that year that the administration decided it would no longer prioritize the DPRK, and would instead place China as its new priority. That same summer of course, two key personnel changes had come into place, Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State and John Bolton as National Security Advisor. The addition of these NeoConservative hardliners saw US foreign policy change dramatically, hence in that same year the US also withdrew from the Iran deal and also, as Bolton's pet project, attempted regime change in Venezuela.

However, what I had noticed at that time, while still a student is that around September of that year, as Trump initiated the trade war, is that the Xinjiang "Uyghur concentration camp" narrative first appeared in the mainstream media. With hindsight I now know that this coincided with the foreign policy shift, uncoincidentally, and followed the US's defeat of ISIS in Northern Syria and thus the formal "end" to the war on terror policies. The Xinjiang narrative would start up slowly, yet increasingly intensify throughout the year of 2019. This was being coordinated by the US government, yet being reported as fact by the mainstream media, outlets such as the BBC being key collaborators. The advance of another anti-China hardliner, Matthew Pottinger, into the administration by 2019 made it worse.

Thus the fact there was a covert campaign by the CIA to coordinate this comes as no surprise whatsoever, and by 2019-2020 I now realise how this was deliberately active on social media in respect to Xinjiang. For example, anti-China topics were made to trend in targeted countries such as Indonesia (as per the Reuters report), where "China is terrorist" was sent viral over Xinjiang. Similarly, I remember how other coordinated Xinjiang, propaganda and fake news was viral on Twitter from that period, which became even more extreme following the COVID-19 pandemic whereby the administration decided to amplify its Anti-China rhetoric to the maximum, aiming to scapegoat Beijing for the virus. It was at this point that they then began pushing the message what was happening in Xinjiang constituted "genocide" (despite legal advice to the contrary).

What the Trump administration effectively did was wage a full-blown public opinion war on China. Now with the Biden Presidency, we shouldn't say that effort has ceased, but their priorities certainly have shifted if you notice. The full-blown Xinjiang megaphone messaging which was the creation of the Mike Pompeo state department has disappeared, unless it is needed for certain opportune moments of policies. Other things, such as the Ukraine and Gaza wars, have also been a distraction. Yet key for me is the point I have always been sharing, the US government always has the ability to influence global messaging to its own agenda because it has a monopoly on resources, connections and effectively shapes what the mainstream media says to its own liking, in what is known as "manufacturing consent". Hence, Adrian Zenz was an artificially promoted expert who gained a lot of prominence, but now hardly any. It surprises me that Reuters would ultimately admit this is the case, but it is. Now you understand why the mainstream media is not an impartial actor when it comes to geopolitics, and moreover why their narratives must be held with suspicion and can't be distrusted, but more to the point, we should stop dismissing the involvement of the CIA as a "conspiracy theory"- they do what Russia and China are accused of all the time, but with a far greater rate of efficiency.

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.

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