After India, China’s relationship with another country has deteriorated as Xi Jinping’s Chinese Communist Party continues its expansionist wishes. China’s relationship with Australia is currently at an all-time low.
The relationship between the two countries took a turn for the worse when a Chinese government spokesman tweeted a doctored image of an Australian soldier holding a knife to the throat of an Afghan boy. The tweet was accompanied by a caption saying Australia should be ashamed of the alleged actions of its soldiers.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison responded within hours to the tweet and demanded an immediate apology from the Chinese government for the tweet he described as “disgusting.” Even France criticized the Chinese government’s tweet, claiming it was motivated by prejudice.
But the Chinese government did not back down and criticized Australia more for allegedly treating its “good will with evil”. The Chinese media have described this series of back and forth actions as the lowest point in the relationship between the two countries.
Australian lawmakers have long distrusted China’s aggressive foreign policy and rapid military modernization. These fears came to a head in 2017 when Australia banned foreign political donations after receiving disturbing reports about Chinese attempts to influence and disrupt the political process in Australia.
Following this incident, Australia also became the first country to ban Chinese tech giant Huawei from installing its 5G network in the country after it was discovered that the tech giant installed backdoors in the network that would allow the company and the Chinese government. access staff. and private user data.
This Huawei ban was followed by the suspension of at least ten suspicious Chinese investment deals in various sectors of Australia. Recently, the Australian government requested an independent investigation into the origins of the Covid-19 virus that first appeared in Wuhan.
China has responded to Australia’s actions by trying to use its economic power to force Australia to back down. China has curbed Australian beef imports and imposed high tariffs on Australians only. Even Australian wine was badly hit by Chinese tariffs and the Chinese government is also expected to block further imports of sugar, lobster, coal and copper.
In this ongoing dispute between Australia and China, the Chinese government has desperately tried to turn the narrative in its favor. According to a Sydney Morning Herald report, China covertly controls several sources of popular Chinese-language media in Australia. The report also added that the federal government has received evidence from Australia’s top intelligence agency that control over Chinese media is part of China’s foreign interference and influence operations aimed at promoting China’s strategic interests. .
Briefings provided to the Australian federal government also highlighted that several WeChat news sites in Australia were controlled, censored, and even directly operated by the CCP. After Chinese spokesman Zhao Lijian tweeted the doctored image, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison even took to WeChat to criticize the tweet, calling it a false image and praising the Chinese community in Australia, but according to a Reuters report, the message of the Australian Prime Minister on WeChat was blocked by China.
Chinese attempts to put the blame and change the narratives to fit their own political agenda are nothing new. Beijing has also been trying for months to change the narrative related to the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Chinese government’s mismanagement and deliberate attempts to hide critical information about it that led to the virus spreading around the world.
The United States on December 2 reportedly declared that the special session of the United Nations General Assembly organized on the COVID-19 outbreak on December 3 was just a stage for China to sell its propaganda and blame itself. to herself. The United States added that the special session had been “pre-designed” to serve China’s purposes. The fact that questions during this session at the UN will be restricted lends credence to US accusations that the session is simply intended to spread Chinese propaganda.
Continuing the dispute between Australia and China regarding the manipulated image of the Australian soldier, the China Global Times spokesperson responded to criticism from Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison by stating that he acted “radically”. The Global Times report went so far as to insult the Australian Prime Minister by stating that he had an “unhealthy mentality”.
One of the most widely used rhetorical tools in China is deflecting or blaming any criticism by accusing its opponents of having a “Cold War mentality.” When the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei came under fire, Chinese officials proclaimed him a victim of “high-tech McCarthyism” (McCarthyism is another term for Cold War mentality).
The US exercise of freedom of navigation in the South China Sea has been described by Liu Xiaoming, the Chinese ambassador to the UK as “gunboat diplomacy motivated by a Cold War mentality.” China’s dismal human rights record is contested by the CCP, claiming that China has once again become a victim of such biased thinking.
In a recent book titled ‘Hidden Hand: How the Chinese Communist Party is reshaping the world’, written by Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohiberg, he laid out the modus operandi and nuanced tactics used by the CCP for influence operations in Australia. The authors argue that China’s use of the ‘Cold War mentality’ as a form of defense is truly ironic, as the CCP’s own leadership is heavily influenced by a Cold War mentality.
Such thinking reached new heights under the Xi Jinping regime. Under his leadership, the CCP has categorically rejected the concepts of constitutional democracy and universal human rights. Not only that, but the CCP has also started trying to root out ideas that it believes would threaten its power.
The authors empirically argue that China currently follows a philosophy that is often attributed to Joseph Stalin: We would not let our enemies have weapons, why should we let them have ideas? ”. Anne-Marie Brady in her work ‘Dictatorship of Marketing: Propaganda Work and Thought in Contemporary China’ showed that the CCP began to massively expand its ideological and propaganda work after the massive student protests in Tiananmen Square that were brutally suppressed with violence, and the fall of the Berlin Wall that triggered the decline of the Soviet bloc. These two major clashes forced the CCP to focus on the concept of “ideological security” as an integral and indispensable part of the regime’s security.
The United Front Work Department (UFWD) has been rapidly expanding its influence in Australia through covert operations in Australian academia, the media and civil society. Australian organizations such as the “Australian Council for the Promotion of the Peaceful Reunification of China” have faced backlash in the country for conducting covert operations for China.
It has also come to light that recently the UFWD has also started to exploit and use the influences of social media, freelancers, particularly lawyers, managers of foreign-funded companies, Chinese abroad, and young Chinese studying abroad. foreigner, plus a long list of community groups. It has also successfully marginalized sensitive issues such as Taiwan among certain Australian communities.
In recent years, China has also made serious attempts to break into the global media landscape. The CCP wishes to use the media as another of its strategies to steer international discourse away from unflattering or critical narratives of the CCP and China. In 2016, Xi Jinping gave a speech in which he emphasized the need for a ‘flagship medium with strong international influence’. Some estimates claim that China has spent more than $ 10 billion a year in an attempt to create a flagship medium, as envisioned by China.
While overt Chinese propaganda and heavy-handed pieces can often be ignored by the layman, there are also many subtle elements to the CCP’s strategy to control global discourse. The Chinese media have a great advantage, they have the financial backing of the Chinese state or through state representatives; on the other hand, western media faces severe financial constraints. Throughout the year, Chinese media with the help of Western Media specialists have expanded enormously, but have also been able to get smarter in terms of their content targeting foreign audiences.
China’s ongoing dispute with Australia over alleged abuses shows China’s double standards when it comes to protecting human rights. China routinely rejects the concept of human rights and even subjects its own people, such as ethnic minorities in Xinjiang, to grave injustices such as arbitrary detentions and mass forced sterilizations.
Despite China’s abysmal human rights record, China continues to criticize other nations and try to change the narrative in its favor. One of the three main pillars that ensure the CCP’s tight grip on China is propaganda. This tool is not only used against his own people, but is also often exported through various means to the outside world, as the narrative benefits the Chinese government.
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