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Journal by quietus
If you ask a mainland Chinese his opinion about the origins of COVID-19 these days, the majority will answer that the virus originated in a US military lab, and was spread into China by US Marines invited for the 2019 World Military Games in Wuhan. The blame doesn't stop there though: even after that evil deed, the United States keeps actively spreading COVID throughout the world. Here's an informative article from the People's Daily, the most moderate among Chinese official media.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
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You're dead, Jim.
-- McCoy, "Amok Time", stardate 3372.7
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 27 2021, @03:49PM (5 children)
See here [soylentnews.org]. Interesting that the idea has gone viral in China.
(Score: 3, Funny) by khallow on Monday December 27 2021, @07:41PM (4 children)
The idea probably escaped a Chinese lab.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 28 2021, @01:40AM (3 children)
or a Chinese Pekingese.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 28 2021, @02:33AM (2 children)
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday December 28 2021, @03:13PM (1 child)
Maybe it's time for a reminder: Gates certainly didn't have a controlling interest in the Wuhan lab, but he did have an interest, just as the US government did. So, the fantastical theory that the US was responsible may be out in left field, but it's not entirely out of the ball park.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday December 28 2021, @03:37PM
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 27 2021, @04:05PM (1 child)
It's intended to be a way of impressing the chinese public with how powerful, advanced and insidious the USA is.
PsyOps at its best.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 27 2021, @06:14PM
It was released by Marines in Tiananmen Square.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 27 2021, @05:55PM (1 child)
https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=53027¬e=&title=Retributive+justice+-+another+tool+of+authoritarian+governments [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by quietus on Monday December 27 2021, @06:28PM
(Score: 4, Informative) by RamiK on Monday December 27 2021, @08:53PM (18 children)
In case you're not being sarcastic:
1. The Global Times is owned by the People's Daily [wikipedia.org].
2. The People's Daily is owned by CCP and, in a rare disagreement between the CCP and the administration, is officially considered as a fake-news spreading right-wing troll by the Chinese government: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Times#In_China [wikipedia.org]
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(Score: 5, Informative) by quietus on Tuesday December 28 2021, @09:42AM (17 children)
The People's Daily is the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party [wikipedia.org]. By now, since Xi Jingping's ascendancy, it is also the most read newspaper in China. It has previously reported (extensively) on the Wuhan Military Games conspiracy theory, and repeats it again in the linked article, quote: "the role of the U.S. military is implicated in the origin and spread of COVID-19".
The Global Times is a tabloid newspaper representing the right-wing view in the CCP. Since Xi Jingping's ascendancy, it is the place to go to if you want to know what's going to be published in the the People's Daily, in a moderated form, and what direction Chinese politics is going to take.
The Global Times is definitely not known as a fake news newspaper: as testified by the direct link to it on the front page of the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. If you'd followed Chinese politics just a little in the last few years, you would have known that.
If you have mod points, mod parent down -- (s)he's spreading misinformation.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 28 2021, @03:43PM (10 children)
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday December 28 2021, @04:38PM (9 children)
Here's an old piece covering the Global Times from 2011: https://foreignpolicy.com/2011/10/31/chinas-fox-news/ [foreignpolicy.com]
And here's a few covering Hu Xijin's (chief editor and columnist) recent retirement:
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/prolific-columnist-retires-editor-chinas-global-times-2021-12-16/ [reuters.com]
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/16/editor-of-chinese-state-tabloid-global-times-retires [theguardian.com]
Together, you can pretty much piece together what niche the Global Times fills for the CCP and why anything they say is never taken too seriously even by their own readers. Well, short of a few nutjobs...
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 28 2021, @06:40PM (8 children)
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday December 28 2021, @10:57PM (7 children)
I guess third time's the charm?
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Times#In_China [wikipedia.org] )
That's the position of their administration. The rest is about their reputation among their peer and population domestically and abroad.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 28 2021, @11:47PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 28 2021, @11:52PM (5 children)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 29 2021, @12:10AM
So Global Times stops running polls that "cause serious political consequences" and CAC doesn't destroy them.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Wednesday December 29 2021, @12:26AM (3 children)
Regardless of the specific issue, at the very least it shows they're autonomous enough to deviate from the party and/or administration line. From there, you just need to check and see if the story in question is repeated across different Chinese news media companies. If it does, it's at least semi-official. But if not, it's just Global Times being their usual crazy selves.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 29 2021, @12:35AM (2 children)
Did they so deviate? My take is that the Party was fine with the polls beforehand, until the perceived blowback (or perhaps blame transfer - I don't really buy that the polls had that much effect) got the administration stirred up.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Wednesday December 29 2021, @02:42AM (1 child)
No clue. I'm not sure about what happened. I remember I read about some factional disputes during that period (when Trump was campaigning?) between Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang and I can [wsj.com] find some news about it looking back... But I'm not sure if it's related. Either way, they're not a monolithic party and I think it's pretty clear hard leaning nationalist papers like Global Times won't always fall in line with the party's script so we shouldn't assume their stories represent anything from the administration unless it's collaborated in other Chinese media and there's certainly no evidence they represent the mainstream Chinese public.
I mean, just look at iPhone sales in China this year. That's not the response one expects from a xenophobic mob... Right?
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(Score: 2) by RamiK on Wednesday December 29 2021, @02:44AM
Non-paywalled source for that story btw: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/2016/07/22/open-discord-between-xi-and-li/ [osu.edu]
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(Score: 4, Informative) by RamiK on Tuesday December 28 2021, @04:14PM (5 children)
If the G.O.P. were to release a statement under a Republican administration, would that make that statement an official statement by the administration and the office of the president?
The CCP is a political party. Sure, they're practically the only party in China so there's quite a bit of weight to them. But that doesn't change the fact their publications aren't official government statements. In fact, being the only political party means they need to house multiple contradictory factions and opinions and their various physical and online newspapers reflect that diversity.
I've already linked [wikipedia.org] a statement by the Chinese government saying to the contrary. You're probably thinking about the People's Daily which has the widest circulation as a physical paper and is taken more seriously. However, even the People's Daily doesn't represent the official position of the government and sometimes won't even represent the leading faction's voice in the CCP.
Basically, the physical "People's Daily" coverage represents the popular (rather than moderate) opinions within the party. The online "People's Daily" gets a bit more inflammatory as it appeals to a younger public. And the "Global Times" is the nationalistic conspiracy theory Fox-News nutjobs pieces that the "People's Daily" is too embarrassed to release under their own publication but still want to contain to avoid losing the right-wing factions.
Basically, they're the twitter account of the CCP's Tea Party.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 28 2021, @06:50PM
That's a good reason right there. When you also combine it with the fact that the Party selects every government official over the local level and Chinese that the head of state, Xi Jinping, is simultaneously the head of the Communist Party (a state of affairs ongoing for almost three decades), that makes the Communist Party very official as well as any media outlet they control.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 28 2021, @08:24PM (3 children)
You seem to lack even cursory familiarity with the Chinese political system. The party is over the state. The party is the state. "Government" positions are interleaved with party positions such that to advance or remain in politics requires obedience to bosses above you.
And this control extends all the way down to the "work unit" on the farms and in companies.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RamiK on Wednesday December 29 2021, @12:04AM (2 children)
Being the only party means the CCP encompasses far-left communists that want to abolish free enterprise, mid-left socialists that want free education and workers housing, mid-right capitalists that want to privatize everything, right-wing nationalists that blame the US / South Korea whenever there's a chance etc... And all that doesn't even begin to represent regional and different industries interests.
So, besides all those factions having their own news publication under the CCP umbrella and/or private papers, the administration itself is a majority coalition and often finds itself contending with minority voices in the CCP.
Essentially, if the conspiracy theories blaming the US were the official position of the administration and the party, they wouldn't be relegated to just Global Times. They'd be made official government statements and repeated, ad nauseam, by officials in public addresses and all across different papers and will be quoted and reprinted word-for-word.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 29 2021, @12:17AM (1 child)
My take is that the CCP encompasses what it chooses to encompass. The Uyghur and a number of non-approved religions aren't so encompassed, for a glaring example. By now, far left communists are in a petting zoo as well. And the biggest faction is the informal corruption faction which crosses ideology.
(Score: 2, Troll) by RamiK on Wednesday December 29 2021, @12:33AM
Aha but the devil is in the details: SAMR has been setting record fines and jailing party-associated corporate chairmen in tech and pharmaceuticals last couple of years now which divided the party on the very issue of the local vaccination performance and safety records. That is, there's members in the party that are desperate to point fingers at US on all COVID-19 issues, knowing that their own heads are next on the chopping block should the public discourse takes a wrong turn.
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(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 27 2021, @10:33PM (2 children)
If this becomes the official dogma of the CCP, expect CBS/Viacom, ABC/Disney and NBC/Universal to offer profuse apologies and distribution of this message on their American news outlets.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Monday December 27 2021, @10:47PM (1 child)
They'll all have to get in line behind Intel, who is fellating Chinese authorities right now.
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=21/12/26/162213 [soylentnews.org]
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday December 29 2021, @07:33PM
Watching a wrestler apologize to China in Mandarin for calling Taiwan a country was definitely an unexpected twist though! [theguardian.com]
(Score: 2) by turgid on Wednesday December 29 2021, @01:17PM
It was the Martians. Everyone knows that by now.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].