the West's Destructive China Cold War Agenda And Why It Must Stop

This article is an extract from the report "Behind the Smokescreen, An Analysis of the West's Destructive China Cold War Agenda and Why It Must Stop" published by the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research (TFF) on August 6, 2021.

Original report here, also downloadable as PDF :

This extract comprises the Introduction and Executive Summary sections of report. At the end of this article you will find the report table of content.

---

Introduction

The China Cold War Agenda as Dangerous Decline and Decay

What happened to the US perception of China?

By way of introduction, let’s flashback to 2011. Watch then US Vice President Joe Biden speak in a Chinese classroom – President Xi listening carefully – about how good it is for both China and the US that China grows, how they have nothing to fear from each other and how cooperation and educational exchange programs will yield mutually beneficial results. 

And less than ten years later, the US began to develop a new China Cold War Agenda, CCWA, fierce and fast. We must ask: Why? What happened to the US and Mr Biden?

Recent years have seen a marked shift in how Western government, research and media look at China. Especially the last couple of years, we have witnessed how, daily, a systematically negative attitude bordering on demonisation has been promoted. And according to reliable surveys, it has caused a significant intensification – ”historic highs” – in citizens’ unfavourable views of China in many countries. 

This could have been caused by some sudden policies and actions by China perceived as negative around the world. We fail, however, to see any such abrupt moves that could have caused such a significant and uniform attitudinal change. It is more realistic to hypothesise that this increasingly negative attitude is manufactured, orchestrated, and correlates with other initiatives and policies pursued by the US and its NATO allies in roughly the same period. 

During the past two years, there has also been a substantial increase in Western attention to China concerning various issues. One immediately thinks of the Coronavirus, human rights violations, genocide in Xinjiang, riots in Hong Kong, the Taiwan issue or security threats from Huawei and other Chinese businesses as some of the headline concerns in news, commentaries, documentaries and also research and policy debates.  

China has increasingly been a priority for political debates, foreign policy agendas and mainstream media in Western nations with narratives and accusations piling up with more extreme accusations by the day followed by condemnations, warnings or restrictions by trade, sanctions, media narratives, diplomacy, militarism, cultural exchange or education.  

Yet another dimension of this change is that China has been narrowed down, so to speak. Most media and people, including foreign policy officers, only need one hand to point out how they view China and what they think about China. Finding nuanced notes or different perspectives in these media productions, opinions and discussions is like searching for a needle in a haystack. 

It is possible to summarise these – negative-only – themes into a few types: dictatorial menace to the free world + human rights violations + security threats + exploitations through the Belt and Road Initiative + territorial aggressions (Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Tibet, Taiwan, South China sea) and forced labour.

In general, Western media do not report on, and politicians do not bother about, the obvious fact that something positive is (also) happening in China – be it the uplifting of some 850 million people out of poverty, the tremendously fast socio-economic development the last forty years, the Belt And Road Initiative (BRI) – humanity’s largest-ever civilian cooperation project involving today about 140 countries. 

While the Chinese are curious about and have learnt from the West for decades – and tens of millions of them travel to the West as tourists every year – the general curiosity about China in the West is rather close to zero. Chinese culture has not been assimilated into the West while lots of elements of Western lifestyle, music, theatre, ballet, art and the English language has been welcomed and assimilated into the Chinese society.

This second TFF report

This report is the second in a series from TFF. The first was ”The Xinjiang Genocide Determination As Agenda” (April 2021). It had a more narrow focus than we have here in that it investigated the quality of the Xinjiang genocide accusation’s documentation (as presented in an allegedly authoritative, independent report). It concluded that there was too much deficient scholarship, untrustworthy sources and most of it produced by many scholars who seem to have a less noble agenda, such as ” weaponising” human rights issues in service of an even more hawkish US foreign policy in general and vis-a-vis China in particular. 

In what follows, we provide an overview of how – and how fast – the downward spiralling of negative China themes came about, including insights and perspectives for broader and deeper analysis in a series of forthcoming TFF reports.

We offer an account of what we believe is an orchestrated policy and media campaign, which we call the China Cold War Agenda, CCWA. It has deplorable undertones of a Sinophobia and racism that builds on old historical elements and may remind us of the ”Yellow Peril”. It is virtually devoid of deeper factual knowledge about China – its history, people, culture, values, ways of thinking, socio-economic system and political outlook. We cannot but present a substantial criticism of Western mainstream media in general and their coverage of the US/NATO-China relations in particular. 

None of the authors come from the media world – but we have used media ourselves and been consumers of media for quite a few decades. TFF being a research-based public education foundation – and completely independent of state and corporate funding – has always interacted with media. We know how to critique politicising media and media that serve war instead of public information based on facts, diverse and factual sources and as objective as humanly possible.

As peace researcher Johan Galtung has stated somewhere – ”If truth is war’s first victim, complexity is the second.” The reduction of the world’s complexity into a typical Western dichotomy of bad guys versus good guys, them versus us, the West versus the Rest – with no wish to understand the issues or problems that stand between the parties in any conflict – has become unbearable from both a scholarly and a public service perspective. 

Furthermore, this reduction of substantial knowledge-based reporting and media analysis has opened the gates for a flood of more or less fake narratives, a click economy, smart and short statements without substance or explanation. 

It is on these deplorable features contemporary wars – cold or warm – are sold.

We are deeply concerned about the long-term consequences of the fact that what we witness these years is an extremisation of the China themes, whether fabricated or not. The media no longer seem to ask critical questions to those in power; they do far too little source and fact-checking, bring forward fake news and omit – omission can be worse – facts, perspectives, expertise and news sources that don’t fit the ongoing construction of the overarching China Cold War Agenda – CCWA. 

Furthermore, up to about 20 years ago, media – particularly mainstream media – would always take some slight interest in alternative perspectives, kinds of analyses and sources. Today, this is all gone when it comes to security and foreign policy issues. There is now a homogenised ”party line” in the news, editorials, features and debate sections of these media.

The woefully insufficient attendance to fact-checking, cross-cultural considerations and consequences regarding the intense push forward of the China themes threatens to substitute journalistic professionalism with sheer deception and propaganda. It also means ending the media’s role as a critical examiner of the powers that be. 

The CCWA promotion is a huge and dangerous example of this rapidly developing decay of the whole idea of free media. Any society ends when it becomes impossible for the citizens to know what is fact-based and what is not.

In contrast to TFF's first report, the main purpose of this second report is not solely to check sources and facts, to verify reality or determine what facts are true or false. Rather, it advances perspectives, considerations and consequences of the Western China policy themes which – if not stopped now – are likely to have very destructive consequences for single societies, for the Occident as well as the Orient (in civilisational terms), and for humanity’s problem-solving capacity today and far into the future. It will also be self-destructive to the US.

Indeed, we are asking: Can humanity solve the real problems we are facing within the time we seem to have available – climate change, poverty alleviation, sustainable development, nuclear abolition, de-militarisation – if the West continues with its CCWA and establishes a Cold War relationship with China the next 10, 20 or more years? 

Such a Cold War with armament back-up will, in our view, result in a devastating, self-destructive loss of human creativity, human and financial resources, which, instead, ought to be deployed to the solution of those overarching problems that face us all. It will be harmful to China, to the West itself and to humanity. And not only in terms of resources diverted but also because it is an essential – and existential – truth that none of these real problems can be solved without the constructive participation of both the United States and China, given their central role in the present and future global politics and development. 

Thus the subtitle: Why this must stop. It simply must – for the common good of humankind. A new multi-decade Cold War is an irresponsible project in these very times. Those promoting it should lose the right to lead because such a Cold War – the CCWA – is to mis-lead humanity. 

Balance and symmetry

Since China and the US/West are parties to a complex conflict formation, why do we study only the West’s negative Agenda? It would seem both fair and relevant to include an analysis of China’s use of policies, media and propaganda as well as the image it seeks to create of itself and the US. As conflict analysts, we would agree with such a point or objection. 

However, we would answer it by pointing out that there is an urgency and an a-symmetry at play here. While China is certainly playing its cards and asserting its role vis-a-vis the West – as could be witnessed in the recent Alaska meeting between the top foreign policy actors of both China and the US – we do not see any signs of a similar Agenda, of a systematic, orchestrated anti-US or anti-West campaign emanating in Beijing. 

What we do see is a Chinese foreign policy establishment which, while pursuing its own national and international goals, repeatedly emphasises the need for global cooperation, win-win solutions, international law, non-intervention in the domestic affairs of other countries and a global adherence to the principles embedded in the UN Charter.

By and large, when China raises its voice more loudly, it is in response to various aspects of the larger Western CCWA. It doesn’t seem to have an inner need for confrontation or manifesting its own power by antagonising or belittling others.

Where do we stand?

None of TFF’s reports shall be read as an endorsement of everything China does or as a critical-only, ”anti-American” position. We are not judging or analysing in this report whether or not human rights violations are taking place in China. This is not the purpose of our message in this report, and TFF is not a human rights organisation.

What we question is the scholarly quality of the Western accusations against China. We also question the increasing ”politicisation” or ”weaponisation” – of human rights arguments, i.e. using human rights analyses as a tool to promote an indisputably hawkish US foreign policy. 

Further, we question the right of the US/West to point fingers at China when it is so obviously a systematic – and in many ways a much bigger – violator of human rights. We also question that the US can be a judge or that the West’s human rights definition is the only one possible that can and should be applied with no understanding of China’s culture, history, society and ways of thinking. Most likely, the US/West would find it unacceptable if judged by Chinese standards only.

It is our firm belief that even if China would be the greatest violator of human rights as the West wants us to believe by committing all the terrible crimes it is accused of, the world needs to witness more intelligent conflict-handling attitudes and policies than confrontation, demonisation, withdrawal from cooperation and condescending policies rooted in on of the most pervasive racist ideas in Western culture: the age-old Yellow Peril idea.

They are not conducive to help victims of human rights anywhere, and a much more sophisticated policy and interaction will be essential for the future. 

In other words, the US and the West should put its own human rights in order instead of diverting attention to somebody else. As Eric Clapton’s song goes: ”Before you accuse me, take a look at yourself.”

We consider these motivations and aims fully in line with decent, qualified and independent scholarship and public education. We shall, therefore, not engage in debates or respond to criticism or attacks that build on questioning motives or slinging around mud – as is often done against those who work for conflict analysis and peaceful resolution instead of militarism and advocate nonviolence in line with the UN Charter norm that ”peace shall be established by peaceful means.” 

What about the Smokescreen in the title?

We use it in the sense of ”something designed to obscure, confuse, or mislead.” We have chosen it because our studies have convinced us that those who mastermind the Western human rights concern and the genocide determination by a series of Western countries primarily function as a smokescreen for building the CCWA and that this Agenda also serves as a smokescreen for the fact that the US/West is in decline – a diversion of attention to others from one’s own crisis while also serving militarist-interventionist interests. 

Finally, this report also shows how the CCWA can be seen as a smokescreen designed to obscure, confuse, or mislead the world about the human rights violations and other violence committed for decades by the West/US/NATO itself. 

---

Executive Summary

(1) This report is the second in a TFF series about China and the West’s policies vis-a-vis China. TFF’s first China report – “The Xinjiang Genocide Determination As Agenda” was published in April 2021. In this report, we outline the main think tanks, civil society organisations – not the least in the politicised human rights community – that are the main producers of narratives. It is a widespread network, and while we have connected quite a few dots, there may well be much more to dig up in future articles or reports. The reports can be read independently of each other and will, eventually, become a book.

(2) While this second report also deals with, among others, the agenda-making around the Xinjiang genocide accusations, it is much broader than the first report. By utilising some basic concepts, theories, facts and a diversity of reliable sources, this report reveals a pattern: the systematic US development of a China Cold War Agenda, CCWA, with many elements and dimensions. 

(3) We argue that, as a response to the ongoing changes in the international (dis)order, the CCWA will have devastating consequences for the world in general and the US itself in particular. And that, therefore, it must be highlighted and stopped before it becomes more harmful.

(4) This CCWA is rooted much less in what China is and does than in psycho-political dynamics inside the declining US and West itself. It is not fully understandable with rational theories of, say, political science and international relations; it takes culture, psychological theories and more to interpret this in the realm of the irrational. That realm is dangerous – as all declining empires are in the handling of their weakness and demise. Given the comparatively extreme militarism of the US, the situation is extremely worrying and contravenes any sensible definition of stability, security and peace – to use NATO’s mantra.

(5) The CCWA is closely related to what we call the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex, MIMAC. Its creators are academics doing sub-standard academic work to satisfy the results wanted by their funders; it’s commissioned works. The funding invariably comes from governments, ministries and military corporations with an immediate interest in more armament, interventionism and other confrontational policies rather than in conflict-resolution, negotiations, cooperation and genuine security and peace.

(6) Western mainstream media no longer serve their classical roles as carriers of facts from diverse perspectives to provide fact-based, source-checked public education, to do so freely and critically and thereby serve as a sort of Fourth Estate. Instead, they are very clearly part of a huge orchestrated campaign designed to promote worldviews and perspectives that are negative-only about China and justifies the imperial militarist interests of the MIMAC – thus the second “M” in that acronym. It also serves to maintain the US as global leader in the future.

(7) In consequence, the report outlines the anti-China themes and the accusation industry which make up the CCWA. Further, it exemplifies some more pro- or positive China themes that you are not likely to ever hear or see in the mainstream media. Fake and omission – the latter often the more important – are part and parcel of that second ”M.”

(8) We outline the classical mainstream Media Manipulation Methods, MMM, to help people understand better the mechanisms by which they are objects of systematic manipulation in this field (not the only one, however). We know that it is easier to deceive people than to convince deceived people that they’ve been taken for a ride.

(9) The tragedy is that it is the West itself – nobody else – who undermines the noble principles of free media, fair hearing and the roles of the independent power-critical press, which are so fundamental to an enlightened democracy.

(10) In these and other ways, this report points out that the CCWA is essentially self-destructive of the West’s own values and that that reaction mechanism is more harmful to the West than China – if at all – can be perceived to be.

(11) The analysis also sheds light on the terrorism issues that flow from the Xinjiang accusation industry and compare China’s way of handling terrorism with that of the United States. The US costs to other people are much higher than China’s, and it seems that the US’ Global War on Terror, GWOT, has increased the world’s terror problems a multitude of times whereas China states that it has seen no terrorist attacks in Xinjiang over the last 3-4 years.

(12) This and other parts of the analysis brought forward give rise to the chapter, Don’t Throw Stones When You Live in A Glass House – where, by several essentially important criteria, we show how the United States itself suffers from the problems it accuses China of – just to a much larger extent. Each criterion is divided into the official “We do…”, “They do…” and contrasted by a fact-based reality description. 

(13) We find it important to back up our arguments with concrete examples – some of which will require the reader’s concentration. These issues are complicated. We hope, however, to have entered some summaries here and there so you’ll get the gist of the argument even though you may have gotten lost in the details. A real plot has many threads, doesn’t it?

(14) We’d like to point out that none of the authors is or has ever been ”anti-American” or ”anti-Western” – the invective used as a cheap accusation, framing, cancelling and meant to derail any serious criticism of the United States foreign policy. To be “anti” a people, a group of citizens, a nation or a civilisation would equal some kind of racism. Rather, we present this analysis with a fair amount of sorrow, old enough as we are to have experienced the dynamics, innovativeness and cultural creativity that the United States also stood for once upon a time – even seeking under Presidents such as John F. Kennedy (his peace speech a few months before he was murdered in 1963) and Jimmy Carter’s moral-based vision to be a leader in the struggle for a more peaceful world – something Nixon and Kissinger did brilliantly with China’s Prime Minister Chou Enlai in their own way back in 1970-72.

(15) Finally, we argue that allies and friends of the US must now step up and lend it a helping hand.

---

For the whole report, please download as PDF here Behind the Smokescreen, An Analysis of the West's Destructive Cold War Agenda and Why It Must Stop or read online in below link.

---

Report Table of Content

Introduction

The China Cold War Agenda as Dangerous Decline and Decay 3

Executive Summary 15

Chapter 1

China and the West – Competition Not Cooperation 19

Chapter 2

The Xinjiang Genocide Accusations As Agenda – and its sources 26

2.1 The compact Western mainstream media silence 27

2.2 The six main sources behind the Xinjiang genocide documentation 29

2.3 Problematic issues, materials and producers 30

2.3.1 The number issue

How many Uyghurs are in how many detention camps and facilities? 31

2.3.2 Funding and policy affiliations

Where does the funding come from to produce the Xinjiang Genocide accusations? What political interests are behind? 36

2.3.3 Databases and witness statements

The Victim Databases and the Credibility of witnesses 39

2.3.4 Politicisation, weaponisation and Adrian Zenz

On human rights, there is only one interpretation possible 42

2.3.5 ASPI The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) 46

Chapter 3

Some facts about the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR): History and terrorism 52

3.1 Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in China 52

3.2 Xinjiang in recent history 53

3.3 Counterproductive US meddling in Chinese affairs 56

Chapter 4

Smokescreening: Media Manipulation Methods (MMM) Promoted by Governments and Media 59

4.1 Nine Media Manipulation Methods 59

4.2 The decline in Western media and research standards 63

Chapter 5

The China Themes – and Non-Themes – in Western Governments and Media 66

Chapter 6

Concrete Smokescreening and Media Manipulation Methods (MMM) Used Against China 71

6.1 Some random examples 72

6.2 Fake, omission, self censorship and the ’party line’: Cancel dissenters! 76

6.3 Really? The World Bank gave loans to the ”concentration camps”? 8

Chapter 7

Case Studies: The Forced Labour Accusation 82

7.1 ASPI and Adrian Zenz again 82

7.2 The best US think tank connects the dots 85

7.3 The Better Cotton Initiative – and the stories of the great architect of future China and BBC’s Nazi Germany-China parallel 89

Chapter 8

The China Accusation Industry – What’s Next? 96

8.1 Slow genocide non-Zenz 96

8.2 Amnesty International’s participation in the CCWA 97

8.3 Beijing’s coming invasion of Taiwan/ROC 102

8.4 The next items of the China Accusation Industry with its racist overtones 106

Chapter 9

Don’t Throw Stones When You Live In A Glass House 109

9.1 Indicators of projection accusation: We, Them & Reality 112

9.2 Atrocity propaganda – it’s about the US itself and will create a boomerang 116

Chapter 10

The China Themes – Terrorism Costs and Results 118

10.1 The costs of the US and China fighting against terrorism 118

10.2 Hidden agendas behind fighting terrorism 121

10.3 Two vitally different ways of combatting terrorism 122

Chapter 11

US Laws For the Anti-China CCWA and Confrontation – Not For Cooperation With China 124

11.1 Not empty words 124

11.2 Human rights as a main tool for a world-dominating foreign policy that is impossible and self-destructive 127

11.3 The propaganda role of the media in the CCWA 128

11.4 Inevitable world order changes and the forthcoming TFF report 129

---