MCLC: cultural cold war

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: cultural cold war
***********************************************************

Source: Sinosphere blog, NYT (7/17/14):
http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/07/17/undermining-china-one-knocko
ut-at-a-time/

Undermining China, One Knockout at a Time
By AMY QIN

Tensions between the United States and China over cybersecurity have risen
as the two countries continue to trade barbs over hacking. But according
to an essay <http://guancha.gmw.cn/2014-07/14/content_11961243.htm> on the
website of a state newspaper that was widely republished this week, there
is, in fact, a longer-running cyberwar underway between the United States
and China. And the weapons employed, the essay argues, are far more
sophisticated than hacking.

“America has long used the Internet to poison Chinese civilization and
manipulate public opinion to influence politics,” reads the essay posted
on the website of Guangming Daily, a Communist Party-backed paper aimed at
intellectuals. “Hackers are only the lowest level of this cyberwar.”
Pointing to “innumerable articles and writings” circulating online, the
essay argues that the “highest level” of this cyberwar has been the
insidious advance of American culture, which, it says, has had the effect
of “eroding the moral foundation and self-confidence of the Chinese
people.”

Titled “Nine Knockout Blows in America’s Cold War Against China,” the
essay takes on topics including Superman and the American education
system. At one point, it even compares the “indiscriminate smearing” of
China in many “fabricated or exaggerated” American news reports to
Hitler’s treatment of the Jews.

The man behind the essay is Zhou Xiaoping, an independent commentator and,
in his words, “everyday Internet user.” Last year, Mr. Zhou wrote another
widely distributed essay
<http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/15/battling-cancer-in-taiwan-a
-popular-microblogger-comes-under-attack-in-beijing/>, in which he lashed
out against Kai-Fu Lee, the former head of Google China, accusing Mr. Lee
of faking a cancer diagnosis and favoring the sexual harassment of women.
Mr. Zhou was also reportedly involved
<http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/16/in-chinas-campaign-against-
bloggers-a-burst-of-rumor-mongering/> in a website called Fenbei.com, but
he says he left before that website became involved in a pornography
scandal.

“As an Internet user living on my country’s online territory, how could I
not sense, how could I not know, when another country’s culture has
invaded my country’s online territory?” Mr. Zhou wrote, when reached by
email on Wednesday to comment on his essay.

“This is like a real-life war,” he said. “I doubt that when Americans were
fighting the Civil War, ordinary citizens on both sides didn’t know or
couldn’t sense what kind of weapons or tactics were being used by the
other side.”

While blustering essays stoking Chinese nationalism are nothing new, Mr.
Zhou’s piece seems to have enjoyed unusually broad circulation. Since it
appeared on Monday on Guangming Daily’s website, it has been republished
on a number of news sites, including those of the state news agency Xinhua
and 81.cn, the official news portal for the Chinese military. Mr. Zhou
said that though he had originally written the piece for an online forum a
while ago, it was picked up by Guangming Daily only after he posted it on
his microblog.

Here are some highlights from “Nine Knockout Blows in America’s Cold War
Against China”:

* Cultural Cold War Knockout Blow #1: Exterminate idols. Destroy Chinese
moral models and replace them with American idols. Movies such as
“Spider-Man” and “Superman” never forget to include plot elements such as
a little girl being saved from a truck or helping an elderly woman cross
the street. The intention of these is to emulate the exemplary qualities
of Lei Feng [the Chinese soldier who won fame, after his untimely death,
for his selfless good deeds] and Lai Ning [another young hero, who died
trying to put out a forest fire] so that everyone’s hearts will turn to
face the United States.

* Cultural Cold War Knockout Blow #2: Destroy convictions. Target the
long-held beliefs of Chinese civilization, eliminate ancestor worship and
replace it with the worship of Westerners and Jesus Christ. They
[foreigners advocating such ideas] know the audience they’re targeting.
Europeans who waste the most food admonish the Chinese people to be more
frugal. The Americans, whose own elementary education system is in
shambles, urge China to attach more importance to children’s education.
The English, who before the 19th century did not even know what bathing
meant, are advising Chinese to value hygiene. Japan, which has more
homebody males than anyone, is instructing Chinese people to be more
healthy. Even an illiterate country like India has been telling the
Chinese to read more.

* Cultural Cold War Knockout Blow #3: Oppose humanity. Promote racism,
destroy the self-confidence of this generation and the next generation of
Chinese, and maintain their feeling of inferiority. This kind of
indiscriminate smearing against an entire race has only been done by
Hitler against the Jews. Today Americans are doing the same thing via the
Internet.

* Cultural Cold War Knockout Blow #4: Oppose knowledge. Disseminate
pseudoscience, promote environmental terrorism, disrupt China’s
industrialization and advances in science and technology. Viral rumors in
recent years such as rumors about a “high-speed train attendant suffers
miscarriage due to radiation” and the commotion over “global warming and
the melting of the Arctic Circle” … have been circulated all over Weibo,
Weixin and social media forums, cultivating an anti-knowledge sentiment
among a wide group of people.

* Cultural Cold War Knockout Blow #5: Declare China’s decline. Fabricated
or exaggerated essays undermine the self-confidence of the Chinese youth
and cause them to feel conflicted about China’s future, the Chinese
government and the Chinese system. (In reality, very few people know that
the United States itself is no olive-shaped society. According to data
released by the White House we know that 40 percent of Americans hold 0.2
percent of the nation’s assets, whereas 2 percent of the population holds
40 percent of the nation’s assets!)

* Cultural Cold War Knockout Blow #6: Forget history. Comprehensively
vilify Chinese history. Comprehensively embellish American history. Almost
no young Chinese person knows about how during the Civil War, [President
Abraham] Lincoln gave license to his soldiers to lawfully rape women in
occupied towns. [In fact, the United States government's 1863 Lieber Code
of military conduct explicitly prohibited rape.]

* Cultural Cold War Knockout Blow #7: Completely destroy credibility.When
Beijing experienced torrential rains and flooding [in July 2012], even
though the Chinese police worked heroically to save lives, there was one
person who did not want to leave his newly bought car who drowned. And the
Big V’s [verified Internet users with large followings] used photos of
Japan’s hydroelectric power plants to supposedly show Japan’s sewer system
and argue that the reason why Beijing’s sewer system was not as good as
Japan’s was because of problems with China’s political system.

* Cultural Cold War Knockout Blow #8: Attack happiness. Flood every topic
and domain that Chinese people care about with defamatory rumors. The
quality of life of the Chinese people continues to improve every day, so
that now ordinary citizens are turning their attention from food and
shelter to quality of life issues, such as food safety, health care,
health, environmental problems, marriage and other things in [American
psychologist Abraham] Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. But there are people
whose jobs it is to blacken these issues. … Many of the more classic
rumors, such as “injected watermelons” and “fake eggs” are still
everywhere on the Internet.

* Cultural Cold War Knockout Blow #9: Disseminate political opium. In
addition to utopian descriptions of foreign political systems, they also
celebrate foreign leaders. Articles such as “[the former United States
ambassador to China, Gary] Locke Sitting in Economy Class a Victory for
the System,” “What Does George W. Bush Holding His Own Umbrella
Symbolize?” and “Why Doesn’t America Have Corruption” … are available
everywhere online. In these essays, Western society and Western officials
are portrayed as being uncorrupt, in touch with the people, pure and holy,
mindful of ordinary citizens, modest in the pursuit of public affairs.