China’s miraculous economic growth coupled with diplomatic stature triggered a debate in international academia about china’s peaceful rise. The common question that the majority of the academics tried to answer was that will China rise peacefully? Brushing all their arguments aside, only one populist idea of John J. Mearsheimer dominated the academic debate “The rise of China will not be peaceful at all.” Such a pessimistic approach toward China is perhaps understandable that the U.S. needs to contain China, otherwise China will replace the U.S. That has been acknowledged by the Fact Sheet: Indo-Pacific Strategy of the U.S. “ The United States has modernized its longstanding alliances, strengthened emerging partnerships, and forged innovative links among them to meet urgent challenges, from the competition with China to climate change to the pandemic”.
War in Ukraine has deviated the U.S. attention from Asia-Pacific for the time being but the U.S. will continue pouring in resources to augment AUKUS (a trilateral security agreement between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States) and Quad (Quadrilateral security dialogue comprising of four countries: U.S, Australia, Japan and India) for impeding to counter China’s growing influence regionally and globally.
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Understanding the matter better
West-centric academia is mostly biased about China and they cannot be blamed for it because to maintain U.S. hegemony, they need a narrative in global academia that China can be a revisionist power. According to the power transition theory, a revisionist power is likely to change over the period and eventually end the current system. The U.S. had an enduring fear that China’s rise will invoke a new international system winding up U.S. dominated system. The majority of the magazines and newspapers in the West are publishing against China.
China kept tolerating biased academic discourses for more than a decade but as the social media crowded with Anti-China rhetoric, it became a compulsion for China to defend her narrative. The U.S. policymakers and academia alike launched a massive anti-China campaign to undermine China’s rise. The U.S.indeed is very powerful in the narrative building due to it’s supremacy in the international arena. The U.S. academia and media publish articles about China and that are frequently quoted across the globe even in policy-making circles as well. Such an aggressive approach toward China could certainly undermine China’s interests.
That is why China needed a concrete strategy to counter well-orchestrated propaganda. China’s approach of adopting strategic communication which could overthrow false U.S. propaganda. China’s reaction to the U.S. and West-centric propaganda especially on social media platforms was rubbished by a group of diplomats who made their presence on social media platforms.
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The U.S. strategy to securitize the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), terming its projects as a debt trap diplomacy of China undermined China’s image as several other European and developing countries were cautious to engage with China. To defend their stance, Chinese diplomats came up with facts and figures and started challenging such narratives on social media platforms. Chinese diplomats used strategic communication to counter the false propaganda on social media. Even that was termed as wolf warrior diplomacy and cyber nationalism by certain quarters.
As this is an age of information, strategic communication (StratCom)is used as a tool to advance policy objectives. Strategic communication is a comparatively new term but due to its frequent use, it has become a buzzword. The primary objective of StratCom is about winning hearts and minds but China is using it to defend its Chinese stance on internal and external issues. The rationale is that if disinformation campaigns are not countered, the world would start believing what West-centric media and academia write. Some of the news shared by western media are so baseless that it invited a strong reaction from China. Some columnists and western media pundits describe the tone of “wolf warrior” as harsh, confrontational, belligerent, bellicose, rude, and so on. Whereas this is straightforward, without any ambiguity and condemnation of false propaganda.
The outbreak of Covid-19 sent a shockwave all over the world. There have been frequent accusations against China by the U.S, especially the former U.S. President Donald Trump labeled the Corona Virus as a Chinese virus deliberately to hold China accountable for the pandemic. A careful analysis provides that “The Wuhan lab leak theory had been dismissed by most scientists as a fringe conspiracy theory”.
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But Western media kept harping on the same string that Trump stated.
Those developing countries who had a colonial experience by the great powers and experienced exploitation are now looking toward China with the hope to come out of the economic crisis. China’s economic engagement with Africa has changed the lives of millions of Africans. The infrastructure has been developed at a rapid pace and that creates numerous opportunities for youth in African nations.
Sophisticated propaganda to malign China is already underway that China acquires strategic assets in exchange for debts to African nations. Chinese diplomats are defending their foreign policy in Africa through diplomacy (digital diplomacy) which does not hold any colonial designs in the continent. Talking to locals, it becomes evident that China’s investment is the source of prosperity for the African nations. China has a complete right to dispel any false propaganda against China.
Dr. Rizwan Naseer is a strategic security analyst and he is associated with PAF Air War College Institute (AWCI) Karachi. The views expressed by the writers do not necessarily represent Global Village Space’s editorial policy.