The U.S.-China meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, last weekend caused a huge backlash. By any measure, this hardball dialogue has created a much larger tsunami of public opinion in mainland China than in the United States.
China Central Television said that China was invited to Anchorage for a strategic dialogue with the U.S. side in good faith, but “the U.S. side seriously overstayed its Time in its opening remarks and provoked disputes by making unreasonable accusations against China’s domestic and foreign policies,” so China considered that “this is not the way to treat guests, nor is it in line with diplomatic etiquette. Therefore, the Chinese side considered that “this is not the way of hospitality, nor is it in line with diplomatic etiquette, and responded to it sternly.
How long did the U.S. side’s first opening statement take? It was a serious 20 seconds.
In fact, Antony Blinken spoke for 2 minutes and 27 seconds, Jake Sullivan spoke for 2 minutes and 17 seconds, Yang Jiechi’s opening statement lasted 16 minutes and 14 seconds, followed by 3 minutes and 26 seconds of interpretation, and Wang Yi’s opening statement took 4 minutes and 09 seconds. Blinken then called back reporters to respond again, saying directly that a response was needed because the Chinese side had taken a long time to speak.
Diplomatically agreed speaking time is reciprocal, and if one side seriously overstays its time, the other side has the right to add to it. So this action by Blinken was reasonable, but CCTV backtracked because of the fruit, using the serious overtime on the U.S. side as an excuse for Yang Jiechi’s overtime speech, which is a usual tactic of the Chinese Communist Party.
We know, of course, that what really made Yang Jiechi angry was that Blinken opened his remarks by directly pointing out the issues of Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan, the so-called “red lines” that the CCP had previously drawn, and here, using the CCP’s best strategy of providing half-truths and half-false information and then basing its arguments on it, CCTV said. “The U.S. side has seriously overstayed its time and made unreasonable attacks and accusations against China’s domestic and foreign policies,” the first half of which covers up the second half, lest the Chinese ask “what internal and external policies were accused.
The CAC’s approach has been successful, at least temporarily.
Xinhua reported that Yang Jiechi said during the meeting that “the United States is not qualified to speak to China from above, and the Chinese do not eat that. When dealing with China, we must do so on the basis of mutual respect. History will prove that if you take a ‘necking’ approach to China, you will end up damaging yourself.”
Wang Yi also stated, “China was, is, and will never accept groundless accusations from the U.S. At the same time, we demand that the U.S. side completely abandon its hegemonic practice of interfering in China’s internal affairs. This old problem of the U.S. needs to be changed!”
The news received 2.45 billion reads and 1.16 million discussions on Sina Weibo.
The “famous words” of Yang Jiechi during the talks have almost gone viral on mainland social media, such as “We think too well of you” and “The United States does not represent world opinion. “The United States does not represent world opinion” and “Chinese people do not eat this”.
These speeches by Yang Jiechi and Wang Yi have spread enthusiastically in China, and the so-called “patriotic” sentiment on the mainland Internet has risen.
Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of the Global Times, wrote that the meeting would “go down in history” because it was “an unprecedented public face-to-face encounter between the two powers, which is highly symbolic. He said the Chinese official’s speech gave domestic politicians “a refresher on who China is” and showed some of its allies how China deals with the United States, saying “whoever takes the initiative to mess with China, don’t expect China to go easy on them.
A week or so ago, Xi Jinping said during a breakout session at China’s National People’s Congress that today China’s “post-70s, post-80s, post-90s and post-00s, before they go out to see the world, China can already look at the world as it is, and it’s not as rustic as we were back then. “. The entire propaganda deployment of the Central Propaganda Department is apparently centered around the height of “looking at the United States”.
On the mainland Internet, the Chinese Communist Party’s Internet army was mobilized to push for a wave of “patriotic anti-Americanism” last weekend.
On March 19, China Daily reporter Pan Xu tweeted two images of the scene of the signing of the Treaty of Xinchao and the high-level strategic dialogue between the United States and China, with the caption: “From 1901 to 2021, China has spent 120 years telling the United States that they are not qualified to negotiate with China ‘from a position of strength. ‘ to negotiate with China.”
One of the most widely circulated images on the mainland Internet is a spliced picture, the top half of which is a group photo of the scene of the signing of the Treaty of Xin Chou 120 years ago, and the bottom half is the scene of this Alaska talks (2021 happens to be the year of Xin Chou on the yellow calendar), with countless netizens leaving messages saying, “The U.S. should recognize reality,” and “This is the great change that has not happened in a hundred years” and “China is not the same China as it was in the late Qing Dynasty.”
The People’s Daily and other official media then launched the hashtag “A comparison of the two Xinchu years”, which set off a wave of discussion on the Internet in mainland China and has been on the Weibo hot search list for days.
The main theme of the topic led by the officials is that “the world is still the same world, but China is not the same China”, and that the United States is “still living in 1901”, and that “the qualifications that make the U.S. side unable to be superior are earned by the Chinese themselves. The Chinese have earned it themselves.” This last sentence is to take advantage of the anti-American climax to put all the glory on the head of the Chinese Communist Party, preferably on the head of Xi Jinping.
The topic of the Xin Chou year is actually a very interesting one.
The official propaganda of the Chinese Communist Party, which proposes 120 years, refers to the year from 1901 Xin Chou to this year Xin Chou. But in fact, there should be three Xin Chou years out of 120 years, not two.
In 1900, the year of Gengzi, the Boxer Rebellion was rampant in northern China, and the Qing government used the Boxers to launch a wave of xenophobia, killing foreign missionaries, merchants, and even foreign diplomats in the streets within the capital. The Boxers, with the assistance of the regular Manchu army, attacked foreign embassies and actually failed to take them down for several months.
That year, the Eight-Power Allied Forces landed from Tientsin and attacked Beijing in less than a month to free their diplomatic staff.
The next year, 1901, the year of the Xin Chou, Li Hongzhang signed the Treaty of Xin Chou, also called the Xin Chou Peace Treaty, also called the Beijing Protocol, in Beijing on behalf of the Qing government. It was actually signed by the Qing government and 11 countries, and we won’t go into the details, the Chinese paid 450 million taels of silver, or 1 tael per person if the Chinese population was spread at that time.
In 1908, the United States decided that the claim was too much and returned more than $11 million in reparations for the development of Education in China, and by 1924 suspended the principal and interest of another $6 million or so. This $18 million represented 80 percent of China’s reparations to the United States for Gengzi.
Led by the United States, by the 1920s, probably in 1924 or ’25, several other countries had stopped paying Gengzi reparations, most of which went to the development of education in China. Some of the best universities in mainland China today were established with that money at that time. Most of the outstanding scientists that emerged in China in the 1940s and 1950s were also trained by these schools.
This is the story of the Xinchu years. If we continue, we can go back another 60 years.
The year 1841 was the year of Xin Chou. In the previous year, the Opium War broke out between Britain and China, and in 1941, British troops captured Ningbo and Tanggu Pass and occupied Hong Kong. The Manchu government finally ceded land and made reparations.
Both years, 1841 and 1901, were years of failed foreign conflicts, and finally bowed down and admitted defeat and made reparations. But neither of these two Xin Chou years were the most tragic and sorrowful years for the Chinese. For the Chinese, the most tragic and unforgettable year that should be learned is the Xin Chou year of 1961.
The year 1901 to the present 120 years, but in the middle of these 120 years, there is another Xin Chou year, why do not skip to mention it.
The year 1961 was the 12th year of the Chinese Communist Party’s establishment of power in mainland China, and 1961 was also the last year of the Communist Party’s three-year famine. From 1959 to 1961, tens of millions of people in mainland China died unnaturally.
How many people died in these three years? I looked up many figures and found that one of the most conservative estimates was actually by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, which reported in 1962 that at least 5 million people had starved to death in the Great Famine in mainland China. By the end of the last century, after various official and semi-official figures came out from within the Chinese Communist Party, the basic Perception was that in the previous three years, including 1961, the year of Xin Chou, the death toll in mainland China was at least 25 million and at most 45 million.
I was born after this great famine. When I was a child, my generation did not know the existence of the Great Famine. The only thing I remember is that we were generally taller than our older siblings. This used to be a topic of conversation among us kids, and we asked the adults about it, and they usually replied, “We ate well. Adults never explain.
When I was in college, one of my classmates told a joke about an old poor peasant who was invited to give a presentation at their high school, criticizing the Chinese society of 49 years ago. The old peasant was in tears while speaking on the stage, and at the end a student asked him, “This is the most miserable day for you, right? The old peasant said, “Almost, almost as bitter as in 1960. The school leaders were horrified and hurriedly ended the political study session.
We all told it as a joke, but for most Chinese people at that time, it was definitely not a joke, but a matter of Life and death.
Even with tens of millions of Chinese starving to death, the Chinese Communist Party was just as tough, and much tougher than it is now, and they not only looked down on the United States, but they simply looked down on the United States.
On November 13, 1960, the People’s Daily published an article “Capitalism rots day by day”, saying that the U.S. was running out of Gold and capital was flowing out, unemployment was increasing, and people were in distress. on November 7, an article celebrating the October Revolution was published, praising the great achievements of the Cuban Revolution, with the U.S. empire trembling on the sidelines.
On May 1, 1961, he published an article saying “The Cuban Revolution points out the way to liberation in America”.
On August 8, 1963, Mao issued a statement of support for the just struggle of black Americans against U.S. imperialist racial discrimination. Maoist Communist Party of America, Robert F. Williams, then in exile in Cuba, published a lengthy article in Cuba on August 14, “Mao’s Black American Liberation Proclamation,” comparing the statement to Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, saying, “Chairman Mao’s appeal to the peoples of the world to support us in the fight people, is a new emancipation proclamation.”
It is evident that the good or bad economy and the size of military power do not affect the so-called assertiveness or otherwise of the CCP at all.
In fact, the CCP had already sent tough signals to the U.S. long before the last Xinjiang year. In 1949, before the CCP’s civil war was over, Mao Zedong published “Farewell, Stuart” and ousted the U.S. ambassador to China outright. This was followed by North Korea in the 1950s and Vietnam in the 1960s, both of which fought with the United States.
Now the Chinese Communist Party thinks it has risen to power, its military is stronger, its technology has developed, and everyone has enough to eat, so it can be “tough” with the United States. In history, this is completely unexplainable by rational logic. And when China was so poor that tens of millions of people died of starvation, the “toughness” then was more powerful than the CCP now, and the hand was extended longer. Back then, the Chinese Communist Party was not only in charge of Asia, but also the Americas, and even reached directly into the United States.
In contrast, Yang Jiechi’s toughness last weekend was so weak that it was more like the complaint of a grieving woman.
As for Global Times’ Hu Xijin’s comment that “the unprecedented public face-to-face encounter between China and the United States is of great symbolic significance”, and that it will “go down in history”, it is even more ridiculous.
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