In September of this year, an account signed “China is not our enemy” appeared on the social media platform Twitter. The account’s image included the Chinese characters “和” and a pink banner with the words “Stop demonizing China. The new account has caught the attention of some, including Catherine Chou, a professor of history at Grinnell College in Iowa.
“An ‘anti-war’ and ‘pro-Asian’ group thought it would be good public relations to ask you to look at their Web site – and you did! , found a bunch of YouTube videos and a China Daily article that denied the Chinese government’s mass incarceration of Uighurs.”
This was the question Professor Zhou asked after interacting with the account.
What is “China is not our enemy”?
“China is not our enemy” is an initiative of the American leftist anti-war organization CODE PINK, which was founded in 2002 as a resistance movement against the war in Iraq. The organization was founded in 2002 as a resistance movement against the war in Iraq. According to its website, it is “a women-led, grassroots organization dedicated to ending American war and militarism and supporting peace and human rights initiatives.”
Looking at its website, Code Pink currently runs 13 initiatives, including “President for Peace,” “Get Rid of the War Machine,” “Expose War Crimes,” “Fight the Drones,” “Boycott Saudi Arabia,” and more, each with its own page, four of which have their own Twitter accounts, with “China is not our Enemy” being one of them, and topping the list of 13.
According to the “China is not our enemy” page, the initiative was launched because “the same methods that drove us to war in Iraq are being used to advance the narrative that we should be afraid of China” in order for the United States to launch a Cold War against China. It calls for action to “advocate peace with China” to prevent a Cold War, even a nuclear war, between the U.S. and China.
“The “China is not our enemy” Twitter account currently has over 300 followers, the vast majority of whom are Code Pink allies and staff, as well as self-described communists, socialists, Marxist-Leninists, and democratic socialists. A number of users. There are also a number of Westerners living in China and some journalists interested in China issues.
The Twitter account mainly sends out its weekly webinars, retweets webinars and tweets organized by allies, or retweets various tweets with pro-China, anti-war, or anti-American positions. One of its most recent retweets was an article by former Chinese diplomat Fu Ying in the New York Times on November 24, “China and U.S. Building a Cooperative-Competitive Relationship Is Possible. “Jodie Evans, founder of Code Pink, commented, “The Biden team should listen to this woman. China is not our enemy,” she continued, “Let’s urge Kamala Harris to call a halt to the Biden team’s hatred of China.”
“Urging Kamala Harris to help end the U.S. attacks on China” is one of three initiatives that China is Not Our Enemy has launched on its web page. The other two are “Urge the media to stop helping Trump spread hate speech against China” and “Urge Biden to pull our country back from the brink of nuclear war. These actions call for electronic signatures on pre-drafted letters to He Jinli, Biden, and several mainstream U.S. media outlets. To date, each letter has averaged about 3,000 signatures.
“So why not oppose ‘all’ wars?” Professor Kathleen Zhou asked a question to her Twitter account. She said, “Being anti-war does not mean whitewashing the Chinese government’s agenda. The fact is, if you are truly anti-war, then you should also criticize China’s various armed military threats to Taiwan.”
The Twitter account then responded, “China is not our enemy,” focusing on U.S.-China relations, “The escalating U.S. attacks on China are causing serious racial discrimination against the Chinese community in the U.S. The U.S. attacks on China have the potential to escalate into racial discrimination against the Chinese community. U.S. attacks on China may evolve into nuclear war.” The response also welcomed Professor Zhou’s response. The response also said that Professor Zhou is welcome to visit his dedicated website to learn more.
Whitewashing of Xinjiang Policy, “Genocide Denialism”?
“China is not our enemy” offers literature and resources on topics such as “Why we need peace with China” and “The epidemic and China” on its dedicated web page. Of note is the “Frequently Asked Questions” section, which refutes each of China’s most internationally criticized areas, including what Professor Zhou has criticized as “genocide denialism.
In response to the question “What is the Uighur problem? The web page gives several resources on this issue. The first is the “Qiao Collective” – a coalition of pro-Chinese and Chinese nationalists abroad dedicated to “challenging U.S. attacks on China and the misinformation they spread. a report on Xinjiang by an organization that has been “in the forefront of the U.S.-led hybrid war against China”. The report’s introduction states that “China’s politicized counterterrorism policy in Xinjiang is yet another front in the U.S.-led hybrid war against China” and that the report “provides a counterpoint to the misinformation about the Xinjiang Autonomous Region that pervades the mainstream media. “
The second resource is a statement by British far-left scholar John Ross. In one of the “China Is Not Our Enemy” webinars, Ross repeatedly emphasized that the U.S. portrayal of the human rights situation of the Uighurs is a “big lie” that the U.S. has invented to attack China. In particular, he cited a report by Max Blumenthal, the founder of the independent American news website Grayzone, in which Blumenthal claimed that the U.S. was “lying” and that the U.S. was making it up to attack China. In his report, Blumenthal claims that human rights persecution in Xinjiang is grossly exaggerated and lacks credible evidence, and he extensively criticizes research by Adrian Zenz, a German expert on Xinjiang issues and a senior fellow at the American human rights organization the Foundation for the Victims of Communism.
Dan Garrett, an American academic and former Pentagon intelligence analyst, told VOA that the “gray zone” news site has close ties to the Kremlin. Blumenthal has appeared frequently in webinars organized by Code Pink and its allies, as well as in interviews with Russia Today (RT) and China Global Television Network (CGTN). The report, published in the “gray zone” and refuting the Xinjiang allegations, was also picked up by the official Chinese propaganda website China Xinjiang.
Garrett told VOA: “I first noticed ‘Code Pink’ when I was doing research on the CCP’s ‘anti-Hong Kong’ propaganda, and I observed the synergy between the two. ” Garrett said that during his research, he found a large number of pro-Communist or pro-communist writers’ statements that are widely circulated and not limited to the official Chinese media platforms, but are also widely quoted in the mainstream Western media. Independent Western media, such as Gray Zone, are even more heavily involved in publishing these kinds of statements and narratives – “sometimes they’re paraphrasing almost word for word, sometimes they’re saying the same thing in a different way,” he says. The “New Cold War”, Le Yu Cheng “praise”.
A larger alliance camp – “Rejecting the New Cold War”, Le Yu Cheng “Praise”
The third resource on the Xinjiang issue is a webinar hosted by the Code Pink coalition, No Cold War.
“No to the New Cold War is a large initiative of anti-war allies, including Code Pink, Act Now to End War and End Racism, and other founding members. ANSWER, Movimiento Cubano por la Paz y la Soberanía de los Pueblos (MOVPAZ), Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the UK (CND), and 19 other leftist anti-war organizations from North and South America and Europe. In July of this year, “No to the New Cold War” made headlines in the Chinese media for organizing a multi-platform, live online seminar.
The seminar was not only attended by a number of official Chinese scholars, but was also praised by Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng, who was interviewed by the Observer. In an interview with the Observer, he said, “Former political leaders, experts and scholars from 48 countries launched a global networking conference, ‘Any new Cold War against China is against the interests of humanity,’ and delivered a ‘No to the New Cold War’ speech in 14 languages. The ‘joint statement’ can be said to be a powerful voice against the U.S. ganging up and dividing the world.”
The Chongyang Institute of Finance at Renmin University, a government-run think tank in China, published an article titled “’48 Scholars Warn U.S.’ Campaign Spooks the World, Nearly 200 Million People Pay Attention,” praising it as a “global and highly relevant live broadcast. “, the hospital’s executive director, Wang Wen, was one of the speakers at the event. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying and CGTN also tweeted about the event.
In response, Bill Bishop, a U.S.-based China expert, highlighted in his August Sinocism e-newsletter that “the original signatories to the ‘No New Cold War’ initiative campaign included Wang Wen, Martin Jacques, and the Chinese government. ), Max Blumenthal and Gao Zhikai of the ‘Gray Zone’ news network, and so on.” He commented jokingly, “Did the Soviet Union set up these organizations?”
Is it an operation of the United Front Work Department?
Seeing Professor Catherine Zhou’s tweet criticizing “China is not our enemy” for denying what happened to Uighurs, tweeter Kimmy Leominster, who is followed by many China experts, commented: “This is another bad operation by the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department. “
Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a U.S. think tank, says that whether this is an operation of the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department depends on whether there is a visible link between it and “Code Pink” and that it would require special research. draws conclusions. “But whether it’s intentional or out of ignorance, ‘Code Pink’ sounds like it’s ‘parroting’ the CCP’s propaganda discourse,” Gonzalez continued. “And for it to deny something like the Xinjiang concentration camps is unimaginable. It has to feel like it’s a deliberate attempt to whitewash the Chinese Communist Party.”
Dan Garrett says “China is not our enemy” looks too much like a parallel “No to the New Cold War” initiative campaign, with the same sympathies and defenses for the CCP. He said, “It is a good example of the influence of the United Front Work Department’s overseas operations, if not its direct funding of its creation, then at least its absolute endorsement.”
“One of the reasons I don’t think it’s a coincidence is the involvement of official Chinese scholars as well as Western scholars who routinely appear in the Chinese official media to defend the CCP, such as Martin Jacques and Rothschild,” says Garrett. ‘ and its allied organizations make extensive use of narrative discourse that is almost identical to the opinion pieces published by these individuals in the People’s Daily or China Daily.”
Garrett also points out that one of the central strategies of the CCP’s propaganda efforts is to conflate the Chinese government with the Chinese people, deliberately making no distinction whatsoever. The 12 webinars that Code Pink has been conducting since late July of this year reinforce this notion – what they are doing is conflating Western criticism of the CCP’s policies and actions with criticism of the Chinese people. This approach sends the signal that your criticism of the CCP is racist prejudice against the Chinese people.
Coincidentally, in his July 20 issue of the Sinocism newsletter, Ming-Chiang Li concludes, “Judging from these recent statements of growing anger by the CCP officials, the two things that CCP officials are most concerned about the United States doing are the possibility of developed countries forming a ‘united front’ and the fact that U.S. officials specifically Distinguish between the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese people.”
Why the closeness to the CCP? Experts: This is the CCP playing “identity politics”.
Garrett told VOA that the basic element that brings Western dissident groups like Code Pink closer to the CCP is their shared “anti-Western” orientation. Many of these groups and their members, he said, are Marxist, some of them Leninist, some Trotskyist, which means they are more likely to be directly involved in action, even violent action. These people, like the CCP, are dissatisfied with the state of the world and blame the West for all its ills.
“One of China’s most effective tactics for ‘dividing and ruling’ the West, whether by uniting the Chinese communities abroad or by these dissident groups, is to use disaffected groups in Western society,” Garrett analyzes. “This is really the ‘identity politics’ of the Chinese Communist Party, in which the ‘identity’ being exploited is the entire collective in the West that is outraged at the social status quo.”
Gonzalez said that China is currently the most important and powerful socialist country in the world, and that Vietnam, Cuba, North Korea, and Laos are so insignificant by comparison that many believers in socialism or communism in the West have always seen China as the North Star and the touchstone for Marxism. They have defended China even against evils for which there is no room for defense. He cited the example of organizations like Liberation Road, which to this day praise and follow the catastrophe of the Cultural Revolution.
“China is competing with us as a great power, so it’s natural that it would want to create instability in American society; China is willing to do anything to disrupt our democracy and our society as long as it’s not too obvious. For American socialists, who also want a major change in the social order, it’s natural that they would follow China’s lead,” Gonzalez said.
The Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda tool? Experts: or become foreign agents
In the eyes of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), these overseas organizations play a role similar to that of the CPPCC in that they are responsible for communicating the party’s positions to the public, Garrett said. Although the CCP is not very good at directly and effectively interacting with and infiltrating foreign audiences, these pro-communist organizations abroad can play the role of the United Front Work Department, communicating the CCP’s positions and agenda to the public abroad.
“But more troubling than that is that this type of operation is no longer limited to the foreign public; it also attempts to directly influence the political process abroad,” says Garrett. Garrett said, “China is not our enemy,” as exemplified by the “China is Not Our Enemy” initiative, which sent a letter directly to Hogan and Biden to convince them not to view China as an enemy. What the Chinese government has repeated ad nauseam is that the U.S. should not resist China, but should partner with China in the areas of climate, epidemics, and the economy, so as to avoid ideological confrontation with China in the West. Xi Jinping’s “One Belt, One Road” and “Community of Human Destiny” reveal the CCP’s ambition to spread its ideology. For decades, Garrett points out, the CCP has positioned itself as a “peace-loving party”; in recent years, that phrase has become the CCP’s responsibility to maintain world peace. Code Pink and its allies have constructed a discourse that sees the United States as a threat to world peace.
Garrett added that Code Pink and its allies can certainly hold any position or viewpoint, and can freely and autonomously choose to support the policies and views of the Chinese Communist Party, which is a legitimate right protected by the U.S. Constitution. However, if the participation and involvement of CCP officials, official CCP scholars, and official media is evident in the activities of these organizations, then they are not necessarily expressing their positions and views autonomously, but may be acting as foreign agents. In that case, such organizations should be treated as if they were interfering by foreign powers.
Changes and Constants
Professor Catherine Zhou told VOA that she does not consider China to be an enemy. She said, “If it weren’t for the fact that these organizations deny on their platforms that the Chinese Communist Party oppresses Uighurs and other groups, I would be very supportive of their efforts to resist the ‘new Cold War.'”
It is worth noting that “China is not our enemy” has changed its presentation on Uighurs twice in the last week.
Prior to the interaction between its Twitter account and Professor Zhou’s, the site’s description of Uyghur issues read.
“There is a lot of propaganda about the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), such as the Chinese government’s enslavement of Uyghurs and genocide against them. Here are the people who debunked some of these rumors and what they reported.”
After interacting with Prof. Zhou, the quote has become.
“For Uighurs in China and Muslims around the world, this issue is complex and painful. And we are concerned that it is being used as a tool to advance the Cold War rather than a human rights issue that needs to be addressed. Like many governments around the world, the U.S. response and actions to terrorist attacks have been highly problematic. Here are some resources to help you understand this issue.”
When contacted by VOA last week, Angela Simmons, a staff member of the “China is not our enemy” initiative, replied by email that she understood Professor Zhou’s questions and concerns, but still emphasized that her initiative’s main focus was to create peace between the United States and China. Simmons also mentioned, “I too wish we could stop all the human rights issues around the world, but we can’t even stop the U.S. from bombing Yemen or murdering black people on the streets of our own cities right now.”
When pressed by reporters about the many people who oppose both the Cold War and criticize China’s persecution of Uighurs, the group did not receive a response.
The day after the VOA interview, however, reporters found that the organization’s introductory text on the Uighur issue had added the phrase, “China’s included” (“including the Chinese government”). The text of the article on this topic was changed to “Like many governments around the world, including the Chinese government, the response and actions of the United States to the terrorist attacks have been highly problematic.
However, the website’s text on this topic remains unchanged.
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