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Xi, Modi agree to 'de-escalate' tensions on disputed Himalayan border
(new.thecradle.co)
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this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023
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I'm a little concerned about how badly China is losing the optics war on this conflict. As far as I know, you can't really pin the blame on either side here. But if you go to the comments of any YouTube videos on this such as SCMP, seems everyone is supporting India and talking trash about China, especially commenters from Vietnam and the Philippines.
Are the comments in English? A lot of Indian netizens can speak English and will naturally support their own country.
I don't think looking at youtube comments is a good way of gauging general opinions on a subject. The opinions of terminally online fascists maybe, but not everyone else.
Citizens of countries that have a bad relationship with China hating China shouldn't exactly be surprising tbh idk
The thing is Vietnam doesn't even have a particularly poor relationship with China. Yet it seems like bashing China is a national pastime. There are border disputes, yes, but they have those all over the world, like for instance between the US and Canada.
At least a plurality of people in Vietnam seem to really hate China, and while I disagree I also struggle to blame them given the history that a number of them experienced personally or had parents who did. For example, if you look at one of those "which country is the biggest obstacle to world peace?" maps, iirc Vietnam's most popular answer is consistently China. I would guess that's not a supermajority but just a plurality saying that -- while others might say the US, Myanmar, Russia (depending on when), Israel, or . . . India, maybe? But I don't really know anything
On the other hand, India doesn't have particularly great relationships with any of its direct neighbors and has had a long history of conflict with many of them. People always harp on how China has few friends among its neighbors, but I struggle to think of any relationship India has with a neighboring country as friendly as China-Pakistan.
It's the SCMP, Lol. The content is occasionally objective, but the readership is like 80% anti-China.
I’m just glad it’s not owned by Murdoch anymore
That's in part because of all the anti-China propaganda on big media and youtube. In youtube, anti-China content, specially content from big media (BBC, sky news and the likes) and CIA-backed content, is recommended to much more users than pro-China content. Just look at the number of views of anti-China videos vs neutral or pro-China channels. Anti-China videos easily get millons of views, while the best of the best pro-China videos only reach tens or hundreads of thousands of views (one or another may reach millions by using a super catch thumbnail and title). The pro-China videos are mostly recommended to people that already watches pro-China videos, while anti-China videos get recommended for everyone on youtube. The result is that a huge amount of youtube users believe anti-China crap.
If I'm being honest I think China has pretty poor optics/soft power all around in the West, which is obviously because of Western lies and their equivalent of a cultural Firewall mixed with the fact that these socities could not be much more different. If China wants to win over hearts and minds in the West (which I do NOT think is necessary to achieving victory), they need to make China sexy/cool or at least spin themselves as a clear moral/rational arbiter (in a not lame or culty way).
Obviously we Westerners could help a lot on that front too but it's hard to shoulder the optics by ourselves.
They could learn a lot from Japan, which has essentially won the cultural war for America's most beloved pet, or from America itself, which has convinced millions of people across the world (even those it destroys!) that it is The Good Guys.
And what objections did the western bourgeoisie have to this? What objections did the bourgeois controlled press have? What objections did the CIA have? None. Because Japan is a puppet, a land of unrepentant fascists where school curriculum, downplays or outright denies the atrocities their forces committed in the second world war. It is occupied by the US armed forces and completely subjugated. In other words it is not a threat. Neither is its exports of sexualized drawn children a threat. Neither are the occasional capitalism bad messages which the western media itself regularly creates and disseminates without elaborating and certainly without ever giving the impression communism or revolution is a good idea.
The problem with PR In the west and I do think they could do better to be clear because they don't try that hard. Is that there is a ceiling, a limit to what they can achieve because the entire western media and cultural apparatus and propaganda machine is working full time against them. They will not allow them a toe-hold, they will not readily purchase rights to and air Chinese animation for example that might portray China too positively. The media here looks the other way or pretends to see only the cute kawaii anime girls in animes that have parallels to Japanese fascism and mock war crimes but they would immediately spot and scream about propaganda the second a Chinese animation project portrayed even a minor good thing like a government official helping a character as propaganda by the ebil see see pee.