In recent months, China’s media has frequently reported the United States, in particular the CIA, has interfered in Hong Kong’s affairs and is a driver behind the months-long protests there. They cite other Western countries as well. Chinese leaders no doubt concur with these charges.
They have a point. The CIA has long had a presence in Hong Kong and is well-known to support Western-style democratic change there.
On the other side the protesters assert Chinese mainland agents operating in Hong Kong seek to discredit their efforts and extinguish the anti-China, pro-democracy movement. The details are murky since both sides push their narrative aggressively and deny the charges against them.
However, what is clear is that the liberal Western media has taken an inordinately strong interest in the dissent in Hong Kong, especially given the frequency and magnitude of protest elsewhere, Hong Kong’s population, and the number of killings.
A Washington Post analyst in December wrote there were more protest movements in more places in the world in 2019 than in any other year in history. Indeed, there were more than in most periods of time ever, many of them large and many of them violent. NBC News called 2019 the “year of protest.”
In Algeria, 3 million citizens demonstrated against then-president Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s running for a fifth term as president.
China has not been involved in armed conflict for 40 years; the US has been involved in continuous wars. Instead, China has advanced poverty reduction to the tune of millions of people leaving penury, alone making the UN’s millennial project to eradicate world poverty successful
In Bolivia in October, demonstrators complained of election fraud against then-president Evo Morales. More than 31 were killed.
In Chile, protests began over a hike in subway fares and expanded to include income equality, better healthcare and more funding for education. At least 22 people died.
In Egypt, protests broke out for a week in September over officials’ purloining state funds. More than 4,000 people were arrested.
In the fall in Haiti, protesters demanded the resignation of President Jovenel Moise. Over 40 protesters lost their lives.
The worst was in Iran, where more than 1,000 people were reportedly killed in protests against gasoline prices. The government responded with brutal force. According to one source, 300 people were killed in one day. Many more have perished since then.
In neighboring Iraq, 350 have died in anti-corruption demonstrations.
Protests have also taken place in Chile, Columbia, the Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, Indonesia, Lebanon, Russia and Spain. Violence was part of most of them.
In India - with a population of more than 1.36 billion, compared with Hong Kong’s 7.4 million - protest broke out in December over the government banning a form of divorce under Islamic Law, and a Citizenship Amendment Act that restricts the rights of immigrants.
In none of these cases was the attention of the Western media as large as it was over the demonstrations in Hong Kong.
A Google search indicates the Hong Kong protest has drawn more media coverage even though the number of people killed or injured has been minor in comparison to some of the other cases of protest. In Hong Kong’s case, two people died, none at the hands of the police or the government. One died at the hands of the protesters.
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a media watchdog group, noted the Hong Kong protest was covered by The New York Times and CNN on average by a factor of 20-plus fold that of Chile, Haiti or Ecuador.
A host of Western newspapers have carried the Hong Kong protest as front-page stories, with pictures of fires and police battling students. So did some magazines. The New Yorker, for example, in a front-page story depicted “mass violence” in Hong Kong, and wrote the protest was one “over the soul of Hong Kong”.
In December, The Economist carried a cover picture of police in the midst of tear gas on Hong Kong streets, with the label “Hong Kong in revolt”. It covered the killings of a large number of protesters in Iran in a short piece on page 43 of the magazine.
Why the huge discrepancy in reporting on the protest in Hong Kong compared with protests in other places in the world? Also, why has the Western media shown such a bias for the protesters in Hong Kong and against the Chinese government? It evidently has.
The Western liberal media, which dominate global newspapers, TV and more, is hostile toward China for two main reasons. And it wants to convince people it is right and China is wrong.
First, they believe China to be planning to destroy the Western-based liberal world order, or the global system established after World War II by the US and a number of European countries. This system, called the “rule-based” international order, was organized based on several guiding principles: open markets, multilateral institutions, and liberal democracy under the leadership of the US. It put great faith in the United Nations and international law.
But this system is under threat and is even, to some, in collapse for a host of reasons.
This threat became even more serious after Donald Trump was elected US president. Trump perceived that open markets were a bane to an economically healthy US, and many agreed with him. He also declared that he had little faith in multilateral organizations, including the UN. He advocated bilateral negotiations as the way to conduct diplomacy and resolve America’s unfavorable balance of trade and its consequent grave and dangerous debt problem.
The second reason for hostility toward China and the liberal media’s reason for despising China was that China and Chinese were, and are, a curse to the liberal dogma of affirmative action and quotas used to resolve racial imbalances in US and European societies, especially through manipulating allocations in students’ admissions to institutions of higher learning. This discriminated against Asian students, especially Chinese, which number higher than other groups in submitted applications. It is a clear policy of racism, and the victims so complained.
This became more sensitive a few months ago when Asian students filed a suit against Harvard University for blatant bias in their admission policies and the Trump administration supported them.
The way out for the liberal media is to vilify China for “stealing American technology” and to “out-Trump” Trump when he criticizes China for the sustained US trade deficit and censures China broadly as a negotiating technique. This included exaggerating the importance of Hong Kong’s protest and “human rights violations” in China.
The media also attacked the “China dream” to recover from 100 years of imperialism and its humiliation at the hands of the West and become again a respected world power. The Dream also reflects the decline of the US as witnessed in then-president Barack Obama’s “lead from behind”, Europe and Japan’s economic malaise, and the crumbling of liberal world-order institutions. China’s dream thus talks about its version of a new world order.
It is based on promoting economic power and global development exemplified by China’s Belt and Road Initiative to connect China with the rest of Asia, Europe, and Africa and even beyond. China has already put US$1 trillion into the project, compared with America’s largest, the economic recovery of Europe after WWII, at just over US$100 billion in today’s dollars. Meanwhile, China has become the premier provider of foreign aid and investments to developing countries. This is humiliating and exposes the West’s financial troubles.
China’s world order is a peaceful system, not based on military power, as is the Western world order. China has not been involved in armed conflict for 40 years; the US has been involved in continuous wars. Instead, China has advanced poverty reduction to the tune of millions of people leaving penury, alone making the UN’s millennial project to eradicate world poverty successful.
Finally, China’s world order is to be absent imperialism and colonialism.
Some say China’s world order is so reassuring the liberal Western media is deeply offended and frightened, and assails it, using any means possible to denigrate and defeat it. This includes condemning China any way it can, even employing unfair and disproportionate criticism.
The author is the Stanley J. Buckman distinguished professor (emeritus) of international studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. He is the author of more than 35 books.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
