China has slammed a State Department report that claims the country has been spending billions to manipulate information worldwide
FILE PHOTO. © AFP / Mark Schiefelbein
Beijing has labeled Washington the “true empire of lies” as it dismissed allegations contained in a new report by the US State Department, which accused China of “global information manipulation.”
“Some in the US may think that they can prevail in the information war as long as they produce enough lies. But the people of the world are not blind,” China’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Saturday. It added that “more and more people in the world” are seeing through America’s “ugly attempt to perpetuate its supremacy” with lies.
The US has a long history of manipulation and disinformation campaigns, the ministry continued, citing a number of examples spanning from the early Cold War period to the present day.
“From Operation Mockingbird, which bribed and manipulated news media for propaganda purposes in the Cold War era, to a vial of white powder and a staged video of the ‘White Helmets’ cited as evidence to wage wars of aggression in Iraq and Syria earlier this century, and then to the enormous lie made up to smear China’s Xinjiang policy, facts have proven time and again that the US is an ‘empire of lies’ through and through,” it stated.
“The US Department of State report is in itself disinformation, as it misrepresents facts and truth.”
The report in question was released by the State Department’s Global Engagement Center on Thursday. It alleged that Beijing has been spending billions each year to wage an elaborate misinformation campaign worldwide, while using “deceptive and coercive methods” to shape the global information agenda.
“Beijing uses false or biased information to promote positive views of the PRC and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). At the same time, the PRC suppresses critical information that contradicts its desired narratives on issues such as Taiwan, its human rights practices, the South China Sea, its domestic economy, and international economic engagement,” according to the report.
However, Beijing’s alleged efforts have had only a limited impact worldwide, and China has experienced “major setbacks” while trying to target “democratic” countries, it claims. It attributed the purported failure of the alleged misinformation efforts to civil society and local media, which it said were well-developed in the “democratic” countries that were targeted.
