Many mainstream Western media outlets appear to have made a vow to never disseminate a single piece of positive information about China, seemingly competing to break the negative news about the country. While Western journalists usually lecture on ethics, codes of law, and objectivity in journalism, when it comes to China they seem to instantly forget the lessons behind their lectures, oftentimes fabricating fictitious stories against the country without hesitation. 

Farmers pick megranates in Pishan County of Hotan, northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Oct. 8, 2020. In summer and autumn, the vast land in Xinjiang embraces the harvest season. (Photo by Adil Nadir/Xinhua)

Going wild for tarnishing the image of China, they are constantly on a quest to defame the country--be it true or false.

They are shadowing China, the world's second-largest economy, only because of their pending-anxiety over the country’s rising success, as they consider China as a potential threat to their illegitimate supremacy around the world. For them, this is nothing new, rather they are up to their old tricks again, successfully applying the same strategies used before against Muslims in the name of 'war on terror.’

Many Western media outlets still stick to their old policy of running a smear campaign against their enemies. With an obsession over defaming China, these outlets fail to report any positive news of the country.

Following the same policy, these outlets avoid telling the world of the impressive success stories of China and its people's war against the coronavirus. While continuing to spread varying conspiracy theories against China over the course of the pandemic, these media outlets fail to compare the number of fatalities and confirmed cases of their own countries to that of China.

Just as they are vocal about libeling China, they are quiet when it comes to telling their governments to fix their own homes. People are dying and suffering inhumane pains and grief in many Western countries, yet their media, run by their hard-earned money, chooses to obsess over China instead of using the platforms to spread the voices of their own country’s people.

Western media outlets are very concerned about Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, but remain blind to the slaughter of millions of Muslims in different countries including Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya. The media is too busy spreading false news of so-called concentration camps, labor and human rights violations, forced birth control, along with many other topics directed at Xinjiang, conscious not to disseminate the information of the vast development of the region.

The so-called mainstream media never tells the world of the earth-shaking changes taking place in Xinjiang, or of how the lives of people in all ethnic groups have greatly improved over the years. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, despite the devastating pandemic Xinjiang has reported positive GDP growth rates in the first half of the 2020 fiscal year. The autonomous region ranked second with its first-half economy growing 3.3 percent on a yearly basis. According to Ceicdata.com, Xinjiang’s GDP per capita data was reported at 54,280 yuan in 2019, recording an increase from the previous number of 49,474.717 yuan for 2018. In total, Xinjiang’s GDP rose from 791 million yuan in 1952 to 1.22 trillion yuan in 2018, an average annual growth of 8.3 percent, with the per capita GDP increasing 37.7 times on the inflation-adjusted basis to 49,475 yuan, according to last year's index.

Though it's two-year-old news that Xinjiang's total imports and exports exceeded 20 billion dollars in 2018, Western media outlets have turned a deaf ear to the news. Likewise, they have been indifferent to the news that the region leads the nation in agricultural mechanization and efficient water conservancy in irrigation, while also becoming China's largest cotton production base.

The media has hardly reported that Xinjiang, with 21 civil airports, has received more than 150 million domestic and foreign tourists in 2018, a year-on-year growth of 40 percent, and 75.89 million tourists in the first half of 2019, up 46 percent year-on-year.

Xinjiang's net enrollment ratio of school-age children used to be less than 20 percent, and the illiteracy rate was up to 90 percent, with the per capita life expectancy merely 30 years. After 70 years of development, the number of primary schools has increased from 1,335 in 1949 to 3,368 in 2018, and high schools from nine in 1949 to 1,278 in 2018.

In order to ensure continuous development, the central government of China has provided 2.35 trillion yuan, including 1.61 trillion yuan alone from 2012 to 2018, in financial subsidies to Xinjiang. Still, Western media outlets have been usually silent about the achievements of China in regards to Xinjiang. They spare no effort to keep the region in the news for negative reasons, with no hesitation in concocting cock and bull stories if needed.

The opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the author, and not necessarily to People's Daily Online.

The author is the China Correspondent of the Bangladesh Post.