Washington plans yet another information war against China

BEIJING, Feb. 16 (Xinhua) -- Earlier this month, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the America COMPETES Act, a bill focusing on U.S. semiconductor production and supply chains.

Unsurprisingly, the "industrial" act includes actions to hold China "accountable" for the so-called genocide and slave labor, according to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and specifically allocates 500 million U.S. dollars for media outlets to smear China.

This bill echoes the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act of 2021, another hawkish bill against China passed by the U.S. Senate in June 2021, which authorized 300 million dollars to be appropriated for each fiscal year through 2026 to counter China's influence globally.

The Senate bill is "a dangerous declaration of Cold War on China," wrote Michael D. Swaine, a scholar of Chinese security studies and director of the East Asia Program at Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a research institution and think tank.

The bill, Swaine said, "epitomizes the worst errors of the new Washington 'consensus' on what a rising China supposedly means," and contains "almost exclusively zero-sum (and in some instances dangerous) policy recommendations."

Actually, Washington has been implementing intricate plans to boost the so-called "China threat" narratives and "combat Chinese disinformation" via the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, and the Agency for Global Media, its state-run foreign media service.

In September 2021, the largest Zimbabwean daily newspaper The Harald revealed that the United States is funding and training local reporters to produce anti-China stories and discredit Chinese investments.

According to the report with exclusive details, some private media journalists were told to portray Chinese companies investing in Zimbabwe as "causing harm to communities, environment and workers," receiving payment of 1,000 dollars per story from the U.S. embassy through its proxy.

"U.S. embassy officials bragged during the workshop that they had ... previously sponsored media institutions on the so-called accountability issues," the article said.

Spreading misinformation and manipulating the truth about China are nothing new for Western media and might undermine the credibility of journalists involved in reporting as well as the industry at large.

"If the government is setting out ahead of time in legislation what the conclusion and the point of coverage is going to be, that doesn't really qualify as genuine journalism," Tobita Chow, director of Justice Is Global, a group that advocates a more equitable world economy, was quoted by The American Prospect magazine as saying.

In September 2021, Javier Garcia, former head of the office of the EFE News Agency of Spain in Beijing, announced leaving journalism because "the embarrassing information war against China has taken a good dose of my enthusiasm for this profession."

"The information manipulation is flagrant, with dozens of examples every day," said the veteran who served in the industry for over 30 years. "Anyone who dares to confront it or try to maintain objectivity and impartial positions will be accused of being on the payroll of the Chinese government or worse."