Author: Branko M. Žujović
If you buy the book “The Coming Collapse of China” by Gordon Chang on Amazon these days, at the still-valid price of $34, you’ll find out that in China, beneath the “veneer of its modernization,” all you see are symptoms of general decay: state enterprises are failing, banks are hopelessly insolvent, foreign investments continue to decline, Communist Party corruption is eating away at society, and deflation is eating away at the economy…
“…Economic failure will be followed by the collapse of the government. Covering topics from party politics to the government’s unsustainable stance on Taiwan, Chang presents a thorough and very eerie overview of China’s present and not-so-distant future,” states the review of this intriguing book.
THE PROBLEM THAT MAKES THE BOOK INTERESTING
The problem that makes Chang’s book interesting is the fact that the mentioned book was printed exactly 23 years ago, meaning that none of Chang’s predictions have come true. What might scandalize the uninformed reader is the publisher. Chang’s geopolitical fantasy about China’s collapse, scattered over 368 pages, was published by the famous Random House. What gives pause for thought is the 1,200 reviews on Amazon that, on average, give Chang’s book a strong four-star rating. What might be encouraging is the fact that Chang’s book is still in stock after 23 years.
Chang’s book is just part of his broader anti-China authorial mosaic. The titles of this “China expert’s” books suggest that China is about to go to war, and even that there is a Chinese “Red Plan” to destroy the USA. From an even broader perspective, Chang’s book is a grain of sand in the cognitive war of the USA against China.
MAIN TARGET OF SLANDER
When do American media publish negative reports about China? Let’s first address the textbook definition of cognitive war: it is the manipulative influence on the perception, thinking, and behavior of target groups through information, misinformation, and psychological operations.
You don’t need to be familiar with the works of Paul Linebarger, John Boyd, or General Valery Gerasimov to understand that Chang’s misinformation with his unique predictions of the “inevitable” is part of what analysts have increasingly called cognitive warfare in recent decades.
The Chinese newspaper Global Times, the English-language edition of the People’s Daily, reported on September 21 last year that, according to the media content monitoring platform Meltwater, in leading American media, a total of about 114,000 articles related to China were published by September 21, 2023. Negative sentiments towards China were aroused by every fifth media report, or 20.2 percent.
“The most frequently mentioned words in articles with negative sentiments were ‘economy,’ ‘markets,’ ‘investors,’ ‘interest rates,’ and ‘yuan,’ according to Meltwater data. This suggests that the Chinese economy and financial market are the topics most covered by American media and opinion leaders, and that they are the main targets of their slander,” stated the Global Times commentary.
LINES ON MELTWATER GRAPHS
The newspaper found that the lines on the Meltwater graphs, which show the intensity of the publication of negative reports about China by American media, almost perfectly match the timing of the release of information about the state of the Chinese economy, which the National Bureau of Statistics of China updates in the middle of each month.
“It is interesting that the Meltwater graph shows that the middle of almost every month is the highest monthly peak in the number of stories about China that contain negative sentiments,” observed the Global Times.
The media field thus becomes the battlefield of cognitive war: statistical indicators of the state of the Chinese economy become the target of counterattacks that are not always as visible as the failed Nostradamus-like example of Gordon Chang. Literally anything can be used for a cognitive attack, as long as it is skillfully presented in the media. A good example of this is the Lujiazui business district in Shanghai.
NARRATIVE ABOUT “GHOST CITIES”
Developing the narrative about Chinese “ghost cities,” which is an important stereotype of the anti-China campaign, Newsweek published photos from the social network “X” on September 5 last year, posted by Michael Yon, a former Green Beret who now presents himself as a photographer and writer who likes to comment on geopolitical “reality.”
Yon is not known to the European public, but he is very well known to the American public. One of his scandalous claims concerns the rape of Asian, primarily Chinese women, during the Japanese aggression before and during World War II.
Yon is known for geopolitically relativizing numerous and well-documented rapes committed by Japanese soldiers against so-called “comfort women.” He sees the issue of “comfort women” as a component of information warfare that Japan should keep divided and weak, rather than as an issue of rectifying the consequences of a grave tragedy.
But let’s return to Yon’s photos from the social network “X.”
THREE PHOTOS OF AN ‘UNNAMED’ FRIEND
Three photos, taken by Yon’s unnamed “friend,” show desolation in front of a café, then in a part of the Pudong business district, and on one of the bridges in the aforementioned Shanghai district.
THE FAKE NEWS FOR 1.7 MILLION PEOPLE
In vain did foreigners working in Shanghai and the Chinese themselves refute the message accompanying these pictures, which Yon claimed were taken on a Monday. They pointed out that Lujiazui is a district where the headquarters of 6,000 domestic and foreign financial institutions and banks, as well as the headquarters of 140 multinational corporations, are located.
They commented in vain that the “Starbucks” was closed at the time the photo was taken, that there is never a pedestrian rush in the area of Pudong that was photographed, and that the pictured bridge is bustling with traffic in the evening, not early in the morning when the photos were likely taken.
THE FAKE NEWS FOR 1.7 MILLION PEOPLE
The fake news that Shanghai has become a “ghost city” due to an alleged economic crisis deeply affecting China was read by 1.7 million people, and the intensity of the misinformation was amplified by negative comments. “This absurd slander is just the latest example of the cognitive and psychological war launched by the West, led by the USA, against China, which aims to slander the Chinese financial market and the international image of the country with malicious labels and ridiculous lies,” noted Global Times interlocutors from Shanghai.
“It’s not easy to get ’empty’ photos of Lujiazui. They had to choose a specific time and find special angles,” said one of the Global Times interlocutors. However, the three photos also led to sharp criticism. For example, Nigerian Ben Adegorilla, who said he lives and works in China, posted his own photos of the mentioned parts of Shanghai, showing everything teeming with passersby. “All these paid Western propagandists can write anything to slander China’s growing glory,” the Nigerian noted.
THAMES IN SHANGHAI
“Ghost cities” are a favorite topic of the Western media narrative in the media and cognitive war against China. Lujiazui is not a solitary example, even in Shanghai.
For instance, Thames Town, named after the river flowing through London, built in the suburban area of Shanghai, about thirty kilometers from the city center, was also once declared a “ghost city.”
This specific getaway for Shanghainese, built significantly in traditional English architectural style, which is why it was called “Thames Town,” has meanwhile become very popular, and it hosts an industrial park and the headquarters of many cultural and creative societies, but this no longer interests anyone in the West.
The average price per square meter in Thames Town last fall was 77,013 yuan, or $10,553, which is certainly too expensive even for ghosts.
“Similar media reports calling Chinese cities ‘ghost cities’ have become more frequent in recent months. Cities like Kunming, the capital of the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan, or Changzhou, in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu, are also included in this type of disinformation campaign,” Global Times reported last fall.
The newspaper noted that the term “ghost city” is a typical part of the cognitive war by American media against China. This stereotype tries to influence the international audience’s perception of China and its cities by portraying them as deserted, unpopular, and unpromising places.
HOW CHINA ARMED RUSSIA?
Rumors, for example, about the “debt trap” essentially targeting the Belt and Road Initiative, are part of the campaign led by Western media to, as Global Times commentators point out, sow doubt in China’s cooperation with other countries.
“Ironically, behind this ambitious goal usually hide clumsy tricks used by American media and research centers, making their slanderous campaign against China less than unconvincing. The audience has discovered that much of this reporting on China cites disreputable sources who most of the time simply throw (media) bombs without any solid proof regarding authenticity,” Global Times noted.
Western media triumphantly reported that weapons and military equipment were transported from the central Chinese province of Henan to Moscow at the end of 2022, although it turned out to be ordinary goods for daily civilian use.
Serbian media also saw “ghost cities.” The Serbian media narrative was not spared from similar media operations in the cognitive war. The most illustrative example is the disinformation from 2021, massively replayed before last year’s elections, that the Chinese company that bought the steel mill in Smederevo does not pay for electricity and is the largest debtor to the Electric Power Industry of Serbia. Serbian media sometimes did not resist such challenges.
THE TRUTH ABOUT KANGBASHI
It happened that even respected local media lightly conveyed news about “ghost cities” without fact-checking. For example, the desert city of Kangbashi, in northern China, was once proclaimed one of China’s biggest failures and the most obvious example or proof that “ghost cities” really exist.
That news echoed about twenty years ago, only to reach us with a slight delay. Today, Kangbashi city has about 200,000 residents and in that sense no longer interests anyone. Wade Shepard, one of the travelers in Asia, whose journalistic work the author of these lines greatly appreciates and respects, wrote that Kangbashi was only five years old when it was recognized as a “ghost city.”
Here’s what Shepard wrote after visiting Kangbashi, which we also laughed at:
“This means that a huge part of a completely new city was built and partially inhabited within half a decade. In a world where it took Germany more than 25 years to plan and build a single airport, or where the Empire State Building was once desperately called the ‘Empty State Building’ due to the lack of tenants during the first decades after construction, and where Western cities regularly took five to ten years to implement construction projects such as monorail lines or new subway lines, Kangbashi probably should have impressed the world with its rapid pace of development (construction). Instead, it was mocked as a ghost city…“
