In its statements toward the West, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs delivers an almost surreal measure of deception. Indeed, the ministry might best be described as a blending of Monty Python and the Ministry of Truth from George Orwell’s 1984.
Don’t believe me? Then take this gem of a tweet from the ministry on Friday.
There’s absolutely no “religious prisoners” or “detention of a million Muslims from Xinjiang” in China. We urge the US to stop making political maneuvers & slanders.
— Spokesperson发言人办公室 (@MFA_China) April 3, 2020
This is a real newspeak-style deletion of reality of which Big Brother would be proud. It’s extraordinary, even by the ministry’s soaring standards for denial of reality because it is a direct and obvious contradiction of plainly established fact.
The question of whether China operates reeducation camps for millions of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang really isn’t debatable. The Chinese Communist Party itself has openly admitted that it operates these concentration camps, although it claims the detention facilities are holiday camps rather than a gulag. But, beyond the Chinese government, we also have the fact of witness testimony. Thousands of Uighurs have told family members around the world what is happening in those camps. Then, we have the international reporting and research on the camps.
So, we know the truth.
And the truth is that Beijing is trying to purge the cultural values and sacred faith of millions of individuals. While Xinjiang did have counterterrorism challenges, that was just the excuse the regime used to throw its free-thinking citizens into the gulag and then to use them as servile labor.
Still, this is just the tip of the iceberg for the ministry.
When it’s not lying about the nature of the regime it serves, it’s engaged in other absurdities. Take the chief spokesperson’s threats to American journalists. Or the ministry’s resident troll Zhao Lijian’s role in spreading lies and engaging in Twitter shouting matches. It’s just part and parcel with Xi Jinping’s broader strategy to ensure that he is never seen as anything but omnipotent in the eyes of his people and anything but a trusted partner in the eyes of the world.
We should give China’s deception strategy the disdain it deserves. That tweet represents the same truth China applies in its description of Hong Kong protesters and on so many other issues. It’s all lies.
