Probably the most interesting and most powerful is the effort to counter the criticism of and change the perception of China’s treatment of the Muslim Uyghur minority.
This was chronicled by the NY Times in its April 5, 2021 online edition and the print edition of April 6, 2021. (See: https://nyti.ms/2Ovbnn1, which is also a photo source).
The Chinese employ every method they can. The picture above shows a propaganda sign in Xinjiang.
According to the Council on Foreign Relations “More than a million Muslims have been arbitrarily detained in China’s Xinjiang region. The reeducation camps are just one part of the government’s crackdown on Uyghurs.” (See: https://on.cfr.org/3rT5cqo, which is another photo source). The March 1 article highlights three key points:
- About eleven million Uyghurs—a mostly Muslim, Turkic-speaking ethnic group—live in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.
- The Chinese government has imprisoned more than one million people since 2017 and subjected those not detained to intense surveillance, religious restrictions, forced labor, and forced sterilizations.
- The United States sanctioned officials and blacklisted dozens of Chinese agencies linked to abuses in Xinjiang. In 2021, it determined that China’s actions constitute genocide and crimes against humanity.
The Sound of Music it's not - but maybe you can fool some of the people some of the time. The Business Insider (see: https://bit.ly/3dHbIvi, a photo source) headed their April 6, 2021 article "China made a 'La La Land' - inspired propaganda musical about the life of Uyghur Muslims, which omits all mention of mass surveillance and oppression.
The “Bollywood” style musical is designed to portray an idealistic picture of the Uyghurs and their loving assimilation as part of China. “The notion that Uyghurs can sing and dance so therefore there is no genocide — that’s just not going to work,” said Nury Turkel, a Uyghur-American lawyer and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington. “Genocide can take place in any beautiful place.”
The movie is thorough in it staging. While it tells the story of three young men from different ethnic groups – Uyghur, Kazakh and of course the majority Han Chinese, it does a great job of eliminating any hint of Islamic influence because … “Young Uyghur men are clean-shaven and seen chugging beers, free of the beards and abstinence from alcohol that the authorities see as signs of religious extremism. Uyghur women are seen without traditional head scarves.”
The movie is only one element of the campaign. Social media is particularly active on FaceBook and Twitter.
Not even textbooks are spared and are also a target of the propaganda. The China Global TV Network (www.cgtn.com) or CGTN released a documentary purporting that textbooks which had been approved and used in Xinjiang elementary and middle schools for over a decade were suddenly deemed subversive.
The People’s Republic certainly knows how to synergize their information related capabilities to push their point across.
From the relentless nature of the campaign, it would appear
that the PRC is far more concerned with Measures of Production (MOP) rather
than Measures of Effectiveness (MOE). Perhaps an indication of how the program is not working would be the population count of the reeducation camps shown on the map and photo below.
1 comment:
And according to Global Security.org - attendance is mandatory?
China Launches Compulsory Film Screenings to Mark Party Centenary
In-Depth Coverage
2021-04-06 -- The ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is ordering the screening and enforced viewing of revolutionary and propaganda movies in theaters around the country ahead of its centenary celebrations on July 1.
In a directive addressed to "all provincial, autonomous regional, and municipal authorities in charge of film, all movie theater companies, and all production units," the National Film Administration called for the screening of at least two CCP-backed films per week in movie theaters around the country.
Movie theaters in the People's Cinema and National Alliance of Arthouse Cinemas chains must show approved films at least five times a week around the centenary, it said.
"The competent film authorities in each locality are responsible for organizing and formulating a plan for local screenings," the directive, published on the Administration's website, said.
The theaters are being required to screen around a dozen movies about the Japanese invasion during World War II, the Civil War with the Kuomintang government that followed, the Korean War of the early 1950s and the Cultural Revolution era, from 1966-1976, including film versions of Cultural Revolution-era productions including The White-Haired Girl and The Red Detachment of Women.
Meanwhile, a new musical inspired by the American Hollywood blockbuster La La Land, depicting idyllic scenes of ethnic integration in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, where at least 1.5 million Uyghurs and other ethnic minority groups are incarcerated in camps, was released on April 3.
The musical appears to be intended as a public relations response to counter growing media reporting and international criticism of the CCP's system of "re-education" camps in Xinjiang, which have been linked by witness testimony to forced labor, forced sterilization, systemic rape and sexual abuse, as well as the brainwashing of Uyghur children to reject their cultural identity after their parents are locked up in camps.
See: https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/china/2021/04/china-210406-rfa01.htm?_m=3n%2e002a%2e3036%2erg0ao0ejdg%2e2t62
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