World

Information insecurity

Drones of information warfare

Even the major Western media outlets came under the banner of the global confrontation.

On June 2, at a special press conference on the results of a trip to Europe, Ukraine and Russia, Ambassador Li Hui, the Chinese Special Representative for Eurasian Affairs and Conflict Resolution in Ukraine, separately refuted information from The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) about the content of his talks and the proposals he allegedly made.

Recall: An American newspaper, as is now often the case, quoted an anonymous European official as saying that Li Hui allegedly urged Ukraine's Western allies to obtain an immediate cease-fire with Russia retaining new regions.

"I don't know myself who this European official is who The Wall Street Journal wrote about, but these reports are completely untrue," the Chinese diplomat said at a press conference after his European tour to find a solution to the Ukrainian conflict.

Anyone familiar with China would have doubts about the reliability of the information reported by a seemingly reputable publication. Especially since it comes from an unnamed source. First, the Chinese diplomacy does not tolerate deliberate leaks; if they say something, they do it officially. Secondly, it is not in the competence of a Chinese official of this level to make such proposals on a global scale.

Nevertheless, some Russian media picked up and retold this "story" at exactly the same time as the Chinese special representative was in Moscow. This, by the way, put him, and the Russian Foreign Ministry, in an awkward position. But we should have long ago stopped taking for granted what comes from the Western mouthpieces of "free speech." At least because recently they have been producing a lot of fakes about China and even more so about Russia.

Take for example the abundance of false information appearing in the Western mainstream about the allegedly forthcoming visits of high-ranking U.S. officials to China to establish a dialogue. It is written and said that U.S. Treasury Secretary Yellen, as well as Assistant to the President for National Security Sullivan and even Secretary of State Blinken are supposedly on their way to Beijing for visits. Time is passing, but nothing is happening. The Chinese do not confirm any of this, and already seem to have stopped responding to such innuendo.

This is what happens. First, an anonymous report appears in the English-language media, and then some Western journalist at a Chinese Foreign Ministry briefing asks for confirmation. An official representative of the Chinese Foreign Ministry is forced to make tedious explanations. They are like: don't believe rumors, believe official statements (preferably from China), the time will come and you will be informed of the truth. And then everything repeats itself.

What good are these fakes, except to discredit the Western media? The goals are different. In the case of Ambassador Li Hui, it is a complication of his mission itself, an attempt to doom it to failure in advance. Because it is clear that the condition "to leave the newly acquired territories to Russia" is unacceptable for Kiev, as it is for many European capitals.

Constantly injecting information about the allegedly forthcoming visits of Americans to China, Washington is trying to present the case in such a way that they are very eager for dialogue, ready for it. But, de facto, uncooperative Beijing rejects all offers. This situation has already been taken apart on numerous occasions by high-ranking Chinese officials. The bottom line is that dialogue is possible if the sanctions and trade wars stop, if the principle of "one China" (and not two, i.e., the mainland and Taiwan) is restored not in words, but in deeds. The U.S. State Department, however, said that Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink had gone to China on June 4 "to discuss bilateral relations." The report from the official U.S. department is already something sensible. But the assistant is hardly suitable for a serious conversation on such fundamental issues.

A week earlier, the Financial Times alerted the world that CIA head William Burns had allegedly secretly visited China in May for talks with Chinese officials. Again, citing unnamed sources. What sources? Chinese sources? Any source, reporting such information to the Western media, would automatically reserve for itself a separate cell in the temporary detention facilities of the PRC Ministry of State Security. Because (let's assume that the visit actually took place and was a secret) people in China know how to keep and protect secrets. Who in his right mind would complicate his life for the sake of a few lines in the newspaper?

Thankfully, the paper did mention that the trip took place amid Washington's attempts to resume a high-level dialogue with Beijing in order to stabilize the bilateral relations. And "the paper's interlocutors said that U.S. President Joe Biden trusts the head of the CIA with sensitive foreign missions." What kind of interlocutors? American? Maybe Burns himself reported to them about his top-secret mission "strictly between us". In confidence to the whole world?

Well, there's also the classic version of the fakes spread over the decades. It's about the collapse of the Chinese economy. Here's a recent one. Bloomberg Economics seriously writes that "a mountain of developer debt equal to about 12% of China's GDP is in danger of default and poses a threat to financial stability." In short, China's real estate market, which has been collapsing for the past three decades, is not going to collapse. As Bloomberg wrote, "China's real estate sector has avoided collapse, but it remains one of the key factors negatively affecting the world's second-largest economy. There are signs of new weakness in the housing market." And of course this entails a crisis across China: "China's economic recovery lost momentum in April after an initial surge in consumer activity. Economists polled by Bloomberg now expect the country's gross domestic product growth this year to be 5.5% year-on-year, which is lower than the previous forecast of 5.6%." That is, U.S. "experts" have discerned a decrease in Chinese GDP growth of a tenth of a percent. And they forgot to mention the fact that this growth is more than twice as much as the U.S. growth. And this is quite understandable, because the goal is not an objective economic analysis, but to influence markets, investors and the global environment as a whole. And in order to do that, you have to keep predicting the collapse of the Chinese economy. It is absolutely unrealistic to do this without using false information.

This is how the Western mainstream and even solid publications become mouthpieces of information warfare, a means of manipulating public opinion. Therefore, any information emanating from them needs to be checked and analyzed for its reliability. Sometimes media fakes are more dangerous than armed drones dropping explosives on civilian targets.