CHINA ONLINE

In China, social media is shaping the public discourse on Doklam stand-off

A peek into the discussions on Weibo and WeChat.

The border stand-off in Doklam has predictably animated discussions in mainstream and social media in both India and China. For the most part, commentators and social media users are busy bolstering their respective side’s position even if it means being economical with the facts.

China’s English media is well known for whipping up hysteria over India, but the Chinese language media, though far less bellicose, is not immune to it either.

Take Huanqiu Shibao, the mothership of the pugnacious Global Times. After Sushma Swaraj asserted that the world community was with New Delhi on the Doklam dispute and that both India and China must withdraw from the region to ease the tension, the paper, in an editorial, accused the Indian foreign minister of lying to her country because it was India that had illegally entered Chinese territory.

The paper also reminded India that its “inferior military strength” was no match to the People’s Liberation Army.

On July 7, Xinhua News ran an article “demystifying the truth” about the stand-off. It maintained, among other claims, that India has illegally entered Chinese territory on the pretext of protecting Bhutan. It lamented that New Delhi has made Doklam a disputed territory even though it has always belonged to China, referring to Thirty Six Stratagems, a set of Chinese military directives that lists “creating something out of nothing” as a key strategy of warfare. Further, the contentious road that Beijing is building in Doklam is within its own territory, the article asserted, so it cannot be a threat to India’s security.

Such articles, of course, omit or distort facts. For one, the Chinese media has not cared to inform its readers that China and Bhutan have signed agreements, in 1988 and 1998, to keep peace on the border until the boundary is settled for good. The two countries have also agreed to maintain the status quo on the border, including the Doklam plateau, as it existed before March 1959. In essence, the Chinese media should acknowledge that the region is disputed and give space to the opposing views as well.

Amplified on social media – including Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter which has over 340 million users, and WeChat, a sort of a hybrid of WhatsApp, Facebook and Paytm with close to 889 million users – the distorted views might come to dominate the discourse about India.

Click here for more : https://scroll.in/article/844795/in-china-social-media-is-shaping-the-public-discourse-on-doklam-stand-off

VIEW FROM CHINA

Murky signals: By focusing on China’s English media, Indian analysts are misreading Beijing

The bellicose Global Times editorial does not reflect Beijing’s thinking. Beware.

As the border stand-off in Doklam defies resolution, the Indian commentariat is increasingly analysing what appears in China’s English media, presumably for insights into Beijing’s thinking. It is a misguided enterprise.

Only about 1%-2% of the Chinese media is in English, and much of it peddles hypernationalism as a market strategy, not unlike a section of the Indian media. The Global Times, for one, spews venom against India the same way as Times Now does against Pakistan. Unsurprisingly then, most of the so-called experts who populate the columns of the Global Times carry little heft, intellectual or political.

Since reputed Chinese scholars publish mostly in their own language, they are not read widely across the border.

Instead, commentators in India overanalyse bellicose articles threatening to “teach a lesson” and “reconsider China’s policy on Sikkim”; retorting, in a dig at Army chief Bipin Rawat’s remark that India was ready to fight a “two and a half front war”, that the “Chinese look down upon their military power”; or warning that a “third country can enter Kashmir” on Pakistan’s request.

By giving undue importance to such articles by amateur scholars – merely because they write in English – India’s strategic experts and policy advisers enable them to influence New Delhi’s China policy.

Falling for the trap

If Indian scholars could look beyond the inflammatory editorials in the Global Times, they would realise that the Chinese media’s coverage of India has changed for the better. Save for Huanqiu Shibao, the Mandarin edition of the Global Times, the Chinese language media perceives India positively.

Last week, People’s Daily, the Communist Party newspaper, republished its editorial of September 22, 1962 to remind India of the “bitter lesson” of the 1962 India-China war and warn that China would inflict “greater losses than 1962”. It was, however, soon withdrawn. The Chinese edition of the daily did not carry the editorial, or even a report on the Doklam stand-off that day.

The state news agency Xinhua carried an English commentary asking India “to rectify its mistakes and show sincerity to avoid an even more serious situation creating more significant consequences”.

It appears the psychological war launched by China’s English media is solely intended to invite counter attacks from the Indian media. It is working rather well, if the coverage of the stand-off by TV news channels and Hindi newspapers is any evidence. This “media war” only serves to deepen the common Indian’s negative perception of China, and vice-versa. Young Chinese hold little or no antipathy towards India, but the hysteria over the Doklam stand-off could have them reorder their list of the most hated nations..................................

Click Here :

https://scroll.in/article/844158/picking-up-the-wrong-signals-by-focusing-on-its-english-media-indian-analysts-misread-china