National Post (National Edition)
What's meant by Chinese diplomacy
There is something quite engaging about the use of metaphors by Chinese diplomats.
“Dark clouds cannot block sunshine; lies cannot cover truth,” said Cong Peiwu, China's ambassador to Canada in a press briefing on Wednesday, in reference to what he called the “lies of the century” — allegations of genocide in Xinjiang province.
Hua Chunying, China's foreign ministry spokeswoman, recently said Canada was “like a thief posing as a judge” in its attempts to launch a declaration against arbitrary detention aimed at China. “The rock (Canada) is lifting will end up hitting its own foot,” she said.
But if the language is colourful, there is nothing charming about the claims being made.
The range of language cannot obscure the narrowness of thought permitted by China, and parroted by its envoys around the world.
George Orwell foretold the concept of “newspeak” in his dystopian novel 1984.
According to Cong, the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou is a “serious political incident” involving a woman who “broke no Canadian laws,” while the detention of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor is a judicial case involving two Canadian citizens accused of crimes against China's national security. “There is no connection between these cases,” the ambassador said.
In Hua's view, it is Meng who has been arbitrarily detained and it is Canada that is guilty of behaving in a fashion that is “hypocritical and despicable.” The declaration against arbitrary detention “looks like Canada's confession in the Meng case,” she said, alleging that some of the 58 countries that endorsed it “didn't even know they were on the list.”
The Chinese Foreign Ministry operates like Orwell's Ministry of Truth — deliberately promoting newspeak, so that the listeners are encouraged to believe that slavery is freedom and war is peace. Far from being persecuted, the Muslim Uyghurs are living “safe and happy lives,” Cong said.
He was speaking on the eve of the “Two Sessions” parliamentary meeting in Beijing, where China's Communist Party leaders will reveal the 14th five-year plan of economic and social targets, which may include more details on the future management of Hong Kong.
The ambassador was keen to tout China's “historic” achievements in poverty alleviation. As he noted, on Feb. 25, President Xi Jinping declared “complete victory” in fighting poverty — “a Chinese solution to the poverty issue worldwide.”
Cong said Xinjiang province is “an example of what we have achieved in terms of human rights.”
Far from shrinking, he said the Uyghur population grew by 2.5 million between 2010 and 2018.
Allegations of concentration camps in the province are false, he said. Vocational and education training centres are no different than deradicalization centres in France. “The door to Xinjiang is always open to welcome fair-minded foreigners,” he said.
Cong waved away accounts of forced sterilization by individual women, claiming such stories are being “hyped” as tools to smear China.
The ambassador cautioned foreigners, including Canada's parliamentarians, against interfering in China's domestic affairs in Xinjiang and Hong Kong. “We will take resolute measures to safeguard our national interests, sovereignty and security,” he said. “I would stress Hong Kong is China's Hong Kong and no one, no force, no country has the right to interfere in Hong Kong-related issues.”
This is more evidence of the Orwellian doublethink at the core of the Communist Party narrative. Foreign intervention in China's domestic affairs will not be tolerated, while Beijing is at liberty to dabble in the politics of other countries, steal intellectual property and intimidate the Chinese diaspora around the globe.
The British communications regulator Ofcom recently cancelled the licence of China Global Television Network in the U.K. because it is controlled by the Communist Party, and is in the midst of proceedings about breaches of impartiality, fairness and privacy provisions. Beijing responded by booting BBC World News out of China, citing “political oppression and ideological bias.”
In newspeak, the world's oldest national broadcaster is guilty of airing false news, while the Communist Party's propaganda arm is objective, impartial, authentic and accurate.
It is a bitter sign of the times that China has co-opted countries round the world to support its malignant policies. Two years ago, 22 countries, including Canada, issued a joint letter at the United Nations Human
Rights Council condemning China's policy in Xinjiang. Four days later, 37 countries, including Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea and Russia, issued a second letter, backing China's behaviour and expressing their opposition to the politicization of human rights issues. Similarly, when the Human Rights Council took a vote on China's crackdown in Hong Kong last July, 53 countries supported Beijing and only 27 criticized the new national security law. Again, support came from autocracies that are deeply indebted to China, as part of its Belt and Road infrastructure plan.
The cultivation of a sympathetic voting bloc helps explain China's vaccine diplomacy, which has seen it export vaccine to 27 countries, even though its domestic vaccination program lags other large countries. “There are no political conditions attached,” said Cong. “We are doing this so we make sure we are together fighting this horrible pandemic.”
It would be heartening to believe Cong's explanation that China is deploying vaccine as a global public good.
But it strains credulity. It would require one to accept that detention centres in Xinjiang are local schools and the imprisonment of Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig is unrelated to the Meng case. In the world of Chinese diplomacy, language corrupts thought, so that clocks can strike 13 and two plus two can add up to five.