Guardian and NYTimes Completely Misrepresent China’s Military Parade
by Joaquin Flores via Russia Insider
Chinese leadership knows what China can do, has done, and what it represents to the world. China apparently felt it unnecessary to ‘over-project’ themselves militarily, because military might is not China’s primary message to the world.
China has nothing to prove – it simply is. Reflecting this, today’s parade was respectfully understated overall.
This didn’t stop even ‘progressive’ Western media, like the Guardian and others, from playing their standard role as war criminals. We must recall here that the Geneva conventions prohibit media from stoking the flames of war and national enmity, which is clearly represented in the Guardian’s libelous sub-heading in today’s write-up on the parade.
China probably has the world’s largest economy, officially number 2. This no.2 status is a consequence of both some of the skewed tools of measurement, alongside the fact that China tends to suppress its own currency as well as allowing some of its productive capacity to be idle – mostly so that it can ‘grow into’ it when the need arises.
China’s military boasts some 2.2 million active duty personnel, with another 500,000 active reservists. Rather, we should say that they don’t boast – today’s parade of 12,000 soldiers represents only 0.045 percent of its force.
The message today was ‘peace and development’, and China’s premier, Xi Jingping, took the opportunity to announce a reduction of the PLA by 300,000.
One thing that China was very careful of, in connection with this ‘peace and development’ message, was not to make this celebration nominally commemorating the Victory over Japanese occupation into an anti-Japanese event in any way.
The Victory over the Japanese invasion and occupation of China in the WWII period is indeed only part of the story here, but it is also one of the most delicate parts. China has a ‘positive’ and fraternal official position towards Japan today, and Chinese and Japanese joint projects along with bi-lateral trade have only grown in recent decades.
China’s understated parade – with as much or more focus on ‘the people’ as on soldiers and military hardware – must have had in mind not to give Japanese ‘hawks’ more ammo than needed.
Contrary to western spin, and in a clear statement to Japan, Xi Jingping pledged his country would:
…never seek hegemony or expansion. It will never inflict its past suffering on any other nation.
The primary US effort with Japan has been to push it against China. This was also US policy in the years leading up to WWII.
Indeed, today we saw a typically despicable write up in the Guardian about this event. They have ‘conjured up’ an anti-Japanese narrative where there was none. One would imagine that in making such a claim, they would quote some of the ‘anti-Japanese’ remarks by the Chinese premiere. They couldn’t, because there weren’t any.
The New York Times, in classic form, gave us this gem:
“Grip on power”? – They’ve resorted to using the ‘rogue state’ narrative to describe the most populous, stable, and possibly powerful nation on the planet, with the second fastest growing economies (was just surpassed by India). Astounding. And criminal.
The psychological connotation here of this discursive trap is that a ‘grip on power’ is in the face of unpopularity and instability, and is meant to imply that one is losing one’s grip on power.
He assumed his role as president only in March of 2013, and will be followed by the next president.
But the logic and narrative of western Media, operating at an elementary school student’s level of cognitive understanding (and on hopped up on Ritalin and coca-cola), reduces all societies, historical events, political processes etc., to the personalities of individuals. And their undying quest for power, naturally. Certainly this is not a case of projection (ha!).
Perhaps this fits nicely in describing Charles Taylor’s Liberia, but certainly seems like a snapshot from some twisted alternative universe when describing China.
Fortunately, it increasingly matters little what New York Times or Guardian readers are led to believe. Most in the west view their own mainstream (including ‘progressive’, etc.) with a healthy dose of cynicism.
The failing western propaganda machine was unable to take away from China’s real message today – international friendship, stability, and development.
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There is no need to judge the Chinese government by standards one would not apply elsewhere. One can accept, for now, the assurance that China “will never inflict its past suffering on any other nation,” but only insofar as one would believe such an ambiguous statement by any other government. At present, the vast Chinese military exists for internal purposes, although nearby countries are concerned about events in the South China Sea.
If one sets aside the usual overblown rhetoric, familiar in Chinese official pronouncements for many centuries, there is clearly a harsh rebuke to Japan, perhaps intensified by the nationalist policies of the present Japanese government. As one might expect, the Japanese government was angered. According to the government spokesman, Yoshihide Suga, the Japanese government had asked the Chinese government to tone down the anti-Japanese aspect of the celebrations, and was very disappointed.
President Xi Jinping, speaking in Tiananmen Square,
“The Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War were a decisive battle between justice and evil, between light and darkness, and between progress and reaction………
“…… In that devastating war, the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression started the earliest and lasted the longest. In defiance of aggression, the unyielding Chinese people fought gallantly and finally won total victory against the Japanese militarist aggressors, thus preserving China’s 5,000-year-old civilization and upholding the cause of peace of mankind……
“……….This great triumph crushed the plot of the Japanese militarists to colonize and enslave China and put an end to China’s national humiliation of suffering successive defeats at the hands of foreign aggressors in modern times.”
The Chinese people did indeed suffer, but the government has not forgotten the uses to which the past can be put, no more than the government of any other country.
I’m beginning to hate The Guardian more than The Sun. To think that paper conned me for a large part of my life. I always knew I was left, even at 14 years old. When I was 16 I bought The Mirror and the New Statesman, then one day when I was in my early twenties I found a discarded The Guardian on the train. It was a broadsheet so I thought it was another toffs paper, but when I read it I adored it, it was as left as me.
The Guardian became part of my identity, and maybe then it was a much better paper than it is now. I bought it everyday for years and I supported the paper even though I could read it for free on the internet.
But eventually I started looking at The Guardian internet more and more, and I saw that the Right were having a field day in the readers comments section without much come back, so I went for the jaguar and would take them out. I would use lots of facts, with quotes, extracts, and links to sites to prove my point often decimating my enemies on the Looney Right, until the Guardian started removing my posts.
So now I know why there is hardly anyone on the Left winning their a arguments with the Looney Right on the Guardian reader’s section, The Guardian simply removes their posts. Traitors!
They would even take this one below out, to protect the bankers, I guess, but who are the bankers, the ruling class, that’s who. They got into banking because you can make tons of money without having to do any real work.
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