Spy balloon and the winds of war: how China pushes anti-US propaganda
Did China invent a spy balloon raid to stoke popular hostility against the United States? The article by Giuseppe Gagliano
Since the balloon incident, the regime in China has denied its involvement in spying on American military infrastructure and has recently stepped up anti-American propaganda nationwide.
ONLINE DISINFORMATION ABOUT USA
As we know, the Internet in China is full of misinformation about the United States, including false information about an impending US-China war. It is important to note that the Chinese Internet is one of the most censored in the world, and China has created its own version of YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, etc., which comply with the censorship criteria of the Communist Party of China (CPC).
On Feb. 16, Shijiazhuang City in Hebei Province experienced many flight delays and cancellations. Chinese social media was immediately flooded with false reports claiming the cancellations were due to the war between the US and China. According to a statement from the North China Civil Aviation Administration, the flight groundings were due to "a flying object which was later confirmed to be a balloon."
DID CHINA SIMULATE A SPY BALLOON INURSION?
US-based Chinese observer Pokong Chen stressed that the CCP news was initially intended to dispel rumors of a US-China war. However, the report suggested that American balloons may have appeared in the skies over China and Chinese fighters needed to shoot them down. In particular, he did not confirm the existence of unidentified balloons in the sky. So, this was all part of the CCP's disinformation campaign.
Furthermore, Chen suggested that the CCP either created an ad hoc balloon show in Shijiazhuang City, or concocted the incident as an excuse for ground flights, as residents did not report any balloon sightings.
Beijing is simply using a scare tactic to portray the United States as a hostile adversary, he said. Analysts believe that the CCP created the Shijiazhuang incident to stoke "war fear" sentiment among the Chinese public and to stoke anti-American sentiments.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/cina-disinformazione-palloni-spia/ on Fri, 24 Feb 2023 06:41:36 +0000.