Totalitarian regimes do not report bad stuff. Governments in democratic countries would obviously prefer that their own media not do so, but generally speaking they are not in a position to prevent anyone, including ourselves at Gript or any other media outlet or opposition platform, from covering events that reflect badly upon them.
So, if you able to tune in to Chinese state media and there is no non state media, or failing that can access their foreign language news, in expectation of finding reference to the events taking place there at the moment you will be disappointed. Indeed, we know from the widespread claims regarding the alleged American military origin of Covid 19 within China itself, that what Chinese people themselves read and hear is vastly different even to the sanitised picture provided for overseas consumption by the Xinhua press agency and the English language People’s Daily.
This mornings People’s Daily lead story is the planned visit by the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, to Beijing this week at the invitation of President Xi Jinping. The message being that China is not only powerful but that other powerful people like them no matter what they do really. Same goes for the likes of the China Ireland Institute which is happy to uncritically echo the party line.
There are references in the People’s Daily to Covid- 19 but they are about the alleged 3,748 new cases reported throughout China on Sunday, and that the overall death toll since the Chinese started the whole panic almost three years ago, now stands at 5,233. Another story trumpets China’s “faithfully enforcing new response measures” to ensure that the happy picture painted by the tiny number of deaths relative to global statistics, is maintained.
Now, bearing in mind that this is all directed at a foreign audience which is watching the protests on TV, one might get the impression that the Chinese Communist Party has “lost the dressing room” on the whole Covid hysteria. Xi, on this issue at least, is a bit like the Gaelic football manager who is still pushing the blanket defence years after it has been revealed as a busted flush.
But of course it is not that long ago since the western mainstream media, including our own, and the political establishment were pushing exactly the same kind of policy. It is curious now to read pro Chinese western communist glove puppets such as the British Morning Star which today is celebrating the success of China’s “zero-covid policy.”
Curious for the reason that while it might read not only as blatant CCP propaganda and as widely out of touch with realities in Britain and elsewhere, this sort of nonsense was the very same line being promoted by significant sectors of the western establishment and media, as was evidenced here and reported by Gript’s Gary Kavanagh with regards to the fanatical desire for a Chinese style “zero Covid” regime by the Independent Scientific Advisory Group (ISAG).
Far from ISAG having been dismissed as crazy people howling from the margins, they were given huge credibility within the political elite. They and others clearly regarded Covid as an excuse to advocate for unprecedented state intervention and controls. Backed by state power including police and judicial power. They were also, whether they realised it or not, effectively echoing the policies of the Chinese Communist Party who had and still have obvious motivations in inducing and maintaining measures that threatened to cripple western economics and civil society.
Not surprisingly, and again as reported by Gript, the desire for draconian statism was echoed with particular enthusiasm by the Irish left. At a March 2021 webinar organised by the Social Democrats, leading political figures on the left including Gary Gannon and Eoin Ó Broin spoke warmly of the opportunities that the lockdown was presenting to even further extend the scope of state intervention. Well – and this is not to imply for one moment that any of the participants supports the sort of regime imposed by the Chinese Communist Party – totalitarianism is the logical conclusion of the belief that the state ought to control as much a part of people’s lives as possible.
Totalitarianism is what the brave souls of Beijing and Shanghai and Wuhan and places we have never heard of and possibly never will know of are fighting. They have lived under this terror all of their lives, and their families have witnessed unspeakable atrocities and mass murders and artificial famines over the 70 years of Communist Party rule that some of our leading media were happy to celebrate on the 100th anniversary of its foundation.
As with the Tank Man who defied the People’s Liberation Army in Tiananmen Square on June 5, 1989 and who no doubt joined the tens of millions of other victims of the Party, we can only send our prayers and best wishes to those fighting socialism in China today.
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