Scrutiny is not something easy to digest for the Communist Party of China. Last month witnessed extreme flooding in Central China that destroyed thousands of homes, engulfed Subways and left thousands of people died. The official death toll is just above 70, but the horrifying sketches from the ground zero speak volumes of the fact that the Chinese government has done a prodigious job at manipulating the death figures. But it is shifting the blame on foreign journalists.
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However, a mere manipulation in the death toll does not help the poor Chinese people who have been served a raw deal by the government. The people are enraged, livid and frustrated at their government. The horrendous floods that devastated China’s Zhengzhou city were barely a natural calamity; rather it was a state-orchestrated mass murder scenario in China.
Mothers lost their sons, daughters their fathers, parents their children and children their parents. The Chinese people have, essentially, lost all hope. Their lives are now so cheap that their deaths too are not recognised in China under the CCP’s rule. Make no mistake, the average Chinese citizen has been seething with rage for quite a long time now. The pandemic has already intensified Chinese people’s woes and now these floods can very well act as a last straw for the sulking Chinese population.
The anguish of the people holds the potential to threaten the CCP’s tyrannical rule over the country. Therefore, The Chinese government is on a hunt for a dog to kick its posterior in its bid to escape from the anger of the people. Resultantly, the foreign media has emerged as a constant target for the Chinese government of late. Foreign journalists and reporters are being hounded, threatened and accused of spreading unrest in the country.
As reported by Indian Express, a party organization in Henan province in China issued a call to arms on social media to confront a BBC journalist covering the disaster there. A day later angry residents surrounded, pushed and yelled at reporters from Deutsche Welle and The Los Angeles Times. Then nationalistic commentators and news organizations used the videos and screenshots of the confrontation to wage a large-scale online attack on journalists working for foreign news outlets.
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The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China said in a statement that it was “disappointed and dismayed at the growing hostility against foreign media in China, a sentiment underpinned by rising Chinese nationalism sometimes directly encouraged by Chinese officials and official entities.” What appears like a cultural war has been waged upon the foreign media at the behest of CCP’s bellicose officials. The idea is to shift the goalpost so that the targeted attacks against the government in China can be subdued.
CCP is looking askance upon the daring coverage that the foreign media has bestowed to the devastating floods. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian had earlier on Thursday called the BBC a “Fake News Broadcasting Company” that has “attacked and smeared China, seriously deviating from journalistic standards.” The BBC has said its reporters covering the deluge had been subjected to online vitriol, while other outlets had been harassed on the ground in “attacks which continue to endanger foreign journalists.”
CCP stooges are alleging that these foreign media institutions are undermining the efforts of the mighty People’s Liberation Army (PLA) that was entrusted with the job to carry out rescue operations in the flood-affected area. Hence, any question raised on the effectuality of the rescue efforts in China is being viewed as a direct attack on the PLA’s capability to mobilize its forces and carry out such herculean tasks.
Press freedom groups say the space for overseas reporters to operate in China is tightening, with journalists followed on the streets, suffering harassment online and refused visas. It seems it is the only way left for the Chinese government to escape the irate citizens.
Hyperinflation, no freedoms and rights, a continuous subjugation by the Chinese state, institutionalised supremacy of the Han Chinese, shortage of electricity and water, ballooning debts, a crumbling financial system and much more have contributed to the Chinese people viewing the CCP in their hearts as a hostile force. For CCP, it has become a matter of life and death to provide people with a scapegoat to let them express their anger upon. Otherwise, it could be the CCP itself at the receiving end that could very well mark the end of its tyrannical rule in China.