For years, Chinese language media has portrayed america as an unfriendly nation that seeks to include and weaken China on the world stage.
The US has repeatedly been solid as a risk to world peace in Chinese language media owing to Washington’s insurance policies of arming Taiwan, sending army help to Ukraine, and supporting Israel’s conflict on Gaza.
So when tales in Chinese language media all of a sudden began appearing about “strengthening China-US ties” and “the bonds of friendship between People and Chinese language”, it naturally didn’t go unnoticed.
Within the weeks earlier than the long-awaited November 15 assembly between US President Joe Biden and Chinese language President Xi Jinping at the APEC summit in San Francisco, China’s media softened its strident rhetoric.
State-run Xinhua information company reported on a letter Xi despatched to an American conflict veteran, who had served within the US Air Power group nicknamed the Flying Tigers and who fought with the Chinese language army towards the Japanese throughout World Battle II.
Within the letter, Xi addresses relations between China and the US, noting a deep friendship solid between the 2 international locations “that withstood the take a look at of blood and hearth”.
China’s Communist party-controlled Individuals’s Each day, which earlier this yr known as the US a warlike nation, promoted a set of articles commemorating the Flying Tigers in the identical week as Biden met Xi.
The fiftieth anniversary of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s go to to Beijing in 1973 additionally grew to become a subject of focus, in addition to Xi’s varied journeys to the US beginning along with his first go to in 1985, which he spent in Iowa the place, we’re instructed, “he fostered friendships with American individuals”.
Even the outspoken state-run World Instances, which in an editorial in October described the US as being “stained with the blood of harmless civilians” in Gaza, known as for larger cooperation between Beijing and Washington on the day of the Biden-Xi assembly. A far cry from two months earlier, when World Instances described the US getting “nastier and nastier” in its assaults on China.
China’s nationalist commentators have adopted the media’s softening tone too.
Commentator Hu Xijin, who as soon as known as for Chinese language air strikes on Taiwan to “eradicate” US troops on the democratically-ruled island, wrote in a current opinion piece of the necessity for expanded China-US cooperation.
Nationalistic blogger Sima Nan, who as soon as described the US as a “rotten, crime-ridden place”, all of a sudden claimed that he was striving “to advertise pleasant Sino-American relations”.
The abrupt change of perspective on the US by China’s media and public figures can appear very complicated, mentioned Vicky Tseng, 34, who works with social media at an commercial firm in Shanghai.
“However it’s the Chinese language authorities that units the tone for Chinese language media. So earlier than Xi met Biden the federal government clearly determined that it was time for China to love America extra,” she instructed Al Jazeera.
Alfred Wu, a scholar of public governance in China on the Nationwide College of Singapore, additionally mentioned that it was the Chinese language Communist Get together (CCP) headed by President Xi that units the tone within the Chinese language media panorama.
“There was a really clear growth in direction of larger state management over the media in China in recent times, leaving little or no house for media that aren’t affiliated with the federal government,” Wu instructed Al Jazeera.
In line with the advocacy group Reporters With out Borders, China was second from the underside of the world press freedom index for 2023, simply forward of final place North Korea.
“The Individuals’s Republic of China (PRC) is the world’s largest jail for journalists, and its regime conducts a marketing campaign of repression towards journalism and the proper to data worldwide,” the group mentioned.
“It doesn’t actually matter what kind of media you’re nowadays,” mentioned Titus Chen, a researcher on Chinese language social media insurance policies on the Nationwide Solar Yat-sen College in Taiwan.
“If you wish to survive within the Chinese language media market, it’s a must to toe the social gathering line,” he mentioned.
And the social gathering’s new line clearly sought to emphasize extra cordial components of China-US ties main as much as the Biden-Xi assembly, in accordance with Chen.
“The change in media protection is because of a renewed want for extra stability within the bilateral relations, significantly given the present financial state of affairs in China,” he mentioned.
China’s financial progress has struggled to succeed in authorities targets, youth unemployment hit 21.3 % in June – earlier than authorities stopped publishing information – and China recorded its first-ever overseas direct funding deficit within the July-September interval of 2023.
“China has been attempting to ship a sign via its propaganda to the US and the West that China is able to cooperate on a variety of points with the hope that this can safe extra overseas investments,” Chen mentioned.
Softer tones unlikely to final
The grim financial state of affairs has not been portrayed by Chinese language media as an element within the Biden-Xi assembly, in accordance with Tseng, the promoting junior government.
Actually, US financial restrictions imposed on China have been described within the World Instances as giving rise to breakthroughs in Chinese language chip expertise.
Xi’s oft-mentioned mantra about people-to-people exchanges and his championing of such exchanges alongside along with his personal interactions with American individuals over the years had been portrayed in China’s media as having led to a profitable APEC summit.
It was additionally identified that Xi obtained a number of standing ovations throughout an APEC dinner with enterprise leaders and that factors of cooperation outlined by Xi had opened a “imaginative and prescient for the way forward for China-US relations”.
Even two weeks after the summit, the Individuals’s Each day described Xi’s endorsement of people-to-people ties as an inspiration for each People and Chinese language that may generate “extra constructive power for the wholesome growth of China-US relations”.
In line with Wu, it was crucial for Chinese language media to make Xi the centre of the APEC summit.
“The underlying message is that Xi is a really succesful statesman [who] can negotiate with the US and might lead China to a greater place,” he mentioned.
Chinese language media narratives relating to the US persevering with in a extra constructive route sooner or later are unlikely, observers mentioned.
“I feel the ambiance can shortly develop into unfriendly once more,” Tseng mentioned. “And I’ve nonetheless discovered anti-US content material on Chinese language media the previous weeks, so it by no means fully disappeared.”
Whereas the constructive ambiance appeared to outlive Biden calling Xi a dictator on the finish of the APEC summit, the day after the assembly the World Instances launched a cartoon sketch meant for instance hypocrisy in US overseas coverage.
China and the US nonetheless have elementary variations relating to overseas coverage, significantly when it involves the South China Sea and Taiwan, and these variations can simply and shortly bitter the temper, Wu mentioned.
Chen can be not optimistic that the tender contact in direction of the US in China’s media will survive.
“A professional-Taiwan gesture from an American politician is perhaps all that it’s going to take for the protection to revert again to the way it was earlier than,” he mentioned.
“And the day the place that occurs would possibly come ahead of all of us anticipate.”
