[After trade talks with the United States broke down in May, China was relatively polite toward Washington as the two sides considered their next steps. When Hong Kong protesters began marching regularly in June, drawing crowds that organizers estimated at up to two million, the Chinese state news media made scant mention of it.]
By Jane Perlez
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Chinese
officials and news outlets have accused the United States of being behind
the protests
in Hong Kong. Credit Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times
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BEIJING
— A popular news anchor
watched by hundreds of millions of Chinese poured scorn on the United States,
using an obscenity to accuse it of sowing chaos. A prominent official blamed
Washington directly for the antigovernment protests upending Hong Kong.
Pointed hostility toward America, voiced by
Chinese officials and state-run news organizations under the control of an
all-powerful propaganda department, has escalated in recent weeks in tandem
with two of China’s big problems: a slowing economy complicated by trade
tensions and turbulence in Hong Kong that has no end in sight.
“It is, after all, the work of the United
States,” Hua Chunying, spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said
this week of the unrest in Hong Kong. Like other Chinese officials, she
presented no evidence of American involvement in the demonstrations, which stem
from worries over Beijing’s encroaching influence in the semiautonomous
territory.
This is hardly the first time China has
responded to domestic problems with frontal assaults on outsiders. Thirty years
ago, Washington was accused of fomenting the pro-democracy upheavals on
Tiananmen Square.
But after decades of working together on
economic, technological and even military matters, China and the United States
are going through a breakdown in relations that has turned increasingly
adversarial.
Now, a dramatic singling out of the United
States as a bad actor is setting a new anti-American tone for a domestic
audience that is worried about jobs and sees Hong Kong as an island of
ungrateful citizens.
This is deliberate on the part of the Chinese
government, analysts said.
“Hong Kong is part of the bigger playbook to
blame the United States for everything,” said Ho-fung Hung, a professor of
international relations at Johns Hopkins University. “The Chinese government
knows the Trump administration is not popular in the United States or in China,
so it’s an easy scapegoat.”
[Meet the Trump-taunting editor at China’s
“Fox News” who is a key voice in the trade war.]
After trade talks with the United States
broke down in May, China was relatively polite toward Washington as the two
sides considered their next steps. When Hong Kong protesters began marching
regularly in June, drawing crowds that organizers estimated at up to two
million, the Chinese state news media made scant mention of it.
But now the gloves are off, with American and
Chinese negotiators making little progress at talks in Shanghai this week. Just
on Thursday, President Trump escalated the trade war, saying he would impose
tariffs on an additional $300 billion worth of Chinese imports.
Beijing also does not appear to see an end to
its differences with Washington over the Chinese telecommunications giant
Huawei, which was blacklisted by the Trump administration as a security threat.
As the economic strains intensify, state news
outlets are now depicting the demonstrations in Hong Kong as the work of
Americans and other “foreign forces.”
In fact, Mr. Trump expressed respect for
China’s sovereignty on Thursday, calling the protests “riots” when asked by
reporters about the unrest. “Hong Kong is a part of China, they’ll have to deal
with that themselves,” he said. “They don’t need advice.”
One of the most remarkable anti-American
eruptions came last week when Kang Hui, one of China’s most recognized
television news anchors, attacked the United States on-air as a hegemon that
bullied and threatened others.
“They stir up more troubles and crave the
whole world to be in chaos, acting like a shit-stirring stick,” Mr. Kang said
on the usually stolid 7 p.m. national news program on CCTV, China’s state
broadcaster. The expletive quickly became one of the most-searched-for phrases
on Chinese social media.
In a follow-up video on a CCTV social media
account, Mr. Kang boasted about how he had taunted the United States.
“If a handful of Americans always stir up
troubles, then we are sorry,” he intoned. “No more do we talk about certain
issues. We will also target you. We will bash you till your faces are covered
with mud. We will bash you till you are left speechless.”
China began dialing up the anti-American
comments after a meeting in Washington last month between Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo and Jimmy Lai, the publisher of Apple Daily, a pro-democracy
newspaper in Hong Kong. A statement from the Chinese Foreign Ministry accused
senior United States officials of having “ulterior motives.”
At the same time, prominent Chinese figures
have become more public in their criticism of the Hong Kong protests, and more
outlandish in their claims.
One professor accused the United States of
encouraging pregnant women to appear at hot spots during demonstrations, as a
tactic to confuse the police.
“They are obviously actors, not Hong Kong
citizens,” said Wang Yiwei, a professor in the School of International Studies
at Renmin University in Beijing.
In recent days, the barbed language has
turned to the United States economy as well.
Ms. Hua, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman,
said at a briefing on Wednesday that the Chinese economy was in a far stronger
position because it grew 6.2 percent in the second quarter, compared with 2.1
percent growth for the United States.
“Which one is better, 6.2 percent or 2.1
percent? I believe you all have a clear judgment,” she told a room full of
Chinese and foreign reporters.
While the United States figure is far short
of Mr. Trump’s 3 percent target, economic growth in China — which reported
double-digit growth as recently as 2010 — is at a 27-year low.
CCTV is now regularly showing video of
clashes between protesters and the police that suggest Hong Kong is in the
throes of permanent rebellion. Chinese-backed news outlets in Hong Kong have
published photographs of foreigners taken at or near the protests, including
journalists, and accused them of being American government agents.
Such outbursts almost certainly have the
blessing of China’s top leadership, analysts said.
One of President Xi Jinping’s closest
confidants, Wang Huning, is a propaganda specialist who harbors a dim view of
the United States and multiparty democracy in general.
Mr. Wang, the author of a book called
“America Against America” about his visits to the United States in the 1980s,
is one of the seven members of the Politburo Standing Committee, the highest
level of political power in China. His views are likely to permeate the
propaganda apparatus as it formulates the anti-American campaign.
“Blaming the U.S. for the trouble in Hong
Kong signals a deliberate policy decision rather than an instinctive reaction,”
said Minxin Pei, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College in
California. “It is highly unlikely that the use of such shrill rhetoric has not
received endorsement from the top leadership.”
Beyond the specific issues of Hong Kong and
trade, Mr. Pei said, the Chinese government is trying to construct a
“meganarrative” that portrays the United States as the “principal antagonist
intent on not only thwarting China’s rise with the trade war but also fomenting
trouble within Chinese borders.”
Media experts said that while the government
rhetoric was probably effective in influencing the attitudes of Chinese people
toward the United States, its precise impact was impossible to measure.
Since Hong Kong’s last sustained protest
movement in 2014, the experts said, Beijing has become more sophisticated at
controlling information from outside sources.
“Domestic platforms are heavily censored,”
said Luwei Rose Luqiu, an assistant professor in the journalism department at
Hong Kong Baptist University. “Only posts and comments in line with official
ideology and rhetoric are allowed to exist.”
The propaganda machine has a powerful
insulating effect on Chinese readers and viewers, said Lokman Tsui, an
assistant professor in the school of journalism at the Chinese University of
Hong Kong.
“Even when some Chinese people come across
messaging that is contrary to the propaganda, they are inoculated enough to
‘resist’ these messages,” Mr. Tsui said.
Amber Wang contributed research.
