For years, Chinese language media has portrayed the USA as an unfriendly nation that seeks to comprise 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 navy help to Ukraine, and supporting Israel’s conflict on Gaza.
So when tales in Chinese language media abruptly began appearing about “strengthening China-US ties” and “the bonds of friendship between Americans and Chinese”, 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 on 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 Pressure group nicknamed the Flying Tigers and who fought with the Chinese language navy towards the Japanese throughout World Warfare II.
Within the letter, Xi addresses relations between China and the US, noting a deep friendship cast between the 2 nations “that withstood the test of blood and fire”.
China’s Communist party-controlled Folks’s Every day, which earlier this 12 months 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 numerous 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 people”.
Even the outspoken state-run International Occasions, which in an editorial in October described the US as being “stained with the blood of innocent civilians” in Gaza, known as for better cooperation between Beijing and Washington on the day of the Biden-Xi assembly. A far cry from two months earlier, when International Occasions 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 “eliminate” 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”, abruptly claimed that he was striving “to promote friendly 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.
“But it is the Chinese government that sets the tone for Chinese media. So before Xi met Biden the government clearly decided that it was time for China to like America more,” 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 Celebration (CCP) headed by President Xi that units the tone within the Chinese language media panorama.
“There has been a very clear development towards greater state control over the media in China in recent years, leaving very little space for media that are not affiliated with the 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 People’s Republic of China (PRC) is the world’s largest prison for journalists, and its regime conducts a campaign of repression against journalism and the right to information worldwide,” the group mentioned.
“It doesn’t really matter what type of media you are these days,” mentioned Titus Chen, a researcher on Chinese language social media insurance policies on the Nationwide Solar Yat-sen College in Taiwan.
“If you want to survive in the Chinese media market, you have to toe the party line,” he mentioned.
And the occasion’s new line clearly sought to emphasize extra cordial parts of China-US ties main as much as the Biden-Xi assembly, based on Chen.
“The change in media coverage is due to a renewed wish for more stability in the bilateral relations, particularly given the current economic situation in China,” he mentioned.
China’s financial development has struggled to succeed in authorities targets, youth unemployment hit 21.3 p.c 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 trying to send a signal through its propaganda to the US and the West that China is ready to cooperate on a number of issues with the hope that this will secure more foreign investments,” Chen mentioned.
Softer tones unlikely to final
The grim financial scenario has not been portrayed by Chinese language media as an element within the Biden-Xi assembly, based on Tseng, the promoting junior govt.
The truth is, US financial restrictions imposed on China have been described within the International Occasions as giving rise to breakthroughs in Chinese language chip know-how.
Xi’s oft-mentioned mantra about people-to-people exchanges and his championing of such exchanges alongside along with his personal interactions with American folks over the years have been portrayed in China’s media as having led to a profitable APEC summit.
It was additionally identified that Xi acquired a number of standing ovations throughout an APEC dinner with enterprise leaders and that factors of cooperation outlined by Xi had opened a “vision for the future of China-US relations”.
Even two weeks after the summit, the Folks’s Every day described Xi’s endorsement of people-to-people ties as an inspiration for each People and Chinese language that can generate “more positive energy for the healthy development 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 very capable statesman [who] can negotiate with the US and can lead China to a better place,” he mentioned.
Chinese language media narratives relating to the US persevering with in a extra optimistic path sooner or later are unlikely, observers mentioned.
“I think the atmosphere can quickly become unfriendly again,” Tseng mentioned. “And I have still found anti-US content on Chinese media the past weeks, so it never completely disappeared.”
Whereas the optimistic environment appeared to outlive Biden calling Xi a dictator on the finish of the APEC summit, the day after the assembly the International Occasions launched a cartoon sketch meant for example hypocrisy in US overseas coverage.
China and the US nonetheless have basic variations relating to overseas coverage, significantly when it involves the South China Sea and Taiwan, and these variations can simply and rapidly bitter the temper, Wu mentioned.
Chen can be not optimistic that the gentle contact in direction of the US in China’s media will survive.
“A pro-Taiwan gesture from an American politician might be all that it will take for the coverage to revert back to how it was before,” he mentioned.
“And the day where that happens might come sooner than we all expect.”