In China-U.S. showdown, Beijing’s steely propagandist sharpens her attack

“Have they no shame? Don’t they owe the American people an apology? Disregarding facts and shifting blame to China only illustrates what it means to be scoundrels,” she fired back earlier this month, responding to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s accusations that Beijing sought to cover up the outbreak of the novel coronavirus.Temperatures rose again this week, as Chinese state television released an animated cartoon mocking Pompeo as a liar, and President Trump blasted back at “some wacko in China.”As Hong Kong was overrun by pro-democracy protests last year, Hua charged the United States with instigating the unrest. This narrative of foreign intervention in Hong Kong is now being used as the pretext for a new sweeping national security law that Beijing announced Thursday it will implement by fiat for the former British colony.Propaganda may not be true, but it can change the course of reality if enough people believe it.

For many Chinese, what they know of the United States through state media is that the CIA’s “black hand” is trying to stage a revolution in Hong Kong, that the United States had clusters of atypical pneumonia months before Wuhan, and that Washington is trying to wreck China’s economy out of spite. Read more…