Truth ultimately prevails. Western media risk ridiculing themselves unless they stop the fool’s errand of smearing China by fabricating false narratives.
BEIJING, March 18 (Xinhua) — For years, smearing China has become routine for some Western media outlets. Truth, the holy grail of journalism, can be distorted or discarded when facts don’t align with their predetermined narratives.
A recent example is a so-called “investigation” aired on France 2 TV channel. Disguised as food vloggers, two reporters traveled to China’s Shandong Province and tricked a factory staff member into letting them in under the pretext that they urgently needed the toilet.
Inside the factory, they used hidden cameras to film a textile workshop, where they ran into a 12-year-old girl. The girl explicitly said she was visiting her mother because nobody was home to look after her during the summer break. But those reporters asked the girl to perform some task and then branded her a “child laborer” in the so-called documentary.
However, that was not the end of their deception. The duo continued to claim that the factory employed workers from Xinjiang and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). This assertion is an outright lie.
The truth is that they preposterously mistranslated words spoken by a female worker in a recruitment video of the factory on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok. In their production, “full attendance bonus” (pronounced “manqin jiang” in Chinese) was misrepresented as “Xinjiang,” while “bonus for extra days” (pronounced “chaotianshu jiang” in Chinese) was twisted as the DPRK (pronounced Chaoxian in Chinese).
To legitimize their claims, they turned to “sinologist” Adrian Zenz, a notorious China-basher whose pseudo-scholarly work on Xinjiang has already been debunked repeatedly.
The fact that Zenz, who has long been proven to have zero credibility, remains a go-to source for Western media reveals a flagrant disregard for journalistic integrity.
Soon after the so-called investigation was posted on YouTube, hundreds of comments condemned France 2’s unethical tactics and blatant falsification.
This incident is but one example of anti-China disinformation promoted by ideologically driven actors posing as journalists in the West. But these tactics are failing in a world of freer information flow.
China’s expanding openness to the world is allowing more people to see the facts with their own eyes rather than through the lens of Western propaganda. Numerous first-time visitors express shock at the disparity between Western media portrayals and what they experience.
But why do some Western media outlets persist in smearing China? Are they really seeking to damage China’s international image, create excuses for political suppression, and ultimately hinder its development?
Yet China’s achievements speak for themselves: It has lifted 800 million people out of poverty, contributed about 30 percent of global growth for more than a decade, and steadfastly championed multilateral cooperation. No amount of distortion can erase these facts.
Truth ultimately prevails. Western media risk ridiculing themselves unless they stop the fool’s errand of smearing China by fabricating false narratives. ■
