Since the US has neither the ability to beat China economically nor the gut to attack it militarily, there is not much left in its bag of tricks except smearing and rumor-mongering – a level of effrontery that’s really mind-boggling. It is reported on April 23 on guancha.cn that the “Strategic Competition Act of 2021 ” adopted by the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations was condemned by Chinese Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson Wang Wenbin as “severely distorting facts and confusing white with black”. The Act grossly interferes in China’s internal affairs, is filled with outdated Cold War mentality and zero-sum game mindset, and exposes the hegemonic idea of the US to pursue supremacy and deprive others of the right to development .
A close look at the articles of the Act would prove the Chinese spokesperson right in every word he said. For instance, it appropriates a budget of USD 300 million annually to fund and train journalists, civil society agencies, and independent media outlets on investigative techniques necessary to ensure the so-called “public accountability” related to the Belt and Road Initiative, which, in a nutshell, means slandering and smearing. Interestingly, this article somehow magically disappeared in American media’s coverage of the Act.
American media has been very thoughtful for their “patron”, but they cannot always please everyone. Sen. Tom Cotton(R-Ark.) named four mainstream American media – ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN – in an interview and slammed them for being soft on China, acting as Beijing’s bodyguard, and deviating from the American people’s judgment and intuition.
What Cotton really means is that those media haven’t slandered and smeared China hard enough. In his opinion, if you are not against China all the way, you are not against it at all. Indeed Pompeo has long shown us what American politicians are all about – “we lied, we cheated, we stole.”
Despite the US drumming about it causing the so-called “debt trap”, the Belt and Road Initiative proposed by China has received the support of more than 100 countries around the world, including 27 EU countries and over 20 countries in South America and Latin America. More importantly, nobody thinks the West is able to provide a better alternative. For the third-world countries eager for economic growth, the BRI is without any doubt the best choice.
Recently the West seems willing to propose some sort of infrastructure strategy too. For example, Biden is trying to work with London and Tokyo to roll out a democratic, Indo-Pacific version of the Belt and Road, while Europe is talking with India about their own version of global infrastructure pact – both benchmarked against the China-initiated BRI. China welcomes such fair competition, but it despises the US for trying to compete through slander and smear.
Disclaimer: This article is originally published on news.qq.com, and is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information, ideas or opinions appearing in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.
