I’ve just finished reading The 24th Mile, an absorbing work of “creative, non-fiction” telling the heroic story of an Indian doctor in war-torn Burma (present-day Myanmar). At one point in the story, the author, Tehmton Mistry, writes about events in early 1942. Hong Kong and Singapore had both fallen to Japanese troops, and the capital of Burma, Rangoon (currently transliterated as “Yangon”), was next in Japan’s sights. Mistry writes as follows: “Rangoon Radio had ceased regular broadcasts; the news bulletins that trickled in were prefaced with the line, ‘Here is the news — do not listen to the rumors.’ The public, cynical and suspicious, changed it to: ‘Here are the rumors — we haven’t got any news.’ ”
This neat turn of phrase immediately struck a chord with me as a description of how the Western media so frequently report “news” about Hong Kong and China as a whole. From reports on Hong Kong’s Western-style national security laws turning the city into a “police state” to those on the threat to the West posed by “Communist China”, rumor, distortion and propaganda are often more commonplace than the impartial conveying of news. A popular saying, often falsely attributed to Mark Twain, goes: “If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.”
If, like me, you subscribe to the view that most people everywhere are fundamentally good, those words may help explain why hatred, division, conflict and warfare are so endemic in the world. Propaganda has a lot to answer for. We often think that propaganda is a relatively modern phenomenon. It certainly played a huge role in the history of the 20th century, most notably in the two world wars and in the Cold War between the West and the Soviet Union. However, it goes back thousands of years.
As far back as ancient Athens, propaganda and counterpropaganda were useful tools deployed by different political groups to influence opinion. Instead of the modern channels of propaganda such as television and newspapers, the Athenians made effective use of their low-tech but equally powerful vehicles of propaganda, including handwritten books, rhetorical speeches, religious festivals and the theater. Greek playwrights were adept at using drama for political, social and moral messaging.
The term “propaganda” seems to have first gained common usage in connection with the missionary activities of the Catholic Church in Europe in the 17th century. In 1622, Pope Gregory XV created the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. This was a commission of cardinals charged with the role of spreading the Catholic faith overseas. In 1627, under his successor, Pope Urban VIII, a “College of Propaganda” was then established to train priests for their missionary work. At that time, “propaganda” was regarded as a respectable and honorable word, associated with propagating religious beliefs for the good of mankind. It was only much later that the word came to have such negative and subversive connotations.
Even in the late 18th century, propaganda was seen as something positive, to be deployed in the service of “noble causes” such as the US War of Independence (1775-83) and the French Revolution of 1789. The writings of Samuel Adams and Tom Paine in America, and Voltaire and Rousseau in France, were instrumental in shaping opinion in favor of regime change. They are usually portrayed as the intellectual philosopher-heroes of revolutionary change, though “propagandists” would be an equally accurate term to describe them.
It was only in the 20th century that the art of propaganda became a byword for lies and manipulation. A turning point was the start of World War I in 1914, when sensationalist and exaggerated stories of invading German troops bayoneting Belgian babies helped to stoke the propaganda machines of Britain, France and the United States. A few years later, in 1917, British newspapers were full of reports that the Germans were using fat from the bodies of dead soldiers to make soap and margarine. After the war, when it became known that these reports had been false, people became more cynical about what they were being fed in the press.
Nevertheless, such cynicism didn’t stop the onward march of propaganda, which became more sophisticated and omnipresent in the hands of practitioners such as Joseph Goebbels in Nazi Germany and Joseph McCarthy in the United States. By the end of the 20th century, following the constant Cold War rhetoric that provided the soundtrack from the 1950s to the 1990s, propaganda had become an integral part of political establishments around the world.
In the 21st century, this has persisted, typified by some of America’s enemies continuing to label the US as the “Great Satan”, and by the West using terms such as “the Axis of Evil” to describe countries with different political ideologies. Such epithets have found an echo chamber in both state and independent media, generally unwilling to challenge the government narrative on perceived enemies. Around the world, lazy journalism, ideological bias, and pandering to populist xenophobia have all given succor to state propaganda.
This long history of propaganda is the background to the current US narrative portraying China as an economic, military and ideological “threat” to America. Allegations against the integrity of Hong Kong’s financial system have been used to support this narrative. One source of these allegations is the US House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. A recent news release contains a letter from the leaders of the committee to then-Treasury secretary Janet Yellen. It expresses their “deep concern regarding Hong Kong’s increasing role as a financial hub for money laundering, sanctions evasion, and other illicit financial activities”. It goes on to assert that “Hong Kong has shifted from a trusted global financial center to a critical player in the deepening authoritarian axis of the People’s Republic of China, Iran, Russia, and North Korea”.
This long history of propaganda is the background to the current US narrative portraying China as an economic, military and ideological “threat” to America. Allegations against the integrity of Hong Kong’s financial system have been used to support this narrative
These allegations have been firmly rebutted by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government, labeling them as “malicious” and “grossly unfounded”. A government spokesman asserted that Hong Kong’s “banks and other financial institutions adhere to international standards and best practices, including those on anti-money laundering and counter-financing of terrorism”. He also pointed out that Hong Kong’s compliance in this area has been recognized by the international Financial Action Task Force. Nevertheless, the US lawmakers’ damaging accusations have been widely reported in the American media.
The key point I want to make here is how easy it is for the Select Committee to publicize its allegations through the media, despite the inherent bias in the committee’s stated brief. This is “to build consensus on the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party and develop a plan of action to defend the American people, our economy, and our values”. Such a loaded brief is hardly one which inspires confidence in the committee’s ability to reach impartial conclusions. The wording is clearly founded on the automatic assumption that China is a threat that needs to be countered. This phraseology is straight from the world of Cold War propaganda. The language is so loaded against China that it reminds me of the classic question “Have you stopped beating your wife?” Whether you answer yes or no, you will incriminate yourself. The wording of the Select Committee’s brief, like the wording of the wife-beating question, is based entirely on the presupposition of guilt. Yet the findings of a committee with such an overtly partial brief are still given prominence in the American media.
It’s a similar story everywhere, with carefully worded government pronouncements and news releases molding the desired narrative. The ancient art of propaganda is clearly still alive and well, practiced by governments around the world and amplified by an accommodating media. We haven’t advanced far from the days of Athenian rhetoric, Catholic missionary zeal, 20th-century war propaganda, and the Rangoon Radio parody: “Here are the rumors — we haven’t got any news.” The lesson for us all is to question everything we read — including this article.
The author is a British historian and former principal of Sha Tin College, an international secondary school in Hong Kong.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
