Home » The wolf costume is cute?Scholars: Elephant herds migrate as tools for the CCP’s image warfare | Lin Mulian | Epoch Times

The wolf costume is cute?Scholars: Elephant herds migrate as tools for the CCP’s image warfare | Lin Mulian | Epoch Times

by admin

[Epoch Times, July 11, 2021]A herd of wild elephants in China has migrated across Yunnan since April. Mainland media follow up and report daily and attract global media attention. Australian scholars recently pointed out that this is the “newest weapon” of the CCP’s image warfare, and its purpose is to cooperate with Xi Jinping’s so-called “cute” Chinese image.

Wild elephants become Chinese media stars

In mid-April this year, the 17 Asian elephants living in Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve first migrated from Mojiang County, Pu’er City to Yuanjiang County, Yuxi City, and then 2 of them returned to Mojiang County, and the remaining 15 continued to move north through Pu’er. After entering Kunming, Honghe and Yuxi returned to Yuxi.

For several months, the mainland media has been reporting the whereabouts of the elephants every day. Elephant groups have become a hot topic on social media. CCTV said on July 9 that this group of elephants was wandering all the way to eat and travel through the mountains and villages, and they were carefree. On this day, they came to Yani New Village, Guishan Street, Xinping County, Yuxi City, Yunnan.

Local officials deployed drones to monitor elephants, dropped food baits, and blocked roads with trucks to redirect the elephants to safety.

Some netizens questioned: “Those elephants in Yunnan, and villagers passing by are particularly concerned about one thing: how much crops the elephants ate along the way, and whether there are compensations behind them.” “Those who were completely rotten (eaten), how many losses were there.” It was also said, “Today all the consumer countries pay the bill!”

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The Global Times reported on July 10 that as of June 28, 2021, the relevant insurance company has received 995 reports of these elephant groups, with an estimated loss of 6,366,300 yuan, and a compensation of 5.0692 million yuan has been completed, involving damages. There were 2,803 farmer households.

With such a large cost and price, why does the Chinese Communist Party’s media follow it so much?

The CCP’s New Weapon for “Struggling for the Right to Speak”

In response, Louisa Lim, a senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne, Australia, recently published an article in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in Melbourne, with the headline “China-US image wars intensify Beijing under the epidemic. “The authorities are supercharged” (Beijing played a good hand as COVID supercharged the China-US image war).

Lin Mulian commented that these wild elephants have become China’s newest media stars. They wandered 500 kilometers and reached the outskirts of the southwestern city of Kunming. In particular, the image of elephants cuddling and falling asleep went viral all over the world.

However, she said that along with this story, the official media also outlined how the Chinese Communist Party officials guided the elephants back to their habitat.

For example, an article on the English website of the party media “Global Times” on June 18 mentioned that “Thank you to those elephants for allowing a true and caring image of China to appear.” Lin Mulian said that I believe the CCP has realized that the relevant film can help promote the image of the country.

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Lin Mulian reminded that the time when these cute elephant migration films were widely released, coincided with the instructions given by Xi Jinping to create a “cute” image of China.

Xinhua News Agency reported on June 1 that when Xi Jinping presided over the collective study of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee on May 31, he emphasized that China should strive to create a “credible, lovable, and respectable” image. The day after Xi Jinping issued relevant instructions (on the 2nd), there was a large number of news on social media that elephants had appeared in the suburbs of Kunming.

This is no coincidence. Lin Mulian said that the cute elephant is the latest weapon used by the Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping to promote China, aiming to show a more “cute” image of China in the world.

Lin Mulian believes that elephants are just a manifestation of Beijing’s ten-year obsession with raising its so-called “right to speak.” Xi believes that Beijing needs to improve its global image. To this end, the CCP has redrawn the global media landscape through the overseas expansion of state-owned media, the acquisition of shares in foreign news media by pro-communist businessmen, and the construction of global communications infrastructure such as satellite TV networks.

Use the epidemic to launch a global “impact movement”

Especially in the past year, Lin Mulian said that Beijing’s “wolf war” diplomats used social media to spread false information, especially the spread of conspiracy theories that the new crown virus originated in the United States.

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The CCP also uses ordinary citizens in its “influence movement” to deny the CCP’s abuse of Uyghur ethnic minorities. It shifted from the original goal of “telling a good China story” to propaganda aimed at specific areas, sometimes aimed at increasing distrust of liberal democratic systems.

In addition to online publicity, Lin Mulian pointed out that the CCP also provides free publicity materials to overseas news media. Beijing also spends millions of dollars on advertising in foreign newspapers.

During the CCP’s two sessions in March this year, Beijing’s propaganda offensive was revealed when the People’s Daily boasted that it had placed a total of 4,500 articles in 12 languages ​​in 200 news articles.

Editor in charge: Sun Yun#

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