[New Tang Dynasty Beijing time July 11, 2021]Recently, a group of Asian wild elephants set off from Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, swaggering across the city and marching northward, arousing global media attention. An Australian scholar said that the relevant images are the latest weapon in the CCP’s image warfare, and the purpose is to cooperate with Xi Jinping’s request to create a “cute” Chinese image.
Recently, a herd of elephants that originally inhabited Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, has attracted the attention of international public opinion. This group of 17 elephants started to leave their original habitat in March 2020 and moved north collectively. On the way, 1 baby elephant was born, and 2 heads stayed in place after being drunk at the farmhouse, and finally returned to Xishuangbanna to find a new elephant herd.
This group of wild Asian elephants traveled all the way from Xishuangbanna, Pu’er, Honghe, Yuxi, and Kunming in Yunnan Province for 1 year and 3 months and migrated more than 500 kilometers. On the way, he went through mountains and ridges several times, and when passing by nearby villages, he went to the fields to eat, and broke into the farmhouse to “eat and drink wildly”, and even swagger through the market.
The story of this group of elephants moving north was followed by drones in China and interpreted as a “cute” story.
However, experts analyzed that the migration of wild elephants was due to the severe destruction of the virgin forests and ecological environment in Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, and the invasion of various economic crops. The survival of elephants was in crisis, and they had to drag their families to find new opportunities for survival. .
In order to prevent the elephant herd from posing a greater threat, local officials dispatched police cars, muck trucks, excavators, and drones to the areas where the elephant herd passed. Guide to safety.
Lu Media reported that from Xishuangbanna to near Kunming, this group of wild Asian elephants has been in a lot of conditions along the way. In just 40 days, elephant groups caused 412 incidents in Yuanjiang and Shiping counties alone, directly destroying 842 mu of crops. According to preliminary estimates, the direct economic loss was nearly 6.8 million yuan, which affected the normal production and life of local people.
Some netizens questioned: “Those elephants in Yunnan, villagers passing by are particularly concerned about one thing: how much crops the elephants ate along the way, and whether there is any compensation behind them.” Some said, “Today, all the consumer countries pay the bill!”
In this regard, Lin Mulian, a senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne in Australia, pointed out that the relevant images are the “newest weapon” of the CCP’s national “image war”, and the purpose is to cooperate with Xi Jinping’s instructions to shape a “cute” Chinese image.
On July 9, the “Sydney Morning Herald” (Sydney Morning Herald) and Melbourne’s “The Age” (The Age) simultaneously published an article by Louisa Lim, titled “The Sino-US image war intensifies under the epidemic, and the Beijing authorities have superior methods. “.
Lin Mulian said at the beginning of the article that the wild Asian elephant population that migrated 500 kilometers in Yunnan Province, China and appeared unusually in the suburbs of Kunming, has become a recent “star”.
Especially when the elephants arrived in the suburbs of Kunming, the southwestern city, the scenes of cuddling and falling asleep went viral all over the world. In addition to the appearance of elephants sleeping next to each other, the film also focuses on the footage of the Chinese Communist Party officials doing their best to guide the elephants back to their habitats.
Lin Mulian believes that the CCP government has realized that the relevant images can help the CCP’s image promotion; she cited an article on June 18 on the English version of the CCP’s official media “Global Times” website, which mentioned “Thank you to those elephants.” , So that a true and caring image of China can appear.”
Lin Mulian reminded that the time when the image of elephant migration came out coincided with Xi Jinping’s instructions to create a “cute” image of the CCP.
When Xi Jinping presided over the collective study of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China on May 31, he asked the leaders of the Communist Party of China at all levels to “work hard to create a credible, lovable, and respectable image of China” and “tell the Chinese story.” On June 2, mainland social media began to play up the news that elephants appeared in the suburbs of Kunming.
These two are not coincidences. Lin Mulian believes that those cute elephants are Xi Jinping’s latest propaganda weapon for exporting the “cute” image of the CCP, and the images of elephant migration that have attracted international media broadcasts are actually the CCP’s ten-year struggle. One of many examples of “discourse power”.
Lin Mulian said that as the CCP has become the world‘s second largest economy, Xi Jinping urgently needs to allow the CCP to upgrade its national image accordingly. To this end, the CCP has redrawn the global media landscape through the overseas expansion of media, the acquisition of shares of foreign news media by pro-communist businessmen, and the construction of global communications infrastructure such as satellite TV networks.
In particular, the propaganda offensive launched by the controversy over the origin of the CCP virus epidemic, Lin Mulian said that Beijing used “wolf war” diplomats to spread false information on social media, allowing false news that the epidemic originated in the United States to circulate on the Internet. At the same time, the CCP’s cyber army was also mobilized to refute the allegations of persecution of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
In addition to online publicity, the CCP has also invested millions of dollars to implant publicity in physical newspapers around the world. Lin Mulian quoted a research report from the University of Hong Kong in May. During the “two sessions” in March, the People’s Daily published 4,500 articles in 12 languages to 200 news media around the world.
Lin Mulian is one of the co-authors of the “Unveiling China Global Strategy Report” by the International Federation of Journalists. The report pointed out that the CCP used narrative techniques to improve its image during the epidemic, and is committed to reshaping the global media landscape. The report pointed out that the CCP’s information warfare has continued to increase, and it called for the global protection of news independence from being affected.
(Reporter Li Yun comprehensive report/responsible editor: Fan Ming)
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