Tribune. As France and Germany strive to rehabilitate their legitimacy as great democracies in their former colonies and in their former theaters of foreign intervention, China tends to root out any possibility of questioning accountability. of his actions.
Stubborn opposition in Hong Kong, repeated requests for inspections on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, and international accusations about the situation in its Xinjiang province, lead the political bureau of the Communist Party of China (CCP) to try. to remove the main source of his troubles, information, and with it the very possibility of criticism.
Indeed, since 2013, under the crossfire of propaganda and the shrinking of any dispute in the public space, critical information and its sources have been taken, by triangulation, as priority targets to be destroyed.
The phenomenon of the suppression of the information space began in the 2000s with the eviction from the Chinese market of large foreign companies from the Web and social networks (Uber, Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.).
Since 2016, and new internal directives from the CCP reorganizing information control, Beijing now closes, in successive stages, access to its infosphere to researchers, journalists, companies, artists, NGOs and foreign diplomats, including initiatives and contacts in China must imperatively be the subject of written and detailed reports. A development which had a dissuasive effect and restricted trade.
Distinguish friends from enemies
The objective for the authorities is to dry up any source of information in order to place its space and its agents, public and private, under total control, thus eliminating any possibility of leakage, provoked or accidental, of unauthorized information. The means deployed to silence these dissonant voices at the source are not limited to the national territory.
The undiplomatic outings of Chinese diplomats in the face of foreign criticism are, in fact, not the simple translation of a stiffening or a speech targeting his own public opinion, or the CCP elite, but another illustration of this will. of suppression of the sources of criticism by progressive encroachment of public spaces and expression, wherever it would come to be manifested.
These verbal or written forays into foreign territory locally create a new fact designed to sow doubt among rulers and the general public, reveal fault lines and distinguish between friends and enemies of China, according to an old technique inherited from the early years of China. Communist regime.
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