Chinas Public Opinion Warfare: How Our Culture Industry Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the PRC

Abstract

We cannot have a society in which some dictator some place can start imposing censorship here in the United States, said President Barack Obama on December 19, referring to Sonys North Korea fiasco. That is exactly what is happening, however, and with a far more important global actor, the Peoples Republic of China (PRC), which is censoring not just our movies, but also our universities. Efforts to influence, if not corrupt, our culture-making industries and indoctrinate the American people in a favorable view of the PRC regime may pose a threat to our long-term national security. The U.S. Congress is right to ask the Government Accountability Office to look into the matter, and its probe should be expanded beyond the GAO.

On December 19, 2014, President Barack Obama took Sony Pictures to task for bowing to North Korean threats and withholding the release of the movie The Interview. Among other things, the President said:

Mr. Obama complained that Sony had not spoken with him before pulling The Interview, but such censoring is already taking place in the United States on a more insidious level, and it is perpetrated by a country of much greater importance: the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). In order to see why, Americans need to understand Chinas allure to U.S. corporations.

In October 2014, the PRC became the worlds biggest economy in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP), bumping the U.S. from that position for the first time since 1873.[2] Since the beginning of economic reform in 1978, the PRCs real per capita GDP has been growing at an average annual rate of 8 percent.[3] Given this level of growth and a population of 1.4 billion people, it was only a matter of time before China passed the United States as the worlds overall largest economy.

On a per capita basis, Chinas GDP is still well behind that of the United States ($6,807 vs. $53,143).[4] China, however, achieved this milestone five years ahead of schedule,[5] and the International Monetary Fund now estimates that before 2020, Chinas economy will be 20 percent larger than that of the United States.[6]

It is therefore to no ones surprise that China presents an enticing allure to U.S. businesses. Two-way trade between these two countries amounted to $562.4 billion in 2013almost 15 percent of Americas international trade. Only Canada, with whom the U.S. shares a 5,525-mile border, edges out China, but just barely, with a bilateral trade of $632 billion.[7] The clich that deodorant makers look at China and see two billion armpits is all too true.

This is the case not just for manufacturers, but for most trades, and Americas culture-making industries are not exempt. As business with China has taken off in the past few decades, there has been a surge in demand for learning about China. Universities and film studios, for example, today depend more than ever on Chinese money.

As a trade partner, China presents problems that Canada does not. Though there is a rough consensus in Washington that trade is good for America and that growing exposure to international markets will push China further in the direction of open markets, the authoritarian nature of Chinas regime and its objectives[8] gives many Americans pause. Consequently, the United States has implemented a series of export control regimes designed to limit manufactured goods that are explicitly military or dual use.[9] This problem, however, is not limited to military affairs; the PRC poses a similar problem in culture-making industries.

Without question, rapid economic growth has given greater economic opportunity to hundreds of millions of Chinese people, but predictions that such growth would lead to greater political opening have not panned out. On the contrary, hopes that new President Xi Jinping would curb the states power and introduce rule of law were dashed once again by the Communist Party Central Committee in October 2014. In fact, intolerance of dissent and secretive purges have intensified.[10] As The Washington Post noted, though Chinas own constitution guarantees freedom of expression, the government recently imprisoned a Tibetan abbot and an 81-year-old writer who criticized Mao Zedong. Meanwhile, Nobel Peace Laureate Liu Xiaobo was rewarded by his government with an 11-year prison sentence, while his wife has been confined to house arrest.

View post:
Chinas Public Opinion Warfare: How Our Culture Industry Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the PRC