TOI correspondent from Washington: US and China are engaged in an all-out propaganda battle to present their narrative of the tariff war and portray the other side as weak and crumbling in the face of adversity.
The Chinese have cottoned on skillfully to Artificial Intelligence tools to launch a series of AI-generated videos and memes portraying Americans as obese and unhealthy, while mocking the US desire to reclaim manufacturing jobs that Trump and Co say were stolen from America.
Also read: China takes a ‘heavy’ troll of USA
The videos suggest the Chinese now think these jobs are low-skilled and they are ready to move up the value chain, leaving Americans to do the grunt work.
Several Chinese vloggers have been posting videos showing the incredible infrastructure China has built over the past two decades while the US has slid into urban degradation and dystopia, with its once-vaunted cities now eclipsed by glitzy Chinese metropolises that go beyond Beijing and Shanghai, and make NYC and LA look shabby.
Chinese propagandists are also getting personal. Earlier this week, they launched a wave of tik-tok videos caricaturing US Vice-President JD Vance, who offended the Chinese by saying the US was buying products made by Chinese peasants with money borrowed from Chinese peasants. Chinese response: That’s coming from a “hillbilly,” a pejorative term for someone from a rural, mountain area like the Appalachians, where Vance grew up.
Vance, who is scheduled to visit India next week, eventually grew out of that eco-system and wrote an acclaimed book titled “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis” that brought him into national limelight and pitched him into politics.
Amid severe blowback against the US veep from the Chinese commentariat, vloggers are posting video clips showing Vance as an effeminate cross-dresser wearing pink and red nailpolish and with prominent eyeliner, mascara, and lipstick.
Also in the Chinese crosshairs — White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, whose wardrobe is being scrutinized every day for signs she is wearing Made in China apparel to the daily press briefing. Twice in the past week, Chinese trolls have posted dresses identical to what she is wearing from Chinese e-commerce sites.
Both sides are also wheeling out partisan “experts” to back their narrative in a trade war that is becoming more bitter by the day with no sign of resolution despite President Trump’s assertion on Thursday that China is reaching out to the White House — a claim that China is ignoring.
While Beijing is wheeling out academics like Victor Gao, an English-proficient Chinese nationalist to present China’s view of the spat, American are not far behind, trotting out Chinese Americans with names like Peter Chang and John Woo to describe how terrible the tariff war has been for China and how the US will eventually come out winner.
On social media, channels like “China Observer” are posting videos claiming Chinese factories are sitting on inventories while production is grinding to a halt and workers are being laid off. “Tariff War Crushes More Chinese Factories, Rapid Decline Spreads Across Cities, Millions Unemployed,” said one recent story it posted, while another said “Tariff War Triggers Massive Unemployment in China, With Growing Support for Trump to Topple the CCP.”
