China Broadcasting Agency - CBA

02/14/2023

Thoughts and prayers for everyone in Türkiye and Syria. China stands with you in your moment of grief and loss. 🇹🇷🇪🇭

12/01/2022

11/30/2022

Harvard professor Graham Allison's book "Destined for war"

He reminds of America's behavior when it was an emerging great power at a similar stage as China today, with Teddy Roosevelt (TR) in command: the Spanish-American war, the Monroe doctrine, the Panama canal, the Alaska boundary dispute, etc.

All enforced at the point of a gun.

He asks "If China were to become half as demanding now as the US was then, will American leaders today find a way to adapt as adroitly as the British did [back then]?"

And he points out that so far "the differences between Xi and TR are more striking than the similarities"

What is obvious though, is that there is indeed more defiance and resentment in China towards the West since Trump and Covid.

It's pretty damn obvious why. They've been accused non-stop of every conceivable evil, from committing genocide to unleashing Covid on the world.

11/30/2022

What if the US got its wish and induced regime change toward a liberal democrat China, what would happen?

Be very careful what you wish for.

The Chinese are deeply aware of the "century of humiliation", it's mighty powerful in China.

They also yearn for China's rejuvenation and are on the lookout for any foreign attempts to counter it.

These are powerful forces: to get elected anyone would undoubtedly play on this.

There is little doubt we'd end up with a China immensely more assertive and nationalist than it is today.

Credit: Arnaud Bertrand

11/29/2022

One interesting aspect of the protests in China is that they shatter several persistent myths about the country.

1) Chinese people can’t protest. There are actually 100s, if not 1000s of protests in China every year. The visibility of those particular protests - because they happen in many places at once (which is very rare) - make it clear to the world that contrary to widespread belief Chinese people actually do protest!

2) China is a police state. Many videos circulating on Twitter of people - often rather smugly to be honest - arguing with .policemen, where it’s clear there is actually very little fear of the police in China.

(Chinese people are more confrontational with policemen than in most other nations)

3) The Chinese don’t know what’s happening in their own country. This is one of the dumber myths: my experience is that the Chinese are actually much more aware of what’s happening in China than foreigners, duh!

Those protests, in several cities throughout China at the same time, demonstrate this: they happened because of a fire that killed 10 people in Xinjiang that, so the narrative goes, the firemen couldn’t access in time due to 0-Covid.

Despite this, that’s the info that got spread everywhere around China almost instantly. It demonstrates that there are widespread information networks that reach the whole population even if the information in question don’t agree with state media.

4) The Chinese government has “total control” of the population: social credit score, bla bla bla.

For the nth time, the social credit score is a myth, and no, obviously, the Chinese government doesn’t have total control of the population. If the people widely disagree with something, as is increasingly the case with zero covid, the situation can obviously fast become unsustainable for the government.

5) It also destroys the myth that for the past 30 years there was a lot of repressed and hidden anger at the government in China.

6) Last but not least, it shows that you’ve largely been lied to about China, that the mainstream picture - a dark monster of a government with a population utterly brainwashed and under their total control - is a far cry from reality which is of course much more nuanced.

Now that’s not to say that the Chinese government is powerless. China does have a very strong state, no question about that.

But it is far from all-powerful and, most importantly, it does rely on the people’s satisfaction, as China’s history has proven time and time again.

Credit: Arnaud Bertrand