Thread by @polijunkie_aus

Global Times named me as “a core participant” in the Great Translation Movement in this so-called “investigation”, but they never for once contacted me for an interview. This is how China’s state media conducts “investigative journalism”.

Let’s start from the beginning. There are no bylines to this “in-depth” Investigation. No one wants to put their name on an article published by one of the biggest propaganda outlet in the world? How humble and selfless!

GT calls the translation a “smear campaign”. “Smear” means damaging one’s reputation by *false accusation*. My tweet thread is based entirely on actual contents from an actual WeChat group. Unless GT can point to error in the translation, where is the “smear”?

GT accuses me of extracting “niche&extreme” comments from Chinese netizens to smear China. However those pro-Putin comments echo exactly the rationale put forward by @HuXijin_GT, GT’s own former editor, and reflect the prevailing attitudes of the Chinese people.

GT asks why do I only see negative messages to highlight? That’s not true. For example I retweeted @AmbQinGang’s heartfelt message on the recent air crash.

Had GT properly done their reporting job and actually contacted me for the article, I could have shown them the interview I did in Feb 2020 with ABC Australia **praising** China’s handling of covid outbreak in Wu Han. abc.net.au/radionational/…

Had GT bothered to be a real news outlet and interviewed the subject of their article, I could have shown them this letter in the Murdoch Press *in defense of* trade relations with China

Had GT bothered to be a real news outlet and interviewed the subject of their article, I could have shown them my writing challenging the conspiracy theory that covid came from Chinese labs

Had GT bothered to be a real news outlet and interviewed the subject of their article, I could have shown them my tweet saying “fuck you” to Donald Trump for using the slur “Chinese virus”

Had GT bothered to be a real news outlet and interviewed the subject of their article, I could have shown them my writing (on the left hand side) in the Sydney Morning Herald *defending* China’s position on the Covid origin investigation

Had GT bothered to be a real news outlet and interviewed the subject of their article, I could have told them that I am not paid by the CIA, because why would it pay me to attack America’s dodgy electoral system and it’s clownish President?

Had GT bothered to be a real news outlet and interviewed the subject of their article, I could have told them not only do I criticise China’s political system when I see fit, I criticise America’s system as well when I see fit

Quoting anonymous “media experts”, GT accuses me of “delusional superiority complex”. Who are the “experts”? Why the anonymity? What are they afraid of? Where is the evidence that I “blindly look down upon my motherland”?

GT accuses me of criticising China with “groundless accusations”. What’s evidence? Show readers an example, a tweet, an article, an interview where I made “groundless accusations”. GT doesn’t even provide a link to my tweets, the origin of the story. How can readers judge?

GT accuses me of “collusion” with so called anti-China forces. Collusion means “secretly acting together in order to deceive”. All I did was giving public media interviews, under my real name. I wasn’t paid by anyone, I wasn’t asked by “forces” to tweet. Where is the collusion?

This the most vicious part: GT implies the movement is responsible for fuelling the recent anti-Asian violence in the US. Did GT interview the police or the murderers? Did they confess reading Twitter or Reddit before committing the crimes? where is the evidence of “fuelling”?

The two horrible killings cited by GT are perpetrated by criminals for robbery, or in the NYC subway case by a mentally ill homeless man. To exploit these women’s tragic deaths to score a political and propaganda point, how much more despicable can GT be?

@globaltimesnews seems to be escalating its war of words on #GreatTranslationMovement, with an article accusing the movement of being cognitive warfare by “anti-China forces”, by Sun Jiashan, a fellow at China Arts Institute

m.weibo.cn/status/4752495…

Obviously China’s state media hasn’t learned of the Streisand Effect. It’s a curious strategy considering the movement can’t reach the bulk of Chinese readers inside the Great Fire Wall. Maybe state media needs to be seen as doing work.

Sun: “The shock for Chinese society from the cognitive warfare deployed in the Russia Ukraine conflict is no less than the 1991 Gulf War. We have been treating #GreatTranslationMovement merely as a new trick from anti-China forces. It’s time to elevate it the national security”

“Our media landscape has undergone great transformation from traditional print/broadcast to mobile internet, yet discussion of cognitive warfare is lagging. We interpreted #GreatTranslationMovement merely as extension of “peaceful transformation””

“The context behind @TGTM_Official is the evolution of warfare theories of US military, from hybrid warfare to cognitive warfare. It incites, provokes, ferments sexist and radical nationalist comments on Chinese social media in order to display and amplify on western platforms”

“While @TGTM_Official incites hatred towards China, they take advantage of the multiplication effect of media attention to take the Chinese Government hostage under the guise of public opinion diplomacy”
Wow! Who knew the translators are terrorists!

There is a reason Sun is an academic star and I am not. He gets paid to see the big picture. As a layman I didn’t realise my translation of pro-Russia social media comments was part of US army’s cognitive warfare against China. Hey @SecDef where is my money?

“#GreatTranslationMovement is an example of cognitive warfare based on deep fakes and accelerationism. Our enemies rely on the carefully curated translated comments to produce more deep faked contents. From covid measures to Xinjiang cotton, deep fakes have been distributed….”

“…..in vast quantities to all forms of world media, used to incite and manipulate public opinion to achieve ideological outcomes. This is a step up from the traditionally unilateral peaceful transformation, with multiple attack points, accelerated spread, cross media synergy”

“The cognitive war has mostly achieved its goals. From Korea, Japan to HK/Macau/Taiwan, from Thailand, Myanmar to India, or even in Central Asia where their presence is weak but still stir up with gender topics, anti-China forces have quietly completed systematic cognitive…..”

“…..encirclement of our country, the foundation of @TGTM_Official. With implementation of Nat Sec laws in HK, these forces appeared to go underground but remain active at the anti-China forefront with their language advantages lurking in cyberspace as a national security threat”

I see a job opening for me at CCTV

“This is an alarm bell. We must study theory of cognitive warfare, elevate to nat sec level. We must study how to better implement comprehensive governance in legislations and cyber technology to achieve long-arm jurisdiction and sanctions on others for our national interest.”

“Must take advantage of our advanced digital industry, achieve synergy between government and civil society, win the modern cognitive war to defend our extended national interest in cyber space” /end

As always, the state media account made the mistake of letting people freely comment on their article. This is the top comments page with thousands of likes. Maybe they are all agents from #GreatTranslationMovement lurking there pretending to be ordinary Chinese

This is the second top page

More hilarious comments skewing Global Times. Chinese people are great!(obviously I skipped the pro-government comments)

Another hit piece appears on People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China. They are really really paying attentions

m.haiwainet.cn/middle/353596/…

Following the time honoured tradition of cowardice of Chinese state media, the article is unsigned.
“#TheGreatTranslationMovement has provided ammunition for anti China forces like @VOANews and @dw_chinese to drag China into the #UkraineRussiaWar

It quoted a member of @TGTM_Official telling DW that all Chinese netizens are “vain, populist, cruel, bloodthirsty, unsympathetic”. As I mentioned below, it was unwise to use such a broad brush, giving an excuse for state media to discredit the movement

“The movement is shameless Western Consumables (parroting Putin, naturally), selectively using extreme contents not unique to China to tarnish entire country and people”

At least People’s Daily is more honest than GT who accused @TGTM_Official of faking contents

Accusing the movement of cherry picking contents to suit its anti-China narrative, @PDChina itself cherry picks @TGTM_Official ’s contents focusing on its initial expose of sexist comments on Ukrainian women. Since then, the translation has moved on

“They take honour in pleasing their western masters and feel pride trampling their fellow Chinese. They are a tool of anti China forces and earn a lot of fame. But they didn’t know one moment they are the west favourite pet, the next they will bear the brunt of anti-Asian hate”

This is always the tortured logic of China’s state media: it’s not the fact they are aiding and abetting Russian invasion of a sovereign country which is fermenting anti-Asian sentiment in the West, but rather the exposure of their positions

“They wish China ill, but only reason they get attention from western anti-China forces is China’s ever growing power”.

Another trope from state media: those overseas Chinese who criticise China are not patriotic.

Look, you don’t get a monopoly on patriotism. You don’t own it.

As an overseas Chinese, I love China too. It’s just that the China I envision is different from the authoritarian model you prefer. To begin with, I want a China where everyone can freely use Twitter, not just the state media paid operatives.

The sycophants at the state media are the ones who are really sabotaging China's prospect to be a great power

Obviously @PDChina’s staff managing their WeiBo account is much more diligent and has the good sense to close the comment section from public view (guess why?). But anther blogger reposts the article and the comments are there for all to see

Thanks to the Streisand Effect of the Global Times attack, I have been contacted by many journalists for interviews. Here is the latest from @NeverlandWang0 at Radio Free Asia

rfa.org/mandarin/yatai…

There are many anti-war voices on Chinese social media as well. This video of Broadway stars singing for Ukraine at Times Square received thousands of likes on WeChat

cbsnews.com/amp/newyork/ne…

The comment section is full of support from Chinese WeChat users. I am proud of them

I was interviewed for this ABC Australia report on Australian Chinese community’s view on #UkraineRussiaWar
abc.net.au/news/2022-04-1…

My interview with ABC News on Chinese communities’ view of #UkraineRussiaWar, part 1

Part 2

Part 3

@JungChauncey this thread might be of interest to you in relation to your article

thediplomat.com/2022/04/the-gr…

This is the 3rd article in English on @globaltimesnews, after three in Chinese, to attack #TheGreatTranslationMovement, in addition to opinions by People’s Daily and China Daily. This one has the added weight of being penned by a professor of journalism

globaltimes.cn/page/202204/12…

This thread is about Prof Tang’s article on #TheGreatTranslationMovement in Global Times

Prof Tang cites an example of misleading translation: 加强管理. He thinks the popular translation “enhance the management” is wrong, but should be “improve the management”. I think he is wrong. 加强 clearly means enhance/strengthen, always in the context of an order from above

In the Chinese version, Prof Tang cites the Xinjiang “reeducation camp” as example of western media’s distortion in translation. The reference is deleted in the English text. Tang argues the camp should be called “vocational training schools”. Orwell would be so proud of him

By rough count, this is at least the 9th article from Chinese state media attacking #TheGreatTranslationMovement. They must be really really worried

Prof Yang complains western media coverage of China focuses on “negative news”.
What the Prof doesn’t understand is “positive news” is normally called “press release”.
Go to NYT’s US page, most of the news is, by his standard, “negative news”

When it suits China’s narrative, it cites western media’s articles in support of Chinese policies. This Hebei Government press release quotes opinions on Bloomberg and WSJ praising China tough covid restrictions

Much of the state media’s ire is on the particular term “social zero covid” used by BBC, accusing it of distorting China’s Dynamic Zero Covid policy. But BBC translated it exactly as the original Jilin Government’s phrase “社会面清零”. The “Zero” is China’s own preferred term.

Prof Tang accuses #TheGreatTranslationMovement of “stigmatising China”.

Look, if @HuXijin_GT, former editor of GT, makes a terrorist demand in Chinese, translating it into English is hardly “stigmatising”, but rather telling the truth.

GT cites a WSJ translation of Huawei CEO’s use of Chinese idiom 杀出一条血路 as example of western distortion. But WSJ readers are not stupid. And the context of the report clearly shows the writer didn’t intend to convey a literal meaning of words

Perhaps this is a good time to reflect why many Chinese idioms and common phrases contain violent and bloody references

GT accuses Google Translate of deliberately maligning China with some of its processing errors. But as the article explains, machine translation is based on user data, subject to user manipulation.

m.posts.careerengine.us/p/61a1c0e54395…

In conclusion GT suggests young Chinese with language skills go out on international forums to tell China’s own story in English. I totally agree. China should dismantle its #greatfirewall and let the Chinese freely access Twitter etc so that no translation movement is needed.

@PDChina, the flag ship state media, repeats on WeiBo Russia disinformation propaganda word by word that US was testing bio-weapons on Ukrainian mental patients

The problem here is Putin thinks Ukraine is an inalienable part of Russia too

Chyron on China’s state TV: “US keeps sending weapons to Ukraine, adding fuel to fire.”
No comment on the fact Russia keeps bombing and shooting at and invading Ukraine.

From Taiwan’s Liberty Times: without censorship China’s social media is full of attack on the government; with censorship the only comments allowed become fodder for the #GreatTranslationMovement

@globaltimesnews: US is adding fuel to Europe’s fire.

Still no comment on the actual arsonist named Putin

@SydneyDaddy1 talks about #GreatTranslationMovement on his YouTube show

Chinese state media calls out American evil by name three dozens times a day. That’s not how this Dark Lord thing works.

@globaltimes accused @BBCWorld of bias for translating 社会面清零 as Social Zero Covid, even thought itself uses the term “zero-covid goal in communities”. What’s the difference?
@StephenMcDonell

globaltimes.cn/page/202204/12…

I was interviewed in this @NBCNews story on #TheGreatTranslationMovement by @Angela_Y_Yang

nbcnews.com/news/world/gre…

LOL this is hilarious: yesterday @globaltimesnews published a story by columnist 补壹刀, about a disinformation campaign by some conservative Chinese Australians targeting Labor supporters, falsely accusing them of Chinese spies.

world.huanqiu.com/article/47knri…

The article is largely based on this @abcnews story by @dylanwelch and @hui_echo. Global Times normally hates the ABC but this story fits Chinese state media’s narrative of anti-China bias in Australia so GT eagerly copy-paste the material.

amp.abc.net.au/article/101003…

Now the fun part: I was interviewed in the ABC story because I was one of the people falsely accused as being Chinese agents. So 补壹刀 sympathetically transcribed my interview, calling me Mr Yang.

But if 补壹刀 were a competent journalist or Global Times had a functioning editor, they would have remembered that they already talked about me a month ago in another column attacking #TheGreatTranslationMovement

world.huanqiu.com/article/47GzMa…

In that article I was mentioned by name as one of the race-traitors who translated extreme pro-Russia comments found on Chinese social media into English so as to tarnish China’s global image
(They also attacked their favourite target @StephenMcDonell)

So I guess I have the rare honour of simultaneously being both a sympathetic subject *and* a villain in Global Times’ opinion. My spy skills are excellent, tricking the Chinese tabloid into both liking and hating me