Winter Olympics: War Traders Exchange Meeting and National Fanatic Rebound

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Qiu Qing/Zuo Ren Socialist Action

The 2022 Winter Olympics took place on February 4 and ended on the 20th. The Winter Olympics were held under the shadows of the new crown epidemic, the sexual assault of Peng Shuai, the diplomatic boycott, the public anger caused by the mother of Xuzhou Chain, and even the war in Ukraine. Before the opening of the Winter Olympics, European and American countries implemented a symbolic "diplomatic boycott" (that is, officials did not attend the Winter Olympics, but athletes attended as usual) on the grounds of the CCP's oppression of Xinjiang and Tibetans and the Peng Shuai incident. As a result, only Russia was present at the opening ceremony. President Vladimir Putin is the leader of a great power. There is no doubt that Western countries do not really defend women's rights and democratic rights, these are just excuses used to cover up imperialist conflicts and promote the process of a new cold war. But for Xi Jinping, this greatly reduced his attempt to use the Winter Olympics to create the impression of "all nations coming to Korea" and "prosperous times".

Warmongers and Human Traffickers

The Winter Olympics became a meeting for warmongers. In hindsight now, Xi and Putin were negotiating the war in Ukraine. In order to win the support of the CCP, Putin expressed his support for the "One China" policy at the Winter Olympics, and signed agreements with China on finance, food and natural gas. At that time, they also decided to settle in euros instead of dollars, reducing their dependence on dollars in the long run, but a month later, the Russian central bank's foreign exchange reserves of dollars, euros and yen were frozen!

Xi originally thought that Putin could get a quick solution, not only to retaliate against the Western diplomatic boycott, but also to contain the United States to turn its focus from Asia back to Europe, and to benefit from the strengthening of economic cooperation with Russia. Now the war has triggered a strong reaction in Europe and the United States, and Xi has been implicated because he was dragged into the chariot. The New York Times quoted "Western intelligence" as saying that Xi once persuaded Putin to go to war after the Winter Olympics. This report was used by the West to tie Xi Jinping and Putin together, attacking two birds with one stone and attacking both of them as war mongers, adding leverage for public opinion to contain China. How could he have expected this nightmare during the Winter Olympics?

The CCP is trying again to use Olympic medals and sports stars to stimulate nationalist sentiment, but compared to its enormous cost (reportedly estimated at more than $10 billion), public interest and enthusiasm are not high. The focus of the entire Winter Olympics was completely overshadowed by the news of the Xuzhou Chain Mother. Compared with the rich and famous athletes, the Chinese people are obviously more concerned about the "little flowers" who have been abducted, trafficked and abused. According to Sina Weibo's own statistics, on the closing day of the Winter Olympics on February 20, there were 2.04 billion discussions on Weibo on topics related to Xuzhou Tie-chain mothers, compared to only 1.9 discussions on the Winter Olympics. 100 million times, the difference between the two is more than ten times! And this is happening when the CCP's Internet censorship machine is in full swing to purge relevant posts.

The CCP has mobilized enormous power to try to manipulate Internet public opinion. The New York Times and ProPublica, an independent investigative news agency, said that during the Winter Olympics, at least more than 3,000 bots and fake accounts were manipulated by the Chinese Communist Party's propaganda department to influence the description and reporting of the Winter Olympics at home and abroad, and to stifle all critics. sound.

The Chinese Communist Party's propaganda department has sought out champion ski jumper Gu Ailing, making her a centerpiece of nationalist propaganda. She was born in the United States and later became a Chinese citizen. She grew up in a wealthy family, and her "literary and military skills" and cross-cultural image are in line with the CCP's public opinion propaganda of "rising in the east and descending in the west". Indeed, this initially sparked a national frenzy and a cult of the upper classes that helped the CCP look away.

However, there is a huge gap between these seemingly unattainable capitalist "upper society" and the vast number of grassroots workers in China. Why do people pay more attention to the news of Xuzhou Chain's mother than the glamorous sports stars? The Chinese people compare the so-called "Snow Princess" Gu Ailing, who is highly sought after by the CCP, with "Xiaohuamei", and there is a widely circulated sentence among them, "I am still 100,000 times away from Gu Ailing's reincarnation, but only one memory away from Fengxian mother. Sap". And she has been shrewd and snobbish about the Xuzhou iron chain mother incident, which made many people feel quite disgusted by it.

Cool down on nationalism

Gu Ailing herself has dual nationality between China and the United States, and China does not legally recognize dual nationality. Her reluctance to renounce her American citizenship has angered some people who think she is fake patriotic and privileged. Even why she knew Chinese but did not sing the national anthem when accepting the award was questioned by patriotic netizens. The CCP is afraid that because of the overheating of nationalism, the patriotic standards will become too high, and the praise has turned into criticism. Even Hu Xijin said that the propaganda of Gu Ailing should be "moderate" and "don't rely on patriotism." The Chinese Communist Party's patriotic propaganda has once again gone awry.

Under the new Cold War and the economic crisis, the CCP regime intends to promote nationalism through "big internal propaganda", but the fanaticism of the little pinks often gets out of control, causing a backlash of public opinion and sometimes even using censorship machines to suppress it. On the one hand, Xi Jinping has used the power of national fanaticism to consolidate power, but because of this power, his diplomacy and repressive methods have to be toughened, there is no room for adjustment, and often more serious crises are caused. Especially when the working people watch the propaganda machine depicting the song and dance, and then think about the plight of their own pockets, more and more people will see the false and false of nationalism, and instead seek to challenge the dictatorship and capitalism. way out.