this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2023
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If I'm being honest I think China has pretty poor optics/soft power all around in the West, which is obviously because of Western lies and their equivalent of a cultural Firewall mixed with the fact that these socities could not be much more different. If China wants to win over hearts and minds in the West (which I do NOT think is necessary to achieving victory), they need to make China sexy/cool or at least spin themselves as a clear moral/rational arbiter (in a not lame or culty way).
Obviously we Westerners could help a lot on that front too but it's hard to shoulder the optics by ourselves.
They could learn a lot from Japan, which has essentially won the cultural war for America's most beloved pet, or from America itself, which has convinced millions of people across the world (even those it destroys!) that it is The Good Guys.
And what objections did the western bourgeoisie have to this? What objections did the bourgeois controlled press have? What objections did the CIA have? None. Because Japan is a puppet, a land of unrepentant fascists where school curriculum, downplays or outright denies the atrocities their forces committed in the second world war. It is occupied by the US armed forces and completely subjugated. In other words it is not a threat. Neither is its exports of sexualized drawn children a threat. Neither are the occasional capitalism bad messages which the western media itself regularly creates and disseminates without elaborating and certainly without ever giving the impression communism or revolution is a good idea.
The problem with PR In the west and I do think they could do better to be clear because they don't try that hard. Is that there is a ceiling, a limit to what they can achieve because the entire western media and cultural apparatus and propaganda machine is working full time against them. They will not allow them a toe-hold, they will not readily purchase rights to and air Chinese animation for example that might portray China too positively. The media here looks the other way or pretends to see only the cute kawaii anime girls in animes that have parallels to Japanese fascism and mock war crimes but they would immediately spot and scream about propaganda the second a Chinese animation project portrayed even a minor good thing like a government official helping a character as propaganda by the ebil see see pee.