Just SayingAge of hyperbole: China dials it down while America ramps it up
Yonden Lhatoo contrasts Beijing’s growing embarrassment over boastful claims about China’s might with the Trump administration’s unabashed bombast about the power and greatness of the United States
As authoritarian as China’s government may be, it’s starting to cringe at unembarrassed domestic hyperbole over the country’s perceived greatness, conscious of being ridiculed and losing its credibility on the global stage due to backfiring propaganda.
“Recently, headlines like ‘the US is so scared’, ‘Japan is in awe of’, ‘Europe now regrets [China’s achievements]’ have been getting lots of clicks,” an online commentary on the People’s Daily website noted. “But most of these apparently explosive articles … are worrying.”
The commentary called out reports propagating sweeping claims that “China is the undisputed No 1 in several areas”, unsubstantiated boasts that “Chinese technological power has surpassed that of the United States”, and hollow generalisations about the country “taking the global centre-stage”.
“Arrogance won’t make a country powerful,” the commentary cautioned. “Deliberately trying to provoke extreme sentiment and spread bias will trap the public in a vicious circle of arrogance and self-aggrandisement [based on] fragmented information.”