Marjana DODA
China is a world superpower, a powerful economy, and a country with great influence in international politics. But whenever there is talk of China’s rise, the skepticism about its role in the global arena grows even more. From media reports, whether in the global media but also in our region and Albania, China is portrayed as a competitor and rival in world geopolitics.
So, the Media, which is known as the fourth pillar of democracy, sometimes seems to lose the principle of being objective and impartial.
Therefore, in this article, we will first analyze the inherent role that the media has in reflecting the truth because when the media offers one-sided news, it endangers the integrity of society. Therefore, the media must influence society in a way that society and its people progress forward.
The media should always give the most informative and accurate news at all times because everything depends on it. Sometimes wrong information can cause chaos and lead to the destabilization of a country or region. So media plays a vital role to balance every aspect of our society.
Secondly, the negative perception towards every Chinese initiative, and their excessive politicization, places ambiguity on the normal economic and trade relations between our region and China.
Changes in media reporting on China are influenced by many factors such as the media’s political orientation, economic interests, information sources, and public perceptions.
There is a type of prejudice towards China and any of its political or economic engagements, which either comes as a result of a lack of information or simply because the media has fallen into the trap of propaganda and disinformation.
While we see our media talking about the Chinese influence and its impact on the country and the region, there is an exaggeration in the media coverage. There is a senseless ego to hold back China’s rise. Likewise, the Western narrative about China, which emphasizes that its investment policy is a concern and a threat, is meaningless.
Although there is competition with European countries, China’s investment in this region will benefit the economic modernization, competitiveness, economic growth, and regional connectivity of the countries of the Western Balkans. Therefore, China is more likely to be a “stabilizer” in the region as it supports the integration of the Western Balkan countries into the EU system. Moreover, three of the six Western Balkan states are members of NATO.
China still cannot exert its influence like the West because of its limited economic, political, and cultural involvement in the region. But on the other hand, the West must recognize the need for cooperation in our region with China and respect the development of these relations in this globalized world.
Nathan Roger argues in his book “Image War in the War on Terror” that the mass media has shifted to a rhizomatic (horizontally growing underground) media system. This system is associated with deterritorialized circulations (take control) and the weaponization of images and this has resulted in a paradigm shift from techno-war to image war. China is a new economic giant in the modern world, perhaps the next superpower of the world in the near future. However, anything we see in the Western media, are different images of China, it is this “image war”, and China is the biggest target of the Western media.
In 2000, when young Bush won the first US presidential election, after winning his presidential speech, he said that China is a real threat and enemy of the US. That speech gave the Western media a new target and enemy. Since 2016, however, the campaign against China has gained new momentum. The reality is that Western media are controlled by Western powers and, therefore, work towards fulfilling their interests. In the modern world, 90% of the world’s media is owned by six conglomerates, and they decide what to put in the mainstream and how to present reality. They present reality according to their ideology and the rest of the world follows suit.
Such framing has been proven in many academic studies on how they “make reality”; a fabricated reality and a “fabricated truth”. Chinese scholar Ma Qian writes that Western media claim to be impartial and fact-oriented. But when it comes to China, the drive to throw aside journalistic ethics and manipulate the truth are now starkly obvious.
It can be confirmed the same for the Albanian and regional media which tend to reflect what is served to them and not from their journalistic research.
There is a deep lack of media to narrate in cultural and historical terms discourses (as opposed to China’s growing economic and political influence in the world order).
Unfortunately, there is an extremely negative and critical representation of China in the Western media, whose narrative has a direct impact on our media in Albania and those in the Western Balkans region.
To understand the media approach and the portrayal of China in our media, it is enough to remember the pandemic period when China was initially accused of being the country of origin of the Sars Covid-19 virus, calling the virus the “Chinese virus”. The phrase “Chinese virus” was misused starting from the prestigious Western media to the President of the United States of America Donald Trump himself.
But while we anticipated the strict measures of the Chinese government to isolate the virus by blocking everything, the governments of various countries, including Albania, neglected to take measures in the fight against Covid-19.
This was a consequence of a negative and untrue narrative, violating the main principle of the media which is information and not disinformation.
However, China was ready to send its teams of doctors, but also all the necessary medical help wherever they needed it, in the World, Europe, and the Balkans.
Even this readiness of China, when help was offered, was met with skepticism and political struggle.
While airplanes with medical supplies and teams of the best doctors landed in Italy, Europe vegetated by closing its borders to its own family members. Italy was alone with hundreds of victims dying every day.
It was only when China and Russia found themselves right next to Italy that Europe woke up with complaints claiming that Italy was forming new alliances.
Shouldn’t we all have been together in this fight?
What is the importance of new or old alliances, East, West, Europe, or Asia?
On the 75th anniversary of the founding of the UN, world leaders unanimously acknowledged that the COVID-19 pandemic has been a test, demonstrating that multilateral cooperation is key to overcoming global challenges, they said in statements – stressing the need for collective action to address common threats and “vaccine multilateralism” to fight the coronavirus.
But the world leaders forgot about “multilateralism” as soon as the conference ended, as they faced the divisions and prejudices against the origin of the vaccines… the Russian, Chinese, American, or European vaccine?
Even vaccines were unfortunately distributed based on each country’s alliances and people’s health and lives turned into a geopolitical game.
Also in the geopolitical arena, China is negatively judged in its commitment to peace and stabilization.
For example, the economic and humanitarian aid that China provided to Afghanistan after the withdrawal of US troops was trumpeted in the media as an approach by China to replace the US in the region.
Meanwhile, humanitarian aid is still urgent in Afghanistan to ensure peace and stability in the country. In fact, in our media, instead of talking about the two-decade failure of the American military intervention in Afghanistan, there was talk in the TV studio about how China has already signaled its willingness to cooperate with the Taliban.
But what should be the role of the media in our society and what purposes does it serve?
Isn’t the media the best catalyst for relations between countries and people?
Why are the implementation of projects with a significant impact not reflected in the framework of the China-CEEC platform in the Balkans, how well have these become known to our public?
There are several projects and investments within the China-CEEC platform in the Balkans, and Europe in infrastructure, energy, telecommunications, the mining sector, etc. but there has been no media coverage of the successful implementation of these giant projects, as in Poland, Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, etc
Also, with other initiatives launched by China, the tendency is to find elements of Chinese “influence” instead of analyzing them objectively. The media needs to do more to see the reality more clearly beyond the prejudice towards Chinese initiatives aimed at prosperity and peace.
Initiatives like;
Global Security Initiative proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping contributes to addressing international security challenges.
The Global Development initiative, where China is speeding up cooperation with countries and international organizations in various fields such as green development, sharing satellite data, and providing digital products that include global data in the ecological field to help various countries to guaranteeing food safety, environmental protection, etc.
Global Civilization Initiative. This initiative is essentially respecting the diversity of civilizations, protecting the common values of humanity, highly valuing the heritage and innovation of civilizations, and jointly supporting strong international people-to-people exchanges and cooperation.
These and other initiatives manifest China’s vision for a community with a shared future, and precisely in the name of the people and for the people in the media, journalists must convey only the truth.
In this decade of knowledge and awareness, the media has a great role so that the truth reaches the people. Therefore, the media war fueled by current geopolitical interests must end and it should return to the public, the reader, so as to truly deserve the title of “fourth power”, otherwise it would lose its credibility and legitimacy once and for all.
© 2023 Argumentum
