China unilaterally suspended cross-strait communication mechanisms late last month after judging that President Tsai had failed to meet Beijing’s expectations.
The News Lens
Date: 2016/07/18
By: J. Michael Cole
Sometimes it is not enough for China’s propaganda organs to brainwash people through
Photo Credit：AP/ 達志影像
repetition, such as, say, by insisting that there is only one China and that Taiwan is indivisibly part of it. On some occasions the facts themselves must be created.
China did just that at the weekend when the Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece Xinhua news agency reported on remarks by Taiwan Affairs Office chairman Zhang Zhijun (張志軍). During a speech at the fifth World Peace Forum in Beijing on Sunday, Zhang, a keen practitioner of saturation propaganda, touched on souring relations in the Taiwan Strait following the election of Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) as president in Taiwan.
While there was nothing atypical in Zhang blaming Tsai’s refusal to recognize the so-called “1992 consensus” and absurd (to the Taiwanese) “one China” framework, he did go beyond the usual rhetoric by rewriting recent history. [FULL STORY]
