Someone much wiser that I once said that "the first casualty of war is truth". The problem is that as a child who was born in the middle of the Cold War, which had very clearly defined goodies and baddies, and who still lives in a country which has huffed its own myth making for so long that it has no idea what objective truth even looks like, I will not find the truth by looking in our own media.
I can take it as lore that News Corp and Nine Ent Co. are unreliable narrators with regards Ukraine. The ABC and SBS no longer have the teeth to be able to bite into the truth properly any more and neither of them have boots on the ground. Channel 7 and Network Ten have joke news desks and specialise in ambulance chasing and the footy. This leaves other international news outlets like DW, NHK and curiously, Xinhua.
Xinhua is the Chinese State News Network. Just like reading Pravda, reading Xinhua is sometimes like reading propaganda from the Mars Corporation but instead of wanting to sell you packets of M&M's or Purina cat food, the product that Xinhua is trying to sell is China itself. Admittedly that's also not exactly a recipe for objective truth but unlike News Corp or Pravda, Xinhua doesn't have a dog in the fight. Rather, China would prefer that it all just goes away quickly.
Xinhua reported that on Wednesday, Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, held a telephone conference. Of course Xinhua will toe the line and try to paint China in the best light but in this case, at least a kernel of truth may have accidentally fallen out.
On the Ukraine crisis, China always stands on the side of peace and its core stance is to facilitate talks for peace. China did not create the Ukraine crisis, nor is it a party to the crisis. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council and a responsible major country, China would not sit idly by, nor would it add oil to the fire, still less exploit the situation for self gains.
Dialogue and negotiations are the only viable way out for the Ukraine crisis and no one wins in a nuclear war.
- Chinese President, Xi Jinping, as reported by Xinhua, 27th Apr 2023.
China has a problem. Directly to their north is an idiot superpower with nuclear weapons who threatens to use them. On the other side of an ocean is another idiot superpower with nuclear weapons who has used them in the past. The crafty panda is a big enough superpower that it does not need to fear either the idiot bear or the idiot eagle, but it does need to be careful lest it annoy either one of them and ruin its day.
If you want to find what could be the closest resemblance to the truth, then find a neutral party for your reportage. When it comes to the reportage of the War in Ukraine, then inadvertently China is about as neutral as you can get. They have to be. China does not want to be dragged into a conflict which has no benefit for it.
What you absolutely did not find in the press in Australia, not in News Corp, Nine Ent Co, ABC, SBS, Channel 7 or Network Ten, was the intent that the Chinese Government appears to be signalling here. Why should you? Commercial news networks, especially News Corp, are too busy with their own propaganda to worry with the propaganda of a foreign designated enemy power. Sky News Australia which doesn't even exist for Australians is absolutely not going to report something like this which is in direct conflict to their own narrative that China is looking for a war to participate in.
https://english.news.cn/20230427/fc2db69be7294b21851612e7147bdb93/c.html
BEIJING, April 27 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday held phone talks with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky.
During their conversation, Xi reiterated China's core position on promoting peace talks between Ukraine and Russia, and announced that Beijing will send a special representative on Eurasian affairs to visit Ukraine and other countries to conduct in-depth communication with all parties on the political settlement of the crisis.
...
Persuading Russia and Ukraine to sit down at the negotiating table is indeed a much harder task. Fortunately, voices for peace and rationality are building. More people are waking up to the fact that a protracted crisis to some extent is detrimental to everyone in the world, and dialogue is the sole viable way out.
- Xinhua, 27th Apr 2023.
The West's basic stance in all of this is to do very little, lest they provoke a mad man with nuclear weapons. Mr Putin in starting a war with Ukraine has been quite sneaky in the fact that as Ukraine is not a NATO country, starting a war with it will not provoke or engage NATO into action. The United States' response to all of this is to do as close to nothing as possible. The United States is too busy fighting its own culture war and I think that secretly there is a lot of Russian money tied up in American business, which is why the right-wing propaganda networks of the United States want to keep the United States out of this.
There's an interesting tail on this article. In wanting to paint China as a peaceful power (sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows everywhere), Xinhua has still put a sting in it and indicated that China is in fact very angry with the idiot superpower to its north.
"Those who refuse to endorse peace and add fuel to the fire are possessed by their mindset of bloc confrontation or care only about selfish gains from the tragedy."
- Xinhua, 27th Apr 2023.
Clearly is is a jab at Vladimir Putin. It goes without saying that Xi and the Vladster or their proxies have spoken at length to each other throughout this stupid conflict. Also very clearly is that China thinks that this conflict is a load of nonsense, and given that the idiot superpower across the ocean will not act in its self-appointed role as policeman of the world, then the sleepy panda has to act in its place.
The panda has noisy neighbours and wants to roll over and go back to sleep. Don't make it go upstairs and say rude things to you.
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