Nathan Roger argues in his book Image Warfare in War on Terror that the mass media system has been shifted to a rhizomatic (grows horizontally under the ground) media system. That system relates to deterritorialized (take the control of) circulations and weaponization of images and this has resulted in the paradigm shift from techno-war to image war. China is a new economic giant in the modern world, possibly the next superpower of the world in near future. However, whatever we see in the western media, we find different images of China, a deprived nation, killing Muslims and other minorities in their country. This is what Nathan Roger argues, its image war and China is the biggest target of Western media.
In 2000, Bush junior when won his first US presidential election, after winning his presidential speech, he said, China is a real threat and enemy of the US. That speech gave a new target and enemy to Western media. However, since 2016, we observed the campaign against China got new momentum. The reality is Western media is controlled by Western powers and, therefore, works 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 the reality. They present the reality as per their ideology and the rest of the world follows this. Such framing has been proved and established in many scholarly studies that how they make a reality for us; a manufactured reality and a fabricated truth. Chinese scholar Ma Qian writes that Western media purportedly claim to be unbiased and fact-oriented. But when it comes to China, the impulse to toss aside journalistic ethics and manipulate the truth is now boringly obvious.
China is not the only victim of Western media’s bad image construction, to understand this we have to go through the concept of orientalism. Since the Western powers emerged, literary work from Western writers also came out, however, in such books the people of the East were depicted as downgraded or subhuman. Edward Said, a Palestinian intellectual, literary theorist, and historian of the colonial narrative – said explained how Western works, now not just via armies, but via literature; now not just thru conquest, but through anthropology; no longer simply via oppression but justified thru narrative. He showed how the West painted a picture of the East. Snake charmers, belly dancers, thieves, the extraordinary, the sensual, and the deprived.
In the modern world, Hollywood is the biggest tool of the West, portraying other communities, nations, countries, and religions as per their desire. Dr Hamid Dabashi, Professor at Columbia University argues that it is time for a reality check and to come to terms with the fact that “Hollywood” as an abstraction is in the business of misrepresenting everyone. It does not commit to the truth. It has made a lucrative business of deluding the world. Native Americans, African-Americans, Arabs, Asians particularly Chinese, Latinx, Muslims, Africans – everyone on planet Earth is misrepresented for the simple reason that at the epicentre of Hollywood as an industry stands a factual, virtual, or fictive white narrator telling the world he is the measure of truth and wisdom, joy and entertainment. A recent study conducted by the University of Negeri Surabaya (2021) concludes that the Hollywood industry reflects the superiority of the west over China through their designed characters. Hence, the portrayal of Chinese characters is displayed with stereotypes such as yellow faces, skin colour racism, slanted eyes, bullying, and alcoholic habit.
The unique lens, through which non-Caucasians have been portrayed, as stupid and deprived is still practical in Western media. Said saw it in 19th-century Western literature and we can see it across current tradition: switch on the news, read the newspapers, and have a look at the images. What tales are you being informed? Us versus them; The rational as opposed to the irrational; Civilization versus barbarism.
It is a ground reality that Orientalism is an integral part of European material civilisation and culture. It represents that part culturally and even ideologically as a mode of discourse with supporting institutions, vocabulary, scholarship, imagery, doctrine, and even colonial bureaucracies and colonial styles. The such thing we can see nowadays, for example when China is becoming a new economic giant, the Western powers align together against it with all of its forces to stop it.
This is a matter of the fact that in the modern world everyone needs a good image and the bad image leads to isolation and no country can bear it, North Korea is an example of that. In image construction, media plays a vital role. Construction of image by the media has extreme effects; the manipulated image of a country, nation, or religion, has stern consequences. This is what is happening with China; a massive campaign has been going on against this country by western media.
According to Malcom X, ‘the media is the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.’ Noam Chomsky says that media work on a ‘doctrinal system’ where the message of the elite is put out. He pointed out that the global elite – like the Pentagon- controls what type of message is to be broadcasted in print and electronic media. Such kind of doctrine system we can observe against China now a day.