FROM EIR DAILY ALERT
British Empire Attacks China Again: ARTE TV Airs ‘The World According To Xi Jinping’
PARIS, Dec. 18 (EIRNS)—This evening the Franco-German ARTE TV channel air an ostensible documentary, entitled “The World According To Xi Jinping.” It’s an all-out neo-con attack against China’s President Xi Jinping and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The film has the heavy, anti-Communist propaganda style, reminiscent of the McCarthy era, with anxiety background music added to at least half the content.
The first part is a “psychological profile” of Xi Jinping, presented as a new Mao. Xi is alleged to be suffering from the Stockholm syndrome of those who have been tortured, and adopt the identity of their torturer in order to stop the suffering. This would apply to Xi Jinping because he, as a “red prince,” saw the hideous downfall of his father and his family during the Cultural Revolution, and in order to deal with it, the young Xi became more revolutionary and more Maoist than the Red Guards. This is supposed to explain his so-called authoritarian orientation.
The film’s authors then come to what drives them up the wall: Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative, which they describe in some detail only to characterize it as an imperialist ploy to counter “the American and Western power.” The “win-win” phrase, they say, is double-talk and that China is actually attacking the universal values of the West: liberal democracy, human rights, individual freedom, etc.
But China and Xi’s goal of industrializing Africa seems to irritate the filmmakers the most. Every year Xi Jinping organizes a tour of African states to promote the Chinese model, in which, lo and behold, the “first of human rights is the right to economic development.” The Chinese always use the same approach, ARTE complains. They approach Africans with the line (which also happens to be accurate): “We have succeeded to get out of poverty in 30 years, we didn’t follow the Western model, but we came wealthy and we are now developed.”
ARTE’s choice of people to interview makes their message obvious: former British and U.S. ambassadors to China, Kerry Brown and Max Baucus respectively; former CIA analyst Christopher Johnson; and think tankers such as Nadège Rolland, Senior Fellow for Political and Security Affairs at the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR), who five years ago had written an interesting paper on the BRI, and who since has made an about-face; Prof. Jean-Pierre Cabestan, of Hong Kong Baptist University; François Godement at the European Council on Foreign relations.
Of the two filmmakers, Sophie Lepault is most interesting. She is a former 12-year collaborator of Daniel Leconte at his production company, Doc en Stock. In 2004 they produced a raving film for ARTE, denouncing Lyndon LaRouche and others for having attacked the war against Iraq and the George Bush’s role with the Saudis in 9/11.
