Although domestic and international media were welcomed to the recent 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China and wellrepresented there, and while many outlets provided fair and balanced reporting of the event, quite a number of Western news media mischaracterized key messages so severely that they inverted them completely.
These included discussions and explanations of whole-process people’s democracy and common prosperity, the mainland’s position vis-àvis Taiwan, and China’s repeated commitments to true multilateralism, peace and development. Why did these inversions happen? What sort of interpretive framework is guiding Western media and thinking about China today? Here are six possible answers.
First, the U.S. is experiencing absolute and relative decline according to several key indicators. As numerous internal and external studies conclude, and as confirmed by recent performances in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places, as the oft-cited 2018 strategic assessment describes, “America’s longstanding military advantages have