Now that the Hong Kong local district council elections are over, the diagnoses on China's willful blindness to reality are out.

Foreign Policy, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal have all converged onto one talking point.

They have concluded that Beijing did not see the pro-democracy landslide victory, because the Chinese government simply got high on its own Hong Kong propaganda supply.

Inner workings of propaganda machinery

The most insightful article out of the three was written by FP, titled, "Hong Kongers Break Beijing’s Delusions of Victory".

The FP writer, James Palmer, had unprecedented access to editors and reporters from the various Chinese state media, both foreign and Chinese, as he worked as the foreign editor for the Global Times from 2009 to 2016.

His past employment has come in handy, presumably because those who spoke to him know and trust him well enough from before, to speak with him in confidence now.

Within a day of the Hong Kong elections results, he had already interviewed staff from:

• China Daily (the flagship English-language newspaper of state media)

• Global Times (the English-language version of the nationalist tabloid) and

• People’s Daily (the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party).

All those interviewed universally requested anonymity.

What the interviewees provided was an inside look into the machinery that keeps Beijing's narrative going.

Questions about Beijing's quality of information

It turns out that Chinese state media had articles written the night before the Nov. 24 Hong Kong council elections, which assumed a strong victory for the Chinese establishment.

These stories even included predictions of increased majorities.

The copy was written, and gaps were awaiting official numbers so they could just be inserted in as they were made known.

It should be noted that filing stories before the actual events come to pass is a common enough practice in newsrooms.

However, Palmer wrote that there was a conspicuous lack of alternative copy anticipating a democratic victory in Hong Kong -- a major tell-tale sign, if there ever was one.

If such a practice of writing contrary stories is untenable, it would be due to the sensitivities of a paranoid and insecure regime that will not and cannot even fathom anything else other than having its way.

If and when such "unpatriotic" articles are simply unwritable for political reasons even before publication, it is a clear indication that one's own survival will be in jeopardy if one ever tried to do so.

What is the purpose of the Chinese state media?

The single biggest problem identified is this: The people in charge of manipulating Hong Kong public opinion for the Chinese Communist Party are also the people charged with reporting on their own success.

This ultimately created a distortion field that even sucked in the Chinese authorities.

The major culprit pointed out by FP, would be the Hong Kong Liaison Office, the chief channel and a government organ.

It is officially in charge of pushing mainland-Hong Kong integration, while acting as the coordinator for United Front policies.

As an intelligence-collecting unit, it transmits reports from the ground back to the government, besides putting them out into wider society to shape perspectives and mobilise feelings.

The ongoing Hong Kong protests, a misreading of the ground, and the "shock" elections results, have since been viewed as a massive failure for the Liaison Office.

The false "silent majority" narrative

As clever as the "silent majority" narrative was, it was still going to be a long-shot, one-off bet that would have been impressive if it actually did come to pass and prove itself right, and allow the Liaison Office to redeem itself.

But there was no room for manoeuvering or for counter-narratives to exist, as they were all too effectively suppressed -- to the extent, the wiggle room was eliminated.

Even though it might sound unbelievable on hindsight now, but China's state media were saying before the election results came out that this voting exercise was to be a referendum on the protests and protesters, which will prove that the majority of Hongkongers were actually against the chaos.

This was why Chinese state media have long argued that the frustrations in Hong Kong have stemmed from economic issues, such as sky-high housing costs, and depicted demonstrators as paid thugs.

Alas, there was no fringe group dictating the protests.

Nor were there thugs and bullies smothering the voices of the rest of Hong Kong society.

The fact remains that Chinese influence in the city is deemed highly undesirable, and the unhappiness with Beijing is more real and pronounced than what the CCP imagined.

China cannot alter reality outside of China

Within mainland China, Chinese authorities can warp reality.

They can prevent internet searches of certain news and terms, and perspectives can be programmed to spout party and patriotic lines to keep the population cocooned in a bubble of prosperity and neuroses.

Beijing was, hence, left shell-shocked and dumbstruck when it became clear the pro-democracy candidates crushed the pro-Beijing candidates on Monday, Nov. 25, 2019.

The vote on Sunday has severely undercut the government’s narrative.

The immediate silence from the news media suggested the government had not decided yet how to respond.

Right now it is still trying to come up with something tangible.

However, China observers are sure the rhetoric and hardline stance of the CCP will show itself in the weeks to come, as the Hong Kong protests continue with no signs of ending.

To save face and calibrate a response, Chinese officials directed their ire at the United States -- a familiar foe.

It is a nationalistic message that plays well to the masses at home -- one that blames foreign forces for interfering with the elections.

This sudden pivot reflects the ruling Communist Party’s continuing struggle to understand one of its worst political crises in decades.

China can start to do better by not buying its own propaganda

The CCP leadership, to its credit, is aware of this blind spot.

FP also mentioned that the party usually receives its information through a variety of methods, including neican (“internal reports”) produced by media staff.

These tend to come from the official news agency Xinhua, according to Palmer, which is for the leadership and informal channels -- sometimes deliberately circumventing official sources to get at the truth.

Political incentives, however, cause multiple sources to repeat the same comforting narratives to the leadership, which then becomes convinced of its credibility.

The toughest challenge for open societies to come to terms with China is perhaps its cultural and existential elements.

The CCP's survival and legitimacy are tied up with its dominance.

This would also make Hongkongers' gripes and grievances inaccessible, on purpose and by default:

FP explained it as such:

Both the CCP leadership and ordinary mainlanders are also given to a crude Marxist analysis that sees material interests as dominant and finds ideological ones -- especially those opposed to the CCP -- hard to process.

[New York Times] | [Wall Street Journal] | [Foreign Policy]

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