It seems to me that Facebook is pro-China
Not long after Singapore PM Lawrence Wong made a statement about Southeast Asian countries trusting Japan to maintain security in the region, the 50-cent army went to work, rallying the Sinophiles and other useful pro-China individuals to attack not just PM Wong but Singapore. The meme below is just one of numerous examples of trolling against Singapore on social media. It says that Singapore would suffer massive power outage. Our MRT would be paralysed and schools would have their water and food supply cut off. Frankly, I’m not amused, so I reported the meme as fake news to Facebook. Guess what? No response. Is Facebook pro-China?
Just take a look at the Falungong and other Chinese dissident YouTubers on Facebook. They can have hundreds of thousands of fans and views on YouTube but their visibility on Facebook is dismal. For this reason, I may stop posting any of the more serious topics on Facebook and move to Threads, which is also by Facebook, but the algorithm doesn’t seem to be so blatantly pro-China.
The logic (or lack of it) of these Sinophiles can be quite astounding. One posting on Threads says that Taiwanese and PRC nationals are all “Chinese” and any issues they have between them are domestic issues and therefore other countries should not interfere.
Just a couple of years ago, Wang Yi said this 王毅在会见中日韩合作国际论坛的主要嘉宾时，呼吁三国都要总结经验，携手振兴亚洲。他还说，在欧美人眼里，中日韩都是亚裔，不管怎样都变不成西方人，中日韩要知道自己的根在什么地方。At the Japan-ROK Summit Meeting. Yao mo gao chor ah? Just because of their Asian DNA, they must adopt China’s ideology? By international standards, that remark is horribly racist and shallow. But with this recent spat between China and Japan, Wang Yi turned around and started courting Europe.
What a joke! Isn’t it amazing that these folks can still win the adulation of millions of Sinophiles and other pro-China individuals? Perhaps they think it’s in their DNA to be a fan of the CCP, but I think it has more to do with washed brains. Singapore’s leaders thought that by closing down Chinese medium schools, access to China’s communist propaganda could be impeded. As it turned out, English educated Singaporeans with CMI Chinese make much better 五毛 and 中华胶 than Chinese educated ones and China’s propaganda had gone international. There is now no shortage of 洋五毛。It’s people like me who have kept their Chinese alive decades after leaving school, travelled in China from the 1990s until recently who are not enticed by Chinese propaganda. What an irony.
Just days ago, I posted about Japanese singer Ayumi Hamasaki’s cancelled concert. Guess how low the China Daily can go. They claimed that footage from the empty hall concert was taken during rehearsal and the concert was cancelled because the footage was leaked. Calling out such false accusations may seem like a waste of time. The trouble is, millions of people do not have access to the truth and that can be a problem in a world plagued by conflicts.
Another yao mo gao chor moment came when China’s foreign ministry declared that China does not recognise the San Francisco Peace Treaty in 1951. What does that mean? China thinks that the US should continue to occupy Japan? China thinks that Japan can return to Taiwan and occupy it? China thinks that their good friend North Korea is Japanese territory?
Finally, Okinawa. I was surprised why some people suddenly brought it out, questioning Japan’s legitimacy over island. Ah, Chinese propaganda again. Now, you know where they get all their news. There is a heavy US military presence in Okinawa and for the longest time, residents on the island have expressed their displeasure, not because Okinawans want secession (researched and reported by Japanese media) but because they want the rest of Japan to share an equal burden for hosting American troops. Pro-China media, of course, tell a different story, emphasising how far Okinawa is from Tokyo and how similar the culture there is from China. The thing that strikes my mind is, so what? Singapore and Malaysia have the same culture but does it mean that we should have the same government? Sengkang, Hougang and Aljunied are places in Singapore, but does that mean they can’t be represented by a different party?