WTF is this Inner Mongolian People's Party ??????
It has never govern Mongolia. And what is this "The party was started in 1997 in
. "
That article is an interesting study in influence peddling. Although Mongolia and Xinjiang is a little off-topic, it still relates back to HK.
It is a little scary that in the age of outrage over fake news, that self-described legitimate outlets still wield with such little regard to the consequences.
Nothing stands out as factually incorrect, but the article is more innuendo than news.
1. The opening photograph is of a protest in Mongolia (not Inner Mongolia, China). Not even in the right country.
2. Quoted sources: Radio Free Asia, Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center, a single Mongolian person secondhand from AFP, Inner Mongolian People's Party. 3/4 of these are obviously biased sources. The fact that the only "on-the-ground" quotation is secondhand shows that there is zero original reporting.
3. Anecdotes presented as strong evidence such as: "Images of women applying their fingerprints or adding their signatures to petitions against the move were also widely circulated on social media."
Probably referring to the post from the NYT article:
"While China forces the Chinese language onto students in Inner Mongolia, Mongolian elders write back in protest."
by Twitter user "Ungerni Khooloi".
Who is this guy? Another Tsung Kung-gan?
Furthermore, how is the quote of "forcing Chinese language" not dismissed as nonsense? That is like saying the United States "forces" English language on people of non-English descent (Not exactly a widely held view).
4. This quote is one of the most problematic:
Critics say the Chinese government has been accelerating its push to assimilate minorities
Assimilation of Mongolians (and many of the ethnic minorities) is ignoring literally hundreds of years of history! It was Kublai Khan himself who assimilated himself into Chinese culture to assert his authority over "China". Obviously there are policies to promote assimilation, but it is literally nothing new.
What we forget about Cold War information warfare is that the Iron Curtain worked both ways. You have dissidents that suffered, but they became the only voice. Since people are not freely travelling, there is no counterpoint to the dissenting voice. You can see above, that the articles are staring to cite themselves circularly.
I see the exact same thing happening with the Xinjiang reporting. Almost every news article talks about forced sterilization. Some other news source might quote BBC. You will find that BBC quotes AP. Another news source might quote both AP and BBC, even though it is basically the same. I've tried to trace sources and it seems to all go back to a single source, Adrian Zenz. This guy believes his work is a "God-given mission"! We should be living in the age of reason, but the news is quoting a religious zealot? Pretty much like quoting Iranian clerics on articles about America.
Even though today people can travel freely, the reality is most people don't go very far. As such, this form of influence is still very much useful.
Take this as you may. I was reading an article on China's response to the coronavirus, and there was a comment that said "How can you believe China's numbers?", the author actually responded, "Even if China's response was not as effective as they claim, we can see what is happening in America right now. With such a huge population, it would be impossible for China to hide a disaster on the scale of of America". This is just a modicum of critical thinking, but people don't even bother.