New hacking allegations against China aren’t what they seem — RT World News

by Timur FomenkoPolitical analyst

In March, the United Kingdom, in cooperation with the United States and other members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, China has been accused of participating in a state-sponsored hacking campaign Against them. In response to the alleged “attack,” they launched coordinated sanctions against a small group of hackers and their associated companies.

The sanctions were particularly big news in Britain, where the government suddenly decided that Beijing was behind the Electoral Commission hack three years ago. It is worth noting that newspapers aligned with the country's Conservative Party pushed this narrative in an aggressive manner.

These accusations by the Five Eyes countries do not represent real concerns as much as they are a deliberate and opportunistic act of political theatre, largely led by the United States, that seeks to distort China's image for diplomatic and political gain. The sanctions, although narrow in scope and therefore meaningless, are designed to try to send a message to and about China. It is essentially a fear-mongering campaign, seeking to undermine Beijing's engagement with other countries and serve domestic political purposes in the United States.

The rhythm of American escalation and de-escalation with China

The United States has an astute foreign policy whereby it deliberately chooses to escalate and de-escalate tensions with China at opportune moments, which is precisely why it calls for escalation of tensions with China. “Engagement” With Beijing coming from Washington DC it cannot be trusted. The United States does not change its goals or policies, but rather changes its tactics only in view of what suits it at that particular moment. Hence it always alternated between initiatives and deliberate provocations. They usually do this by leaking a particular report or development to the media at an opportunistic time, in order to craft a particular narrative that imposes a particular set of political reactions and responses.

To give some examples, the Trump administration directly downplayed tensions with China in 2019, even in the midst of the Hong Kong crisis, in order to secure an agreement. “trade agreement” With Beijing. Once it got what it wanted by 2020 and the Covid-19 pandemic broke out, it deliberately launched an all-out crusade against Beijing on all fronts. Likewise, the Biden administration took office and then immediately escalated tensions with China over the Xinjiang issue in order to damage China's relations with Europe within the framework of promoting coordinated sanctions as a show of transatlantic unity.

After that was done, she then decided she wanted it “amazing” Things are down a bit and set up “handrail” So the rhetorical guns fell silent for a few months as Washington reached out to Beijing. Then, with the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, it took “Xinjiang Card” once again with a number of timely leaks and posts directed towards supporting a boycott of the Winter Olympics, as well as a blanket ban on all Xinjiang goods under the premise “forced labour” At that time.

What we see is that the United States is not really de-escalating with China “Hot and cold hits” It essentially manipulates the media cycle to pursue its political preferences as it sees fit. This means that major issues related to China tend to emerge only when there is an agenda to serve.

Latest stage

Now, the Biden administration has developed a political plan to escalate tensions with China by accusing it, in coordination with the Five Eyes organization, of state-backed hacking and cybercrime. The fact that the British government would withstand such an accusation for three years indicates a clear political goal and clear timing. The question is why? First, we are approaching the presidential election in the United States. It was always inevitable that management would want to stand out “harsh” On China to prevent this issue from being used as a point of attack by Biden's rival Donald Trump. As we saw in 2020, an election year tends to become a year of aggressive rhetoric and extreme theatrics.

Second, there is the goal of undermining China's connection with Europe. It has been announced publicly Xi Jinping will visit a number of European countries in May, including France. As mentioned above, the United States, with the support of the Five Eyes countries, is actively seeking to damage Chinese diplomacy with Europe by weaponizing negative propaganda in order to narrow the political space for engagement.

What we see from this is that the United States is dealing with China on its own terms, but seeks to prevent those it sees as such “Allies” Whoever does the same, thus resorts to psychological warfare through media manipulation.

In conclusion, when one sees these strategies being used, one realizes that the Western media enjoys much less independence and neutrality than they claim, but is indirectly subject to American policy preferences. W

says the White House “jump”Journalists wonder “How high is he?” Thus we see that a new propaganda campaign has been planted against Beijing, but of course, we should not be blind to the fact that there is no greater weaponization of cyberspace and espionage in the world than the system created by the Five Eyes. And are we really going to pretend that the CIA doesn't hack anyone?