Essentially the complaint is that Rennie is not following the DC "China expert community" party line. Party lines in western countries are more like the Pirate Code as described in the famous interchange in Pirates of the Caribbean1 "more like guidelines than actual rules" but still must not be questioned. Presumably Wilder and Matthis are expressing discomfort since the Economist has authority and is read by influential people in DC who may question the party line they subscribe to. An excellent piece including comments on the limitations of "trial by X."
What a storm in a teacup! And to mix the metaphor thoroughly, yes, you have indeed made a mountain out of a molehill. Rennie is a superb journalist who makes a supreme effort to withstand the relentless onslaught of the Party propaganda machine and bring clarity to intellectual discourse on China. His interrogators in this case are hardly making a big deal of what he wrote - they were just nit-picking. This is minor stuff made to seem bigger by the kind of huff-puffery that X encourages. The bigger point to make here, which you allude to, is that people of this caliber of intelligence shouldn’t be indulging their egos in tweets
Rennie's tweet literally starts with "Their Msg" - he reports this not as fact, but as the opinion these people want to project. Seems unerringly accurate to me.
I completely agree. Rennie is not a patsy. He lives there, for God's sake. His critics don't. I also know Chinese who do not spout the Party 'line' - but in any case, nothing Rennie wrote could remotely be considered 'Party line', except by extremely blinkered, distant US academics.
The issue seems to boil downs to this: Rennie thinks the messaging is worth noting (even if it is the "party line"), while the others object to it being reported because it is just "the party line". For mine, the real issue is what does this tell us about both Rennie and his interlocutors. It seems that both are similarly dismissive of the "party line", with the difference being that one thinks it's worth being aware of while others don't; but they all seem to presume that there's some normative non-Chinese touchstone against which to validate or determine validity or utility as if western intellectual and bureaucratic milieu don't exhibit similar clustering dynamics. We hear the party-line all the time from Washington think tanks, US government financed China scholars and western generalist mouthpieces, like The Economist, and the issue isn't whether that's worthwhile noting or not, it's actually about understanding the institutional dynamics that give rise to these positions in the first place, and the political effects these positions have broadly speaking.
Hey, very good post. Glad you wrote it. Per Tony Mitchell, it’s actually a case of Western media “whips” ensuring that their party members toe their own party line. I am sure this is a common practice, and it would be good if you keep a close eye on this and expose it for what it is: Western propaganda.
Ironically those in the DC think tank world are doing exactly what they are accusing the people Rennie talked to in China of promoting--"The Party line"; they seem to think that because space for open debate/criticism of top leadership has shrunk in today's China (this is indeed true), that there is no independent opinion in China at all and they are imagining something like North Korea, so they can't fathom that in fact there are still plenty of individuals in China who have opinions and they might express them to a foreign journalist on occasion.
I suspect these two are talking the Reuters/MI5 line more that China's PR story. Trump is a spineless bully, but trying to embarrass him over Ukraine would fail as he's still able to boondoggle his base into believing he's not spending their weal there. He is much more open to pressure on China front as his base is extremely racist.
Essentially the complaint is that Rennie is not following the DC "China expert community" party line. Party lines in western countries are more like the Pirate Code as described in the famous interchange in Pirates of the Caribbean1 "more like guidelines than actual rules" but still must not be questioned. Presumably Wilder and Matthis are expressing discomfort since the Economist has authority and is read by influential people in DC who may question the party line they subscribe to. An excellent piece including comments on the limitations of "trial by X."
Well put!
What a storm in a teacup! And to mix the metaphor thoroughly, yes, you have indeed made a mountain out of a molehill. Rennie is a superb journalist who makes a supreme effort to withstand the relentless onslaught of the Party propaganda machine and bring clarity to intellectual discourse on China. His interrogators in this case are hardly making a big deal of what he wrote - they were just nit-picking. This is minor stuff made to seem bigger by the kind of huff-puffery that X encourages. The bigger point to make here, which you allude to, is that people of this caliber of intelligence shouldn’t be indulging their egos in tweets
Rennie's tweet literally starts with "Their Msg" - he reports this not as fact, but as the opinion these people want to project. Seems unerringly accurate to me.
I completely agree. Rennie is not a patsy. He lives there, for God's sake. His critics don't. I also know Chinese who do not spout the Party 'line' - but in any case, nothing Rennie wrote could remotely be considered 'Party line', except by extremely blinkered, distant US academics.
The issue seems to boil downs to this: Rennie thinks the messaging is worth noting (even if it is the "party line"), while the others object to it being reported because it is just "the party line". For mine, the real issue is what does this tell us about both Rennie and his interlocutors. It seems that both are similarly dismissive of the "party line", with the difference being that one thinks it's worth being aware of while others don't; but they all seem to presume that there's some normative non-Chinese touchstone against which to validate or determine validity or utility as if western intellectual and bureaucratic milieu don't exhibit similar clustering dynamics. We hear the party-line all the time from Washington think tanks, US government financed China scholars and western generalist mouthpieces, like The Economist, and the issue isn't whether that's worthwhile noting or not, it's actually about understanding the institutional dynamics that give rise to these positions in the first place, and the political effects these positions have broadly speaking.
Touche! 👍
Hey, very good post. Glad you wrote it. Per Tony Mitchell, it’s actually a case of Western media “whips” ensuring that their party members toe their own party line. I am sure this is a common practice, and it would be good if you keep a close eye on this and expose it for what it is: Western propaganda.
Ironically those in the DC think tank world are doing exactly what they are accusing the people Rennie talked to in China of promoting--"The Party line"; they seem to think that because space for open debate/criticism of top leadership has shrunk in today's China (this is indeed true), that there is no independent opinion in China at all and they are imagining something like North Korea, so they can't fathom that in fact there are still plenty of individuals in China who have opinions and they might express them to a foreign journalist on occasion.
I suspect these two are talking the Reuters/MI5 line more that China's PR story. Trump is a spineless bully, but trying to embarrass him over Ukraine would fail as he's still able to boondoggle his base into believing he's not spending their weal there. He is much more open to pressure on China front as his base is extremely racist.
With no disrespect, absent from your analysis is that David Rennie is the son of former MI6's Director Sir John Rennie.
This may also explain the need for the alias 'Chaguan'.
So, most likely what readers of the Rothschild-controlled publication, The Economist, are getting is British state propaganda.