Americans' fears of China as a national threat is reinforced by perceptions that is can do no wrong. It follows a well-worn path: we have feared and resented at various times the British, French, Germans and Japanese. Such attitudes can encourage a self-fulfilling defeatism. Americans' belief in Japan's industrial (and specifically automotive) dominance became an overarching trope for almost twenty five years.
Although Islamic extremism has provided the most tangible physical threat to US national security, that culture is sufficiently remote from the experience of most westerners that it remains alien rather than familiar, removing some of the immediacy that gives menace its power.
In China's case, apprehension about its size and its economic success has fueled concerns about its military capabilities. The psychology of this attitude leads us to believe in threats where none may exist. While this may be true in many situations, for instance, the tech community belief that Microsoft or Google or Facebook are unassailable - until they are - it provides a tremendous advantage to the antagonist in question. The phrase 'psyching out' or 'psyching someone out' captures the result; we succeed in conveying to a competitor powers they do not possess but that we believe they do.
Recent publication of what turned out to be falsified photos of Chinese stealth fighter plane in a military or 'mil-blog' are evidence of how this works. That is why one of the advantages of an open society is transparency and debate. And it is one that should be fiercely defended. Without the ability to discuss, deride and challenge, myths can be allowed to govern knowledge, which may, in turn, help create otherwise unattainable realities. JL
David Axe reports in The Diplomat:
"In the United States, they’re called ‘milbloggers’ -- that is, bloggers or Internet forum users interested in war news, strategy and tactics and the latest military technology. Most developed countries have active milblogging communities. In some, particularly the US, the best milbloggers have even joined the ranks of bona fide journalists.
But few country's milbloggers are more influential than China’s. With China possessing so few government-sanctioned outlets for military news, foreign observers of Beijing's military modernization increasingly rely on milbloggers for the latest information. But mixed among the legitimate bits of news are fantastical creations, plus more subtle acts of fakery that can mislead foreign audiences.
Chinese bloggers have obliged by posting amateur photographs revealing new ships, armoured vehicles and aircraft.
The December revelation of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force J-20 stealth fighter prototype by some enterprising amateur photographers represented the Chinese milbloggers’ greatest coup.
Just last week, foreign news sites began circulating an image purportedly depicting China’s second stealth fighter prototype, ostensibly a radar-evading modification of the 1990s-vintage JH-7 fighter-bomber.
While it has long been suspected that China is working on more than one stealth fighter, it seems unlikely the PLAAF would base a new warplane on the rudimentary JH-7, which is roughly equivalent to the West's Jaguar attack plane developed in the 1960s.
Sure enough, it wasn’t long before a Chinese Web user admitted he had created the ‘stealth JH-7’ image using Photoshop software.
The most compelling aspect of the faked Chinese stealth fighter isn’t the creator's trickery. Rather, it’s that news audiences are so accustomed to big advancements in Chinese military technology that they assume any grainy image of a new warplane is, in fact, authentic.
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