AUTHORITARIAN LANGUAGE IS A VIRUS
One thing many of us in HK have noticed over the past couple of years is how public statements from the HK govt - whether it’s chief executive Carrie Lam, department heads or other senior officials - were sounding increasingly similar to public statements from Beijing officials, especially when it came to discussing the 2019 protests, the pro-Democracy movement in general, the implementation of the National Security Law, and any govt leader overseas expressing an opinion about it.
To explain: for decades, whenever Beijing sends Foreign Ministry spokespersons out to talk about the latest diplomatic row, human rights accusation or whatever, they tend to use carefully crafted language to assert that China has done nothing wrong, it is acting according to the law and everyone else is a lying hypocrite who is violating China’s sovereignty by interfering in its internal affairs.
Over the last couple of years, HK officials have started sounding like that. It was as if Beijing’s Foreign Ministry staff were writing their responses - or at least giving them instruction on how to write them.
Over at Quartz, Mary Hui and Dan Kopf analyzed 165,000 HK press releases over the last ten years, and found that HK officials are indeed embracing CCP-speak.
The study serves not only as a textbook case of how a relatively benign government adopts authoritarian language, but also as a masterclass on how to spot authoritarian language and understand its purpose.
In the case of HK:
Broadly, the newly strident rhetoric appears to be aimed at several goals: reinforcing China’s absolute national sovereignty; refuting criticisms and justifying the government’s own actions; exerting control over civil society; and redefining concepts like human rights to align them with CCP ideology.
So, for example, “human rights” becomes defined as “legitimate rights” or “lawful rights”. And “press freedom” is guaranteed under the Basic Law … as long as you exercise that freedom lawfully and don’t print anything that violates this vaguely defined national security law.
Indeed, the HK definition of free speech now is, “You can say or write anything you want. We will totally arrest you if what you say or write is illegal, but yr totally free to say/write it first. You know, if that’s what yr into.”
Anyway, it’s worth the time to read. Who know, it might even apply to your own country.
Speak my language,
This is dF
This entry was originally posted at https://defrog.dreamwidth.org/1653796.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
To explain: for decades, whenever Beijing sends Foreign Ministry spokespersons out to talk about the latest diplomatic row, human rights accusation or whatever, they tend to use carefully crafted language to assert that China has done nothing wrong, it is acting according to the law and everyone else is a lying hypocrite who is violating China’s sovereignty by interfering in its internal affairs.
Over the last couple of years, HK officials have started sounding like that. It was as if Beijing’s Foreign Ministry staff were writing their responses - or at least giving them instruction on how to write them.
Over at Quartz, Mary Hui and Dan Kopf analyzed 165,000 HK press releases over the last ten years, and found that HK officials are indeed embracing CCP-speak.
The study serves not only as a textbook case of how a relatively benign government adopts authoritarian language, but also as a masterclass on how to spot authoritarian language and understand its purpose.
In the case of HK:
Broadly, the newly strident rhetoric appears to be aimed at several goals: reinforcing China’s absolute national sovereignty; refuting criticisms and justifying the government’s own actions; exerting control over civil society; and redefining concepts like human rights to align them with CCP ideology.
So, for example, “human rights” becomes defined as “legitimate rights” or “lawful rights”. And “press freedom” is guaranteed under the Basic Law … as long as you exercise that freedom lawfully and don’t print anything that violates this vaguely defined national security law.
Indeed, the HK definition of free speech now is, “You can say or write anything you want. We will totally arrest you if what you say or write is illegal, but yr totally free to say/write it first. You know, if that’s what yr into.”
Anyway, it’s worth the time to read. Who know, it might even apply to your own country.
Speak my language,
This is dF
This entry was originally posted at https://defrog.dreamwidth.org/1653796.html. Please comment there using OpenID.