I have recently talked to a Chinese friend of mine who started talking about how smart Trump is etc. She previously only gained her knowledge through the Chinese media and not the “western propaganda”, so it was her first exposure to the non-CCP-controlled stuff. I told her “you sound like you read FOX news”. She replied with “hahah yes, how did you know?”
This made me realize that she is very prone to getting manipulated and not doing any fact-checking. However, this situation made me reflect on my own news-sourcing skills.
How do you deal with the issue and what can I do step-by-step to verify the news that I read myself and at the same time a way that I can recommend to my Chinese friend so that she doesn’t fall for the most obvious tricks so easily?
I hope you didn’t talked to my mother, thay sure does sound like her 💀
To be honest, this is no easy feat. Even my mother who has been in the US for over a decade and have somewhat of a fluency in English (good enough to get naturalized as a Citizen) still watched WeChat and consumes propaganda. I can’t do a thing about it except remind her about how white people don’t see her as part of the country and supporting Democrats is better because it lowers the risk of deportations so she’s kinda not as indoctrinated as everyone else, but still she often parrot those anti-Democrat rhetorics like “NYC Dems lets in iLLeGaL iMmiGranTs and crime rates rising” and blame them for “taking away benefits”.
How old are they? Of they are like 40 or older, I won’t even bother, they are a lost cause. For those younger people, just encourge them to read more from various souces, instead of trusting one. Don’t go “FOX News Bad”, that probably wouldn’t work unless you are really closely related and they at least somewhat trusts you (like blood relationship), if you are like a classmate or coworker, that will not work, just that they should read everything, and tell them to be skeptical.
The most important thing is: ABSOLUTELY NEVER CONFLATE “CCP” with “China”.
If you say “China Bad” they automatically assume you are being racist. Make sure to say its the Communist Party of China.
Edit: typos
Edit 2: P.S. I’m Chinese American for context, I’ve grown up mostly in the US, with only like the first decade of my life in mainland China, the rest is in the US (I don’t have much memores of China)
My older brother went to the equivalent of “middle school” in China, and he eventually came to be against CCP, after being going to public school in the US, but he’s more like the KMT nationalist type, still somewhat attached to China (culturally), but just anti-CCP.