The Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD) unveiled this morning the much-awaited website to decode Chinese Communist Party (CCP) slogans and jargon at a press conference held at the Press Club of India in New Delhi.
At a time when Chinese initiatives and investments impact on all countries, and the need for insight into China’s motives is peaking, the decodingccp.org offers deep insight into CCP slogans, and fills an important lacuna in the comprehensive understanding of the discourses and rhetoric deployed by China to explain and justify domestic and international activities and their effects upon its citizens and others in the wider world.
Tsering Tsomo, executive director of TCHRD, said: “As China codifies its agenda for a new order, with distinctly Chinese characteristics, and as propaganda slogans are issued with greater frequency, we need reliable guidance that unpacks and decodes the proliferating building blocks of discourse power. This matters globally. For instance, the China model is actively exported to developing countries worldwide, especially in government-to-government transactions that bypass civil society and community engagement, on the explicit basis of China’s doctrine of ‘non-interference’.”
“China aggressively seeks to reframe global discourse, changing the basic frames within which we do our thinking. There are now few areas beyond Chinese reach. While we may know China’s messaging, coming at us from many directions, doesn’t sound quite right, how do we discern, slogan by slogan, what China actually means, in its endless insistence on ‘win-win development’ or ‘xiaokang villages’?”
Veteran Indian journalist and long-time Tibet watcher Vijay Kranti who moderated the press conference spoke on the significance of deciphering CCP jargons considering how Chinese propaganda had adverse effects on foreign policy on Tibet and China, including shaping India’s Tibet policy that is in urgent need of revisiting.
He observed that TCHRD’s attempt to provide the backstory to China’s narrative stands to serve a much larger purpose in the coming days.
Currently in its beta version, the final version of the website will be ready early next year and a mobile app will be released soon.
In the past week, TCHRD team has briefed relevant officials from embassies as well as members of think tanks and research institutes on the DecodingCCP project both virtually and in person.