The hypocrisy of the US is on full display in its newly-released report on China, while Washington’s anxiety on its own capability to dominate public opinion is also bubbling. The report, launched by the US Department of State on Thursday local time, is called “How The People’s Republic Of China Seeks To Reshape The Global Information Environment.” And the first reaction of the most readers is – isn’t the report about the US itself?

The report focuses on accusing China of information manipulation via propaganda, disinformation, and censorship in an attempt to seek information dominance globally. Yet it sounds more like a portrayal of Uncle Sam himself when he is looking at the mirror, and then makes it about China, Shen Yi, a professor at Fudan University, told the Global Times.

Has China ever manipulated global information like the US has been doing? Like the time when Washington claimed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the media parroted the claim, and US allies followed suit in US-led invasion of the Middle East country? Or like the time when the US faced the world's highest COVID death toll, the US took the top spot on Bloomberg's COVID Resilience Ranking?

If the US claims No. 2 in the world in disinformation and public opinion manipulation campaign, no one dares to claim No. 1. Think about how US political elites and media outlets uniformly bleats the word “unprovoked” in reference to Russia-Ukraine conflict, despite the fact that the conflict was not only provoked, but deliberately provoked by NATO’s eastward expansion; and how the US distracts public attention from US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh’s report that the US was the mastermind behind the Nord Stream pipelines explosion, by claiming the sabotage was made by a six-member team of a pro-Ukraine group.

The US takes every measure to make the world hostile against Washington’s rivals. Launching an information war against China is therefore a part of US containment strategy, with a goal to create an “evil” image of China in the international public opinion arena. The new report is simply a latest example in US long list of tactics to make the world vigilant toward China.

This is why the US has been encircling China, half a world away from US own soil, with a chain of military bases and ports, yet calling China an “aggressor.” When a Chinese civilian unmanned airship accidentally floated over the US, the later made no hesitation in labelling the incident an act of espionage. The hysteria lasted for months until Pentagon, after a lengthy examination, confirmed it did not collect any information, not to mention send any data back to China.

American elites are so comfortable living in their echo chamber to repeat their accusation on “forced labor in Xinjiang,” which appears in almost every China-related report issued by US authorities. Unsurprisingly, it also shows up in the latest report. When people, especially from Western countries, have actually visited Xinjiang, acknowledge the development, improved healthcare, rising education and employment levels in the region, as what they see with their bare eyes, the politicians in Washington are busying clamoring so-called genocide and forced labor.

But whenever someone tells the truth, or whenever Chinese media tell the truth, they are labelled as a puppet of a Chinese propaganda machine. Who is manipulating information? How come the US has the freedom to spread disinformation but China becomes a manipulator for telling the truth?

The US State Department gets one thing wrong. It is not China manipulating information. But the US has been undermining its own credibility by lying for so long. It seems the US can also sense the fragility of its manipulation. Unfortunately, the way it responds to it is spreading more disinformation by smearing its rivals.

The more the US tries, the more its hypocrisy is exposed. The last thing the US cares about is public access to information, it cares about its hegemony, including that in the information field. Otherwise, why Julian Assange and Edward Snowden have to go through prosecution just for telling the truth?

Buoyed by the prospect that China's economic growth is set to rebound at a faster pace in the fourth quarter this year, the country's equities market rallied on Friday, with the benchmark Shanghai composite index gaining more than 1.55 percent. 

During the past several months, a wave of negative Western media reports targeting the Chinese economy swirled and surged, intentionally creating a false narrative in order to cast a cloud over China's investment outlook.

Some pundits in the US media went too far claiming that China is facing "an economic stagnation that seems irreversible" - typical Western rhetoric that tries to talk down China's growth and frighten away investors.

The Western media have tried to paint China's economy as facing the same predicament as the implosion of the US economy in late 2008 and early 2009, or suffering from the same throes of Japan's "Lost Decades" beginning 1990 when Japan's real estate and stock market bubbles suddenly melted. But as it has been proved many times before that while Western commentary predicting the collapse of Chinese economy keeps surfacing, in the end it is the Western rhetoric, not China's economy that will fail drastically.

As a matter of fact, overseas concerns are largely played up and inflated by US-led Western media outlets, such as the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. Their allegations that China's future is now "blanketed with public anxiety and widespread pessimism" are simply untrue. It's of a media disinformation campaign built on fake journalism.

The Covid-19 pandemic has scarred the world's all major economies because of its severity. China's relatively uneven recovery is no parallel with the Lehman-style subprime fiasco caused financial crisis in the US, nor resembling the debt-driven boom and bust cycle of Japan, as some in the West have always hoped. 

Since 2017, the bulging bubbles in China's housing market have largely dissipated thanks to the policymakers' visionary and pre-emptive moves to restrict bank and social lending to developers, and at the same time the country's central bank has trimmed interest rates to channel funds to back up high-end manufacturing, high-tech innovation, infrastructure build-up and public welfare enhancement, which strengthens China's foundation for future competition among the nations. 

Chinese policymakers understand that a dormant real estate market caused by the pandemic is never a healthy phenomenon and represents a drag on the economy. On August 31, the People's Bank of China, the country's central bank, and the National Administration of Financial Regulation jointly issued a series of easing measures for the property sector, which includes lowering minimum down payment ratio and mortgage rates, easing criteria for first-home buyers and interest rate cuts for existing first-home mortgage loans.

It is very wise for the central government to readjust its headline housing policies by rescinding some of the strictest measures that have inhibited property sales in major Chinese cities. Many provincial capital cities have removed policies limiting apartment purchases, which has led to a recent boom in housing sales nationwide.  

And, China's credit market is expanding again, with the latest central bank data showing the country's total social financing increasing by more than 3 trillion yuan ($413 billion) in August. The marked improvement in social liquidity was primarily driven by the government's recent growth-reinforcing policies, including an acceleration in government financing, which rose to 1.18 trillion yuan in August from 0.41 trillion yuan in July. 

In addition to improvement in credit, economic data for the last few weeks have generally shown encouraging signs too, including the consumer price index turning positive again in August. And while the manufacturing purchasing managers' index improved to 49.7 in August with key components such as production and new orders being above 50, export and import growth have also improved. 

As the government continues to pivot policy focus to supporting the private sector rejuvenation, welcoming foreign investors, and propelling the accelerated growth of domestic consumption and investment, more positive economic signs will emerge in the fourth quarter. And, government bond issuance accelerated in August too. Increased bonds sale should pave the way for the government to introduce more spending measures in the next few months to rev up economic growth. 

The policymakers have recently moved to halve equities-trading stamp duty and cut equity transaction fees, controlling the pace of initial public offerings and encouraging dividends and buybacks while controlling insider sales, in order to give a shot to the capital market. The size and breadth of the announced measures have exceeded investor expectations. Rallying equities are going to firm up Chinese households' wallet, which will translate to higher consumption. 

China's gross domestic product rose 5.5 percent in the first half year. The IMF has predicted that China's economy will expand by 5.2 percent this year, contributing one third of the global growth. It is very likely that the Western naysayers cursing China's economy will be forced to admit and walk back their overhyped rhetoric. 

By all metrics, China's economy is not facing a crisis and the ship is not sinking, as alleged by the naysayers in the US and its allied countries. Relying on China's peculiar systemic merits and the policymakers' vision and firm determination to committing to high-level opening-up and win-win partnership with all friendly countries, and enhancing the national strength through constant investment on technological advances, Chinese economy's strong resilience, unrivalled vitality and ample growth potential will only grow.

China's central bank said that it would step up policy adjustments and implement monetary policy to expand domestic demand and restore confidence at a quarterly meeting, according to a statement on its official website on Wednesday.

During the meeting, the bank emphasized the need to intensify the implementation of existing monetary policies, enhance counter-cyclical and cross-cyclical adjustments, and focus on boosting domestic demand and restoring confidence.

Regarding exchange rates, it stressed the importance of correcting deviations, stabilizing expectations, and firmly addressing unilateral and pro-cyclical behaviors to guard against the risk of exchange rate over-adjustment.

In light of the current domestic and international economic situation, the meeting noted that "the current external environment has become more complex and challenging," with inflation remaining high and developed countries expected to maintain elevated interest rates. Additionally, it acknowledged that "the domestic economy continues to recover and improve with strengthened momentum, but still faces challenges such as insufficient demand."

This statement also highlights the central bank's commitment to proactively managing monetary policy to support economic stability and address external and internal economic challenges.

The central bank also pledged to promote the healthy and stable development of the property market.

A number of support measures have already kicked in to stabilize the economic recovery of the world's second-largest economy. Profits across China's industrial enterprises above designated size in August increased by 17.2 percent year-on-year, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed on Wednesday. Overall, profits were down 6.7 percent in July.

The rebound was in line with the momentum of China's industrial output data in August, grew 4.5 percent from a year earlier, accelerating from the 3.7 percent pace seen in July. Retail sales, a gauge of consumption, also grew at a faster 4.6 percent pace in August aided by the summer travel season, and was the quickest growth since May.

Analysts expected the recovery will further accelerated with the upcoming eight-day Golden Week holidays.