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1/7 After a decade of debate on the topic, The Telegraph is cancelling its infamous China Watch, PRC-sponsored supplement. Never any danger that readers would swallow the awkward content, but secondary effects were a major concern... https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/apr/14/daily-telegraph-stops-publishing-section-paid-for-by-china
2/7 @OborneTweets eloquently outlined this concern in his resignation letter to the Telegraph - suggesting that dependence on the fee paid by the PRC may influence the paper's wider coverage of the PRC. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/why-i-have-resigned-from-telegraph/
3/7 This might not be a moral stand by The Telegraph - it could have been decided in Beijing given some negative coverage recently. It could also be down to internal changes at the paper following an ongoing toxic family feud between the paper's owners - the Barclay brothers.
4/7 Still, it is unmistakably a negative development for the PRC, coming amidst a soft power cataclysm caused by a pile-up of damaging events, most recently the poor treatment of PRC-based African citizens (and to a lesser extent, other foreign nationals in various instances).
5/7 At same time the PRC’s online activists of willing young nationalists & paid propagandists have been hammered by Thailand’s online community leading to increasing solidarity amongst some youth groups of S&E Asian nations that seek pushback against PRC + support HK and Taiwan
6/7 On top of this, we look ahead to the prospect of an impending global reckoning regarding silencing of whistleblowers in Wuhan that may have turned an outbreak into a pandemic. A bad time to lose a soft power resource.
7/7 The real test is whether other newspapers will also drop China Watch. If in the next weeks and months we see movements on this issue from other papers that carry China Watch then we may be looking at a sea change...
