one of the most consistently dishonest and troubling behavior patterns at Chinese diplomacy has been their official readouts of meetings and phone calls between a Chinese leader and foreign counterparts.

this has attracted some attention, but far from enough.

a thread

whenever there is a meeting/phone call between a Chinese leader and their foreign counterpart, the MoFA will always release an official readout (carried by state media) in which the foreign counterpart are supposedly paraphrased/indirectly quoted

the problem is this particular part of the readout, which paraphrases the foreign side, is 100% inaccurate - it's not purely false, but always highly selective.

In a Chinese idiom 报喜不报忧 only the ”good” news and never the bad

For example, if a foreign leader utters discontent with HK or Tibet or Xinjiang, then that remark will not appear in that part. But if the foreign leader mentions supports multilateralism, that will make into the part of the readout, because Beijing approves multilateralism

the net effect is that part of paraphrasing and hence the entire official readout is highly misleading and paints a falsely rosy picture of China's foreign relations with this particular foreign country

this practice has been going on for years and years and years

recently, finally, long overdue, there have been two low-key pushback against such practice in Europe

one is Quai d'Orsay pushing back Beijing's paraphrasing on Emmanuel Bonne (May 26)

the other is Josep Borrell rebutting Beijing's paraphrasing of him (June 11)

(the Quai d'Orsay pushback is not well-documented in English news reporting, so you'd have to ask around)

(by the way, these readouts are apparently not written by state media, which simply post/file/publish them. so if you think it's Chinese state media distorting, like this report alleges, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3088505/eu-calls-out-chinese-state-media-distorting-officials-remarks then you are making a mistake)

(I don't have inside knowledge on this, but if you look closely, these readouts always appear first on MoFA's website without mentioning CCTV/People's Daily/Xinhua, and then state media suddenly publishing them, most of the time without a byline, which is another important tell)

And yesterday we see this troubling pattern again, in Beijing's official readouts of China-EU video summit.

Just compare what's in the picture ( https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/web/zyxw/t1791290.shtml) with the EU's press release https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_1159

it's two different worlds

for example, the Chinese readout says 欧方坚持多边主义 von der Leyen and Michel say ... the European side upholds multilateralism
which can not be described as false, since of course the EU does and certainly VDL and Michel in one way or the other meant something similar

But put in that Chinese context, it conveys absolutely no similar meaning as laid out clearly in the EU press release https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_1159
Michel said "we have to recognize that we do not share the same values, political systems, or approach to multilateralism"

don't think it would be exaggerating to describe this pattern of behavior as habitual lying.
Think about it - years and years and years on, Chinese general public, whose major if not only source of info on its diplomacy is MoFA, have been lied to and defrauded like this.

What's perhaps one result out of this lying?
Chinese people on average have no idea how the rest of the world see China - they tend to significantly overestimate foreign countries' friendly ties toward China and China's popularity on earth, save for big disasters that can't be

hidden from the public eye, such as China-US now, China-Japan a few years ago, China-SKorea when there was THAAD.

I've been thinking about this pattern of behavior for quite some time and I can't figure out why - why MoFA keeps, in effect, lying to and defrauding people on diplomacy like this on a daily basis for years? Why?

What's also troubling is the general inaction on the part of the Western democracies.
How could they have been allowing Beijing to manipulate their own leaders' words and stuffing bullshit into their mouths publicly on a regular basis for years without a fight?