Opinion

How Chinese state media paints an alternative picture of the Ukraine war

The Beijing media sphere has created a parallel universe where the Russians are the good guys and the real villains are the US and Nato

This narrative accords with Moscow’s contempt for the idea of Ukraine’s sovereignty and gives viewers a twisted, incomplete view of events

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A man carries a bicycle along a street filled with destroyed Russian military vehicles near Chernihiv, Ukraine, on April 17. Photo: AP

Philip J. Cunningham has been a regular visitor to China since 1983, working variously as a tour guide, TV producer, freelance writer, independent scholar and teacher.

Published: 9:15am, 24 Apr 2022

Ever since February 24, the day Russian troops crossed the Ukraine border and began firing missiles and dropping bombs, Beijing has had to balance itself on a narrative tightrope based on its twin policy of leaning towards Russia and away from the US.

While much of the world’s media has tuned into the tragic and heroic spectacle of outnumbered and outgunned Ukrainian defenders trying to outfox the Russian invaders, the Beijing media sphere has created a parallel universe where the Russians are the good guys and the real villains are the US, Britain and Nato.

In the Chinese narrative, Ukraine is granted little or no agency. The CCTV graphics department, for example, posts maps in which Ukraine doesn’t have borders, as if it were not really a country.

Given Beijing’s hyper vigilance about maps that don’t include Taiwan, this is lazy, if not careless. It inadvertently accords with Russia’s contempt for the idea of Ukraine as a country at all. The undrawn borders also avoid the map conundrum about how to delineate Crimea and the Donbas region.