Chinese athlete Dinigeer Yilamujiang (left) and Zhao Jiawen put the torch in the center of a giant snowflake during the grand opening ceremony of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games on February 4, 2022, making it an innovative and low-carbon Olympic cauldron. Photo: VCG

There is a Chinese saying, "You will always see what you have in your mind."

Many Western media outlets, especially some American ones, have demonstrated the correctness of this proverb in their coverage of the Beijing Olympic Winter Games. With tinted glasses, they have tried very hard to extract anything they think suitable to reach their evil goals from the sporting event that athletes from around the world are enjoying. 

The New York Times published on Tuesday an article entitled "Bearing an Olympic Torch, and a Politically Loaded Message" to continue smearing China's governance in its Xinjiang region, citing Yilamujiang, the female Chinese athlete of Uygur ethnic origin who lit the Olympic cauldron at the opening ceremony the Beijing 2022. The NYT article said, "To many Chinese, it was a feel-good message of ethnic unity. But to human rights activists and Western critics, it looked like Beijing was using an athlete in a calculated, provocative fashion to whitewash its suppression of Uygurs in the far western region of Xinjiang, where [Dinigeer] Yilamujiang is from."

The NYT's narrative that has tried to make anything related to Xinjiang a fuss is not surprising. It is the continuation of the US-led political war against China.

Lü Xiang, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times, "They completely take it for granted when reporting about Xinjiang. They forge the so-called genocide as a 'fact' that must not be challenged." 

They know they are telling lies but they don't allow anyone to poke that bubble, Lü said. 

It could be any Chinese athlete to light the cauldron. Since Xinjiang was believed to be the birthplace of skiing, there could not be a better idea than having the Olympic cauldron lit up by a Uygur girl from Xinjiang. And all Chinese people have cheered for her. 

It is nothing about "whitewashing," it is about respecting, to cultural diversity, to ethnic unity and to the Olympic spirit. 

It is telling that the BBC-style gloomy camera filter is becoming a standard configuration of the West's anti-China media outlets. They don't care what is true about Xinjiang, they just report what they have in their mind, regardless of whether it is groundless conspiracy or not. 

"Confusing black and white and creating contradictions where there are none are the fundamental points of the US political war against China." Lü noted. "In their framework, anything you do that is normal is described as 'abnormal.'"

We see the NYT suggest Yilamujiang is subject to a "high degree of monitoring by the government" just because she "has posted no updates to her Instagram account, or her Chinese social media account, in recent days." 

This conforms US media's long-standing tricks to tell black white. In December 2021, the NYT reported that China influences the influencers to use them "as propaganda tools," smearing foreign video creators for being sponsored and guided by the Chinese government and media groups. The report disregarded YouTubers' real intention to show what life is really like in China. 

Some Chinese netizens said, "NYT makes me know how they hire people to slander China."

As early as in 2018, the US was preparing a political smear campaign against Xinjiang, Lü said. "Some [Western] professors and scholars who participated in the program even didn't know where Xinjiang is. Still, they accepted to be part of the US government's political network. So it is not abnormal to see the so-called proofs the US uses to stigmatize Xinjiang being self-contradictive."

We hope more foreigners will visit Xinjiang to see the real life there, rather than being deceived by some of their malicious media outlets. Xinjiang may not be a paradise, but it is definitely a place with beautiful scenery, happy residents as well as sound social and economic development.