Ren and Stimpy Work For China’s Central Propaganda Department. Unhappy Muslims Will Be Shot!

After you watch enough CCTV (China Central Television) or read enough Xinhua “news” agency press releases (one of the principal sources of Chinese information for Western journalists in China – go figure), you begin to recognise a handful of mass-produced phrases as the essential ingredients of every product churned out by China’s Propaganda Department, now euphemistically called in English the “Publicity Department”. They changed the English translation from “Propaganda” to “Publicity” because they finally figured out that in the West there is – or at least used to be – a widespread belief that propaganda makes people stupid. Just like advertising and “public relations”. In a way, it’s true that the name change is a distinction without a difference.