The Chinese military has write a novel propaganda picture on the social media weapons platform Weibo that appears to show Chinese bombers attacking a U.S. military bag in Guam . The video is an mine run piece of digital saber - rattle between China and the U.S. , but the new video might seem oddly familiar to Americans . That ’s because the Taiwanese telecasting include clips from at least three Hollywood motion picture : The Rock from 1996 , The Hurt Locker from 2008 , and transformer : retaliation of the Fallen from 2009 .
The video recording , which was originally station to the People ’s Liberation Army Air Force business relationship on Weibo , is titled “ The god of war H-6 K goes on the attack ! ” and shows several planer read off with the sort of hazy and stylized cinematography you ’d see in a professional motion-picture show trailer , slowly build to climactic explosions .
The H-6 K is China ’s upgrade version of an sometime Soviet sheet , but it ’s capable of carry atomic weapons and wasspecifically designedto threaten Taiwan and any U.S.-allied ships in the Pacific .
Gif: PLA Air Force/The Rock
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fj1wCjIitIU
“ We are the withstander of the country of origin ’s aery security ; we have the confidence and power to always guard the surety of the homeland ’s sky , ” the video recording ’s verbal description says , according to an English - language translation byReuters .
The PLA Air Force TV has also been upload toYouTube , but we ’ve create our own side - by - side comparability to the Hollywood movieshere .
Several English - nomenclature news outlets likeReutersand theSouth China Morning Posthave reported that the target in the new Chinese propaganda video seems to be the U.S. territory of Guam .
The reason to snipe Guam ( at least virtually ) is twofold : First , Guam is the situation of a strategic melodic phrase base that would be see the frontline of any potential shooting war with U.S. military adversaries in Asia , let in China and North Korea . But obviously the 2d grounds is that the footage is pulled directly from Hollywood picture show where Guam , or a land mass somewhat resembling Guam , was the aim .
For model , the Formosan video use a short clip from the 2009 Transformers movie where a Brobdingnagian catlike robot issent to Earth . But in the Chinese military version , it take care like a missile being directed at a target that eventually explode . Some of the magazine do n’t show Guam at all , like the explosion from The Rock , which is set on Alcatraz , off the seacoast of San Francisco .
The use of Hollywood movies for the picture , first spotted by semi - anon. users on Twitter who exact to be based inHong Kong , is particularly dry when you consider the pro - U.S. and generally patriotic source fabric . The Rock and Transformers were both produce and aim by Michael Bay , who has an highly close-fitting relationship with the U.S. Air Force , and theAir Force Entertainment Liaison Officespecifically . Bay hand the Pentagon concluding say on his scripts and in exchange he gets to use military resources like fighter blue jet and warships in his picture show .
This is far from the first time that U.S. geopolitical adversaries like China and Russia have used Hollywood movie clips for propaganda purposes . Russia ’s embassy in the U.S. tweeted out a very familiar lookingclip in 2018to pick apart American policy that were being perceived as unfriendly .
“ It seems that the endeavor to ratchet up tension can be explain by the pauperization to justify the adoption by westerly countries of laws design to constrain control over their citizens and restrain fundamental rightfield and freedoms , ” the tweet from the Russian embassy in the U.S. explains .
But the telecasting in the tweet is in reality from the movie Enemy of the State , the 1998 espionage thriller directed by Tony Scott , starring Gene Hackman and Will Smith . The movie becameespecially importantafter Edward Snowden ’s revelations in 2013 about domestic spying by the NSA .
It seems that the attempts to ratchet up stress can be explained by the need to justify the acceptance by westerly countries of laws designed to tighten ascendence over their citizens and limit primal right and freedoms 🖥 ️https://t.co / MJtuuYjjDwpic.twitter.com / EWL2MWYmu4
— Russian Embassy in USA 🇷 🇺 ( @RusEmbUSA)February 21 , 2018
A Chinese Air Force picture from 2011 also lifted footage from the 1986 movie Top Gun , as the South China Morning Postnotes . And we could go on and on .
American picture have been a putz of propaganda since at least the first World War , when Hollywood ’s biggest star like Mary Pickford were release feature like 1917’sThe Little Americanand the light film “ 100 % American ” to help trade war bonds . But here in the twenty-first C , it ’s a act unusual to see America ’s so - call adversaries adopt American motion-picture show to create propaganda that simulates the destruction of American military base .
The whole situation address to just how powerful U.S. media has become over the past century — a power where even American geopolitical adversaries love Hollywood ’s cultural ware and use them to attack the U.S. And it perhaps gives some insight into at least part of why the Trump regimen has feltthreatened by TikTok . Yes , there may be some actual home security business organization about the Taiwanese government have entree to case-by-case user data point , though the government is still not being specific about how TikTok is a larger terror than , say , Facebook . But arguably the bigger worry for Trump ’s buddy was a Chinese - made app being democratic with Americans at all .
If you believe that societal medium is to the 21st century what Hollywood blockbusters were in the 20th century , TikTok is a menace to the U.S. soft power . And while the entire American entertainment biotic community is probably implicated with the world ’s eyeballs being glue to social media apps — Netflix recently called TikTok a “ competitor ” in a very denotative way — the people threatening to shut down TikTok are the same citizenry who will lose foresighted - term if China dominates global finish .
Steven Mnuchin is n’t just Trump ’s Treasury Secretary , he ’s also theproducerof everything from Wonder Woman to Mad Max : Fury Road to The Lego Batman Movie . As always , none of this is really hidden from public view . With Trump , it ’s all being done out in the out-of-doors .
ChinaDonald Trumpmilitarypresident trumpTikTok
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