Editor's note: Andrew Korybko is a Moscow-based American political analyst. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily those of CGTN.

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng called out the U.S. for portraying China as an "imagined enemy" on July 26 during talks with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman. He continued by saying that "the hope may be that by demonizing China, the U.S. could somehow shift domestic public discontent over political, economic and social issues and blame China for its own structural problems."

It seems that a comprehensive government and social campaign is being waged to bring China down. It is as if when China's development is contained, all of the U.S.'s domestic and external challenges would go away, and America would become great again and Pax Americana would continue to go on.

This is an accurate description that hits on several important points at once. It should therefore be elaborated on to further enlighten the readers about the wisdom behind his words. Xie shattered the premise upon which the U.S. is waging its intensified information war against China. Everything that America says about China nowadays is predicated on the presumption that it's an "enemy," but this isn't an accurate depiction of reality. China has never engaged in any conventional or unconventional acts of aggression against the U.S. On the contrary, China consistently advocates a policy of peaceful coexistence and equal respect.

Since the facts contradict the manufactured narrative that the American masses are actively being indoctrinated with, the target audience must be distracted at all costs, at least from the U.S. perspective. This explains why the statements of Chinese officials are never accurately reported to Americans by their media, if they're even mentioned at all.

This is the first example of empirical evidence confirming that the U.S. information warfare narrative about China is imaginary. If the facts about Chinese policy were reported to average Americans like the media has a professional obligation to do, then nobody would believe the lies.

They're not, though, which is why some Americans have been misled into thinking that China is their "enemy." U.S. mass media and government officials then took advantage of their audience's lack of accurate information about China to blame it for their country's problems, especially the economic ones. Since many Americans struggled to live decent lives with respectable income even before the COVID-19 pandemic catalyzed the global economic crisis, they were already predisposed to blaming the so-called other for their problems, which made them receptive to this narrative.

For those with a comparatively greater but nevertheless still imperfect awareness of international events, those who understand foreign affairs but still believe the negative narratives about China their media and government officials feed them, the second phase of this information warfare campaign includes a foreign policy dimension. This has seen its masterminds claim that China is "destabilizing" the world, including through its allegedly illegal use of high-tech companies to spy on Western democracies.

None of this is true, of course, but the allegations are so dramatic that uninformed and misinformed individuals, especially those already in difficult economic situations, might tend to give them credence. All the while, what they don't realize is that their hard-earned tax dollars are being redirected toward funding the military-industrial complex on the basis of "containing China" and "protecting democracy," but for the actual purpose of further enriching their elite who invest in associated companies. The outcome is that average Americans are deprived of healthcare and infrastructure.

Without what many consider to be these two modern-day human rights, Americans will continue to struggle to make ends meet. Sadly, some still don't realize that China isn't to blame, but their own elite are, particularly the political ones. They've successfully brainwashed many well-intentioned but naive Americans into believing that all their problems will go away if China is "contained," exactly as Xie said. What those Americans who are actually aware of the truth behind their many predicaments should do is peacefully organize and begin holding their media and officials accountable to finally focus on the issues that matter, not on the China distraction.

The U.S. will never move forward if its most influential forces are obsessed with reviving the Cold War of the past century in a modern-day context directed against China. The future is connectivity and cooperation, not divide-and-rule information warfare campaigns and geopolitical competition. Never once in history has blaming "the other" ever truly resulted in sustainably improving the target audience's living standards. All such perceived gains were illusory and temporary, ultimately resulting in counterproductive outcomes that only hurt the same people they were supposed to help. It's time for the U.S. to change its ways.

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