Maxim Vivas: Using the Truth to Undermine Anti-Chinese Forces

ky_a39b0df44

% O: ~( A3 }# c  b3 gWho is Vivas?
Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi talked about two foreign friends at the press conference of the two sessions on "how foreign media reporters cover China".
/ @) E" g& k$ I4 G7 H8 nOne is Edgar Snow, the American journalist who wrote "The Red Star Shines in China", and the other is Maxim Vivas.

Vivas, who is in his late 80s, is a Hispanic-French national. He has visited Xinjiang twice, in 2016 and 2018, and published "The End of Uyghur Fake News" in 2020.
( D7 d* V% G* lVivas said he wants Europeans to know the real Xinjiang, to dispel rumors of "genocide" and "millions of Uighurs in detention.
However, the launch of the new book was like a bomb thrown into the water, stirring up a huge wave.
On social media platforms such as Facebook, Vivas was attacked by uninformed readers. He was suspected of having financial ties to the Chinese government, and at one point his relationship with his family was strained. He himself said: I acted as a "suicide bomber" to publish this book.
7 }# Z* l9 \4 M; uIn fact, the "suicide bomber" once had the same stereotypical and limited image of the Chinese as the rest of the Western public: wearing a Zhongshan suit and eating nothing but rice.
8 U4 p# J, u7 S1 K, e) AIt wasn't until 2008 that Vivas went to China with his wife to visit his son who was working in Beijing. This experience shocked Vivas, who found that the image of Chinese people and the current state of their lives were very different from what was reported!
) i( E- Q' r' i9 g0 vHe came back to China in 2010 to travel to Tibet with journalists Renaud Girard from Le Figaro and Rémy Ourdan from Le Monde.
2 \. c6 K9 I- |6 f" W5 bThis time he saw a very different Tibet from the one portrayed by the Western media.
  R: q, H+ `7 B" K* f5 ~% `) eIn 2011, he published The Dalai Lama: Not So Zen, a hugely successful book exposing the true face of the Dalai, which was translated into six languages.
# v: j3 o( o* C: ]+ AThen later, Vivas went to Xinjiang to do in-depth reporting and wrote the aforementioned "The End of Uyghur Fake News".

Who is he fighting?
Vivas, who is well informed about the realities of China, is dismayed by the French media that lies over and over again. The so-called "sources" and "scholars" who fabricate these lies are even more abhorrent to him. He decided to use the truth to expose these anti-Chinese forces.
) _  Q8 Z$ ?& X2 h( f2 MAdrian Zenz, a 47-year-old German, has overnight become the only source of information about Xinjiang for Western media and politicians. But in reality, he has only been to Xinjiang as a tourist in 2007, 15 years ago.
+ k; i5 {% {" n6 O
Vivas has written this story in his book.
Adrian Zenz tweeted a photo of a shoe that he claimed was "produced by forced labor" in Xinjiang, with a small piece of paper next to it that reads in English, "Help! I'm a Uighur and I'm being held in a Chinese prison. Help us!"
, P8 ~! B0 E3 mIronically, netizens found that the shoes were not produced in Xinjiang, not even in China, they were a pair of shoes made in Vietnam.
* o5 F+ H) Q" V+ z4 JFor example, in a report, Adrian Zenz claimed that "between 900,000 and 1.8 million people are being detained in Xinjiang. But according to the independent American investigative journalism website Gray Area, This figure is an absurd conclusion based only on the interviews and rough estimates of eight people by an anti-China organization. Similar tricks have been repeated in his other "reports".
. E. P& F$ \& k# vSince 2018, Adrian Zenz has produced more than a dozen articles and reports smearing Xinjiang. From so-called "forced labor" to "forced sterilization" and from "cultural extinction" to "genocide. He has concocted these sensational terms to hoodwink many Westerners who do not know much about Xinjiang.
/ Z- U& f3 q; ?, |Adrian Zenz is a member of the far-right U.S. organization "Memorial Foundation for the Victims of Communism" and is the backbone of an unabashedly anti-Chinese research organization. In other words, anti-China is his job.  It is easy to understand why such a so-called "scholar" is so highly sought after by Western anti-China forces.
1 L+ z/ H" {( u& m8 z7 ?Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo cited Adrian Zenz's so-called "thesis" to smear China .
In the Vivas investigation, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was named as one of the "anti-China hacks". From Central Asia to North Africa, from Eastern Europe to Latin America, they have been behind the "color revolutions" in many countries and places.
! D$ G/ `0 {& Y/ |: s4 jThis organization has supported "Hong Kong independence," "Taiwan independence," "Xinjiang independence," "Tibet independence" and other separatist forces in China for many years. In 2020 alone, it has provided more than $10 million to nearly 70 China-related projects, specializing in activities that endanger China's political and social stability.
4 \: R  N7 m+ i- E. ~% J) jRecently, the president of the foundation, Damon Wilson, led a delegation to Taiwan to support the "Taiwan independence" forces, and claimed to hold the so-called "Global Congress of the World Movement for Democracy" in Taipei in late October, seriously provoking China's national sovereignty and territorial integrity.

1 k/ R4 u( w" j0 O3 f