How a British TV show tells of ridiculous anti-China propaganda

"Top Gear" was a popular British television show which showcased cars. At its height, it was famously presented by Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond, the former of who gave a ridiculously "masculine" and "lad" edge to it with his outspoken and provocative behavior, until of course his downfall came after he punched a producer in the face.

The show was never the same without him, and the handbrakes were firmly pulled on it after the BBC axed the show in November.

If it wasn't clear already, in all due respect, "Top Gear" was never a beacon of intellectualism or enlightenment, in which case it was somewhat not surprising when an op-ed appeared on its official website of all places deriding China over its electric vehicles, titled: "Are electric cars from China really a threat?"

The article, as you can expect, depicted China's electric vehicles, which have become a major export across the world, as an espionage threat to "shut down" Britain by controlling them remotely, calling them "potential weapons of mass disruption." The charge is unsubstantiated and ridiculous.

But it goes further, saying the boom in Chinese electric vehicles is a "grand plan to destabilize our nation's economy." Although the article does, in classic top gear mode, have an ironic twist to it and complains about English traffic congestion, it nonetheless still scores home the point without rebutting it, and more so, it's ludicrous in any sense that a so-called impartial BBC entertainment show is suddenly pushing a highly partisan point of view on geopolitics.

As I stated many times before, it is an implication of US-led propaganda efforts in order to fundamentally discredit and undermine the market share of goods which they deem to be critically important to US-China competition. To do this, as seen with the notorious "garlic" story, they spread and proliferate unsubstantiated paranoia, usually almost always accusing it of "spying," no matter how absurd it may be. Then in doing so, they subsequently establish those talking points in the mainstream media which reproduce them organically and therefore shape public consciousness and assumptions accordingly.

This is how a view can be pushed by a particular think tank, analyst or political representative and then suddenly find itself being reproduced in a low-tier, intellectually nonsensical "Top Gear" article. To this end, Chinese cars are a deliberate target of such scaremongering because one of the key strategic battles which is taking place now is a struggle over the future of the global renewable energy industry. The United States is pushing aggressively protectionist policies with the view to trying to dominate this global sector and undermine China's hold over it. To this end, the US has pushed paranoia, as well as cynical abuse of human rights rhetoric to try and diminish Chinese renewable energy goods.

However, the West finds itself in a quagmire, that is because it has doubled down on its climate-related goals in recent years. While the political impetus is to try and "push out" Chinese renewable energy products and electric cars, the reality is that their own lack of manufacturing capacity, infrastructure and affordability makes it impossible for them to emulate their own demand of which has beholden them to China's exports.

To try and take drastic steps to crush this will forcibly narrow the market supply against a massive demand, sending prices surging and therefore failing to accomplish their own climate objectives.

In this case, they have no "good" policy options regarding Chinese electric cars, but we should continue to see a regular cycle of such paranoia as they grow to dominate global markets. The key point here? It shows just how dangerous, receptive and organic US-led anti-China discourse is when an annoying British television show starts repackaging it as genuine discussion. The idea electric cars could be used to spy on you is an act of paranoia so bizarre even McCarthy himself would be proud of its originality, and of course those who are talking about war are the ones who aim to achieve such conditions in the first place.

(The author, a postgraduate student of Chinese studies at Oxford University, is an English analyst on international relations. The views are his own.)