Bill Wanlund’s Worth Noting: A Transatlantic look at the U.S.-China Meme Wars

There’s a BBC radio program/podcast I listen to regularly, called “When it Hits the Fan” (WIHTF): If you don’t know it, I suggest you check it out. Its concept is as odd as its title – two guys talking about contemporary public relations disasters and critiquing the response.

To be clear, these “two guys” are seasoned pros with impressive résumés. David Yellend has been a journalist whose jobs included a stint as editor of the British tabloid The Sun and deputy editor of the New York Post (and speechwriter for Rupert Murdoch) before embarking on a PR career. Simon Lewis was communications director for the late Queen, and for Prime Minister Gordon Brown (not at the same time). He had been a Fulbright scholar at UC Berkeley (and chair of the UK-US Fulbright Commission 2009-13, which was instrumental in his being honored by the Queen with the Order of the British Empire in 2014).

In their recent podcast, WIHTF asked, “Is China out-‘PRing’ the United States?” It’s the phrasing of the question that leads you to the expected answer, and although Yelland and Lewis don’t answer yes or no, it’s clear that they believe China has the upper hand in today’s “meme warfare.”

WIHTF uses an example taken from Chinese social media platform Weibo, which begins with a soundbite of Vice President Vance defending the Administration’s tariff policy, saying “We’re borrowing money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture. That’s not a way to economic prosperity….” Then an American-accented influencer jumps in to say, “This is their true face, arrogant and rude, as always. We may be ‘peasants,’ but we have the world’s best high-speed rail, most powerful logistics, and world-leading AI and drone tech. Aren’t such ‘peasants’ impressive?” The influencer’s main point of attack is the cultural stereotype – the meme – of ignorant and arrogant Americans, but he also gets his digs in at some of our technological weaknesses, a sort-of twofer.

Yellend observes that the U.S. messaging on the tariff battle is “top-down,” directed by the White House, while China’s approach has been to open up social media, and notes that the influencers aren’t paid by the Chinese government, only encouraged. Lewis adds that, while China is often portrayed as taking the long - sometimes centuries-long - view of events, they’re proving they can play the short game as well. It’s like tennis, he says, and “they’re at the net.” He wonders whether this new approach “might change views about China…. They’re surprising people, and that’s always a good place to be in PR terms. At least in social media, they’re proving to be fast on their feet and with a lightness of touch.”

Is this new look part of a brilliant Chinese plan? Yellend asks, “Or is this something the U.S. is doing to itself? Let’s be honest – America has become very easy to mock.” He points to an episode in which Trump confidante and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff compares the elegantly-decorated Élysée Palace in Paris to the President’s clubhouse in Mar-a-Lago. He drew a few chuckles from his French counterparts but didn’t appear to be joking.

Yellend describes another popular America-mocking meme showing several severely overweight Americans working on a production line ineptly assembling smart phones and sneakers. In at least one version the workers morph into obese AI representations of Trump, Musk, and Vance. These have been produced in China, Yellend says, but not by the Chinese Communist Party: “This is the Chinese government taking the stabilizers off of China’s social media, something they wouldn’t ordinarily do,” Yellend remarks.

He ends the segment without declaring meme war winners or losers, but says that “we’ve reached a point where China is getting out of poverty, and the U.S. is going into poverty.” Yellend notes that Britain had “25 years of anti-Europe PR campaigns which ended with Brexit. The U.S. had 25 [sic] years of anti-‘fake news’ campaigns starting with the Tea Party and Fox News and ending with Trump.” He asks rhetorically, “What is this campaign a prelude to?”

The podcast veers briefly away from the U.S. to cover the PR surrounding the trash collectors’ strike in Manchester (England – “the city has become synonymous with ‘rats as big as cats’, never a good look”). Then, it re-crosses the Atlantic, first for a look at the Signals security lapse flaps (“Unbelievable, unbelievable,” in Yellend’s judgment; he predicts it will result in Secretary of Defense Hegseth’s resignation). Finally, Lewis takes on Jeff Bezos’s Blue Horizon launch of six women for a 12-minute flight in space – well-intentioned, perhaps, to encourage young women to follow STEM careers, but basically a PR flop: An exercise in stereotyping, unnecessary environmental damage, and a staggering expenditure of money that could be better used in attacking more urgent problems, all demonstrating a stunning self-awareness deficit on Bezos’s part.

And don’t get “the guys” started on Bezos’s half-a-billion dollar yacht Koru, which he’s bringing to Venice for his wedding to Lauren Sánchez. It (the boat) won’t fit on the Grand Canal – the neighboring Venice Lagoon is as close as it can anchor. Sánchez was one of those flying on Blue Origin’s all-women flight into space.​

Any opinions? Let us know at editor@publicdiplomacy.org. 
 

Bill Wanlund is a PDCA Board Member, retired Foreign Service Officer, and freelance writer in the Washington, DC, area. His column, Worth Noting, appears occasionally in the PDCA Update and the PDCA Blog; it seeks to address topics of interest to PDCA members.