Chinoiresie | Confessions Made in China

Chinoiresie | Confessions Made in China: Globally, mass media face a difficult dilemma: how to report on the Chinese spectacles of prisoners forced to perform fake, scripted confessions? The Chinese authorities produce these confessions in order to create a new ‘truth’, one that is to be disseminated through Chinese state media and, if possible, through foreign mass media, and social media as well. Chinese mass media must, of course, simply obey orders to present, and even assist in the arrangement of these new Orwellian ‘truths’. But what should mass media outside of the control of Chinese state authorities do with these grim perfor