Editor’s Note for Wednesday, March 9, 2022

My thoughts today:

Truth is the first casualty in war, goes the old adage, attributed variously to Hiram Johnson (governor of California from 1911 to 1917), Greek playwright Aeschylus (approx. 525-456 BCE), Sun Tzu (孫子 sūnzǐ), author of The Art of War, and several others.

In the age of TikTok, we see war — and misinformation about it — playing out in real time on our screens. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is being documented — and also lied about — by people and organizations with all kinds of motivations on every digital platform available.

But the internet does offer us a way to look at war unmediated by censors and propagandists. Here are two Chinese people in Odessa, Ukraine documenting their experiences in wartime on YouTube, and telling their critics in China to look at the ordinary people — who are not “terrorists” or “Nazis” as described by Russian state media and echoed by Chinese state media and nationalists.

• Old Zhao (老赵 lǎo zhào)
• Wáng Jíxián 王吉贤

And here is their most recent video, done together, at a market in Odessa.

The China Project is hiring an event director for our conferences and other live and virtual gatherings. If you or anyone you know is interested, please apply.

Our word of the day is 战火 zhàn huǒ, which means conflagration or war, which so far is the strongest language Chinese officials and PRC media have been willing to use about the Russian invasion of Ukraine.