Who 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".

One 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.

Vivas 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.

In 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.

It 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!

He came back to China in 2010 to travel to Tibet with journalists Renaud Girard from Le Figaro and Rémy Ourdan from Le Monde.

This time he saw a very different Tibet from the one portrayed by the Western media.

In 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.

Then 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.

Adrian 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.

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!"

Ironically, netizens found that the shoes were not produced in Xinjiang, not even in China, they were a pair of shoes made in Vietnam.

For 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".

Since 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.

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.

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.

This 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.

Recently, 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. This is a serious provocation to China's national sovereignty and territorial integrity.

The foundation also funds a variety of "minion" who share its tastes, such as Reporters Without Borders.

The organization is also hostile to whatever the United States hates, such as Cuba, Venezuela, Russia, including Vivas. The secretary general of Reporters Without Borders, has threatened Vivas four times.

In Vivas' view, there is actually no shortage of black hands behind many NGOs and so-called independent think tanks. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute is one of them.

The agency released its annual report last year, showing that 37.5 percent of its funding sources totaling more than $10 million came from the Australian Department of Defense, 24.5 percent from the Australian federal government and 18.3 percent from foreign government agencies.

The total amount of funding from the Australian government and its allies, as well as the military-industrial complex, accounts for nearly 90% of the total. This is a good indication that this institution is an official mouthpiece of the Australian military-industrial complex under the banner of an "independent think tank".

How do I spend my U.S. funded expenses?

In one grant of up to A$985,000, the U.S. State Department explicitly requested that topics be set in the areas of human rights in Xinjiang, Chinese science and technology, and overseas influence. Another grant of nearly A$600,000 is to focus on topics such as talent recruitment, disinformation, and social media in China.

hold the pen again for the sake of justice

Despite the many pressures and even threats to his life, Vivas did not put down his pen.

Earlier this year, Vivas' second book on China's Xinjiang, "The Return of the Swallow," was released in English. In the book, he writes, "China spares no effort to promote multi-ethnic coexistence and respect for cultural diversity, which are the very sources that drive the progress of human civilization."

Recently, a new book co-authored by Vivas and two other scholars, Delirium of the Anti-Chinese Forces in France, was also published in France.

Delirium, or gibberish. Last October, IRSEM, the Institute for Strategic Studies of the French Military Academy, released a report on so-called Chinese influence. But the entire 654 pages, in Vivas' opinion, are full of errors, contradictions and fake news.

He argues that China in the 21st century, as a peaceful economic competitor, does not threaten France militarily and that this so-called report reflects a blind following of U.S. foreign policy by anti-China forces in France.

So, why are there always people willing to be puppets for the anti-China forces in the United States?

Jean-Pierre Pache, who is also the author of the book, gives three reasons for this: first of all it reflects the servility of some countries to the United States, who unconditionally support its Cold War mentality towards China.

Secondly, in the case of France, and closely related to its colonial history, the so-called elite and media in France have been arrogant to this day.

Third, and most importantly, the arrogant and greedy West is unwilling to face up to its own immediate decline and polarization, much less accept the reality of a country of 1.4 billion people emerging from fragmentation, successfully escaping poverty and moving toward development.