“Where Google Translate fails, Decoding CCP comes in ” says the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD)*, introducing their recently launched translation application. As machine translation can often not detect phrases as used by the Chinese government which could be regarded as allusive and vague, Decoding CCP analyses and gives background information to frequently used propaganda terms in concise sentences.In the end, the user is left with an explanation of a phrase and can make up his/her own mind about whatever s/he is reading.
Decoding CCP can be defined as a thesaurus, containing supplemental information to hundreds of commonly used Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda slogans that are often familiar to people inside China, but rarely known or correctly understood outside of it. Hence, it could prove a helpful add-on tool to everyone engaged with the Chinese government.
Given the term “rural surplus labour” as an example, it discloses an entirely different meaning when used by the CCP. Decoding CCP explains that this phrase is often used as a pretence for farmer resettlements into urban areas, further called ecological migration or poverty alleviation relocation transfer. Additionally, for every search result there are shown various hyperlinks to allow the user to dive deeper into the subject.
The application is searchable in Tibetan, English and Chinese and shows supplementary tags that could match one’s search in case it was unsuccessful. It clearly states that it is not authoritative.
But is all this representative or just a try of countering Chinese propaganda with counter-propaganda?“ Decoding CCP contextualises, analyses, and leaves the reader to decide ”, is the clear statement of the founders on the website, moving the possibility but also responsibility of interpreting the given context solely to the user.
As the authors do their best to keep up with the rapid changes in the CCPs jargon, users are also requested to continuously suggest new phrases for decoding. Terms that are out of use are removed from the jargon. From the ongoing updating and expansion of the data base to an App to be released in 2022 , still, there is “plenty more in the pipeline ”.
*TCHRD is a non government organisation based in Dharamshala committed to advancing human rights and democracy in Tibet and the exiled Tibetan community by empowering Tibetan human rights advocates and monitoring, documenting, and campaigning against human rights abuses.
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