Remarks by General, Qi Jianguo, deputy chief of staff of the People's Liberation Army, at a security conference in Singapore this weekend, reinforces comments about China's state ideology made in London recently by China-watcher Isabel Hilton.

Speaking at a recent event associated with the current British Library exhibition on propaganda, Hilton, the Editor of China Dialgue, said that the communist party's propaganda machine initially "focussed on a workers' state narrative", and aimed to squeeze out all other messages, to eliminate the competition.

As the party machine narfrowed, very narrow ideological guidelines were established. For example, only half a dozen theatrical performances were approved for a quarter of the world's population.

After Mao Zedong's era,however,  she noted, China opened up: "The '80s were perhaps the most liberal decade of China's 20th century".

That changed again with the Tien An Men Square clash in 1989 and its pro-democracy challenge to the party's authority.

Now, said Hilton, China's internal message is based, like that of the US, on "exceptionalism" - 'The rules don't apply to us: China was a great state until the evil foreigners came, which is why the communist party is needed.' [American exceptionalism is the proposition that the United States is different from other countries ... it is not a notion that the United States is quantitatively better than other countries or that it has a superior culture, but rather that it is "qualitatively different" - Wikipedia]

But for the outside world the message is of China's desire for world peace, a win-win situation for all, "a nice and cuddly China... China Daily almost has no ideology at all," she added waving the newspaper.

Now Qi Jianguo has illustrated her words, calming regional concerns about China's power and emphasising China's peaceful development alongside its neighbours.

"China has never taken foreign expansion and military conquering as a state policy," the news agency AFP reported him as saying.

"We have always held that conflicts and disputes should be properly solved through dialogues, consultations and peaceful negotiations."

Ideologised internally, de-ideologised for outside consumption, was how she summed the policy up.

+ Hitler, Stalin, Mao - and AID

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