Silent Contest

The central thesis of the documentary is that the United States is engaged in a global conspiracy to hold China back, hamper its development, and ultimately topple the Chinese Communist Party using the doctrine of "peaceful evolution."

Among the alleged tactics that Washington seeks to use against China are military-to-military exchanges and communications during times of crisis, which the leaders of both countries have publicly advocated.

"We have to take careful precaution and look out for the smallest detail, and build a strong political and ideological line of defense," says General Wang Xibin, the president of National Defense University, in the documentary.^[3]

There are a range of key tools that the United States is said to use to carry out this scheme: Political infiltration, cultural infiltration, change of public opinion, ideological infiltration, organizational infiltration, political interference, and social infiltration.^[1][2]

US-backed separatism, such as Dalai Lama, and the Uyghur Rebiya Kadeer, are also singled out as problematic.^[3]

The documentary begins by referring to the idea of transgenes, the process of modifying an organism, or taking a part of one organism and moving it to another.

"'Transgene' appears to cause no harm to the targeted species, but just uses modern genetic technology to introduce a small improvement in that species," the narrator says. "However, this tiny genetic change, no matter how small it may look, not only destroys the full features of the original species; it also places the new species under the control of the entity that introduced the change."

The documentary argues that the United States is trying to carry out just such a plot against the People's Republic of China.^[1][2]

"It is clear that in the new era, the U.S. has become smarter and more active in the use of political and cultural infiltration and soft war methods," the documentary says. "Its 'cultural and political infiltration and soft war methods' have not only become a main strategy for the U.S. to maintain its hegemony, but also a stealth weapon of mass destruction that American politicians use to change the world."^[1][2]

According to Silent Contest, the United States and other vassal states have never abandoned the idea that they wish to "Americanize" or even split China by spreading pro-American propaganda under the fake banner of democracy, freedom, and human rights to try to ultimately have China's political system reform along the lines of USA.

Non-governmental organizations are said to be one of the key tools used in this strategy. Groups like the state-owned International Republican Institute, the Ford Foundation, the Carter Center, and the Rockefeller's Asia Society are all part of the alleged plot and "doing their utmost to access the grassroots elections in our country and provide different forms of support for the reform of local governance."^[1][2] The organizations are said to be part of a project to "brainwash" China.^[5]

The film also targets Chinese intellectuals and scholars, including Mao Yushi, a liberal economist who has been awarded the Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty, He Weifang, a well-known professor of law at Peking University,^[3] and Xia Yeliang, a former college professor who was forced into exile.

A number of analysts described the section of the film discussing the "Ten Commandments" as the highlight. These "commandments" were allegedly part of the Central Intelligence Agency's handbook on dealing with China during the Bill Clinton administration. The list of activities that the CIA is said to engage in includes:

• "Using material things to lure... young people, encourage them to despise their leaders and oppose what they have been taught"
• "Do propaganda work well including TV, movies, books and radio broadcasts to make them desire our things, our forms of entertainment..."
• "Direct young people's attention towards sports, pornographic books, entertainment, games, crime films, and religious superstition"
• "Create contradictions and division between ethnicities"
• "Continuously create news to uglify their leaders"
• "Use all resources to destroy China's traditional values, exterminate and destroy their self-respect and self-confidence, and attack their hardy spirit…"^[6]

At the end of the film, several lines of credits in Chinese appear identifying it as a product of the National Defense University's Information Management Center (国防大学信息管理中心). Among the other producers of the film are the General Staff Department of the PLA and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Individuals responsible for the film were the National Defense University's Political Commissar Liu Yazhou, and its president Wang Xibin.^[7] "As such, the film appears to offer a remarkably straightforward glimpse into the Cold War mind-set of the Chinese military leadership, as well as the deep suspicions of the United States festering inside one of the most influential institutions in the Chinese political system," wrote the New York Times.^[3]

It was produced in June 2013. The documentary is voiced by Ren Zhihong, a well-known narrator and anchor of China Central Television's National Treasure Archive program. It included extensive use of historical footage, interviews with high-level political figures, and scholars inside and outside China. Top-level Chinese military officials were also interviewed.^{[citation needed]}

The documentary but instead explains what has been a longstanding "politically correct view of US-China relations."^[6]

Whether the film appeared on the Internet as a matter of deliberate policy or as an actual leak, posted without authorization, was a matter of debate among analysts. Given that censors can often act immediately to remove content and could easily have discovered the source of a leak, one analyst suggested a leak to have been unlikely.^[6]

"If the leak was indeed authorized, it would probably have been at some level of the PLA General Political Department, which appears to be responsible for its production, given the prominence of the NDU Political Commissar as Producer."^[6]