Representatives of the United States and the People’s Republic of China met this past weekend in Alaska to discuss their bilateral relationship and, in the course of the weekend, have a few meals.

The United States’ agenda for this meeting included discussing the ongoing genocide in Xinjiang, the destruction of Hong Kong’s legal and political systems, and China’s increasingly bellicose imperialist threats against its democratic neighbor Taiwan.

The Chinese representatives, by contrast, seemed to have food on their minds.

In a widely shared clip, as they walked into the meeting, Foreign Minister Wang Yi took this moment to ask diplomat Yang Jiechi if he had eaten lunch. Yang responded that he had instant noodles.

This seemingly casual, off the cuff dialogue strikes me as completely manufactured, just like the nationalist outrage that it all too predictably provoked.

My first piece of evidence to support this claim is that I personally doubt that Wang Yi and Yang Jiechi have casual, free conversations within earshot of the media.

If Yang Jiechi had dined on a banquet of abalone and hard liquor for lunch before having a full-body massage, as one can only assume that he usually does, I would assume that these two diplomatic personnel would be considerably less eager to share those details so publicly. “Yes, Minister Wang, my usual lunch of two Australian lobsters and six shots of baijiu!”

The seemingly spontaneous dialogue between Wang and Yang is, in my reading, an example of the type of manufactured authenticity that one sees increasingly frequently in Chinese media today. Anyone who has seen those obviously pre-scripted “positive energy” clips on Xinhua or the South China Morning Post, usually showing a security guard rescuing a baby on an escalator or a traffic guard helping an old lady cross the street, will be immediately familiar with this pseudo-authenticity, wherein pre-scripted encounters with notably not very skilled actors present a state-approved image of an otherwise absent ideal.

I have long felt that Donald Trump’s presidency was the peak of reality television in American society, applying the logic of this genre to the political system with reliably dramatic but admittedly mixed results. A similar albeit inverted process can be seen in these manufactured moments of pseudo-authenticity in Chinese state media, wherein state logics are performed as reality in manufactured clips and in turn presented to the public as spontaneous realities that stand in for the far different reality they experience in their everyday lives.

This is an admittedly longwinded academic way to say that I think this moment was pre-scripted for a particular affective effect. I know that some readers may dismiss my analysis here as either too cynical or even a conspiracy theory, but one does not have to be either a cynic or a conspiracy theorist to believe that the Chinese government dedicates a fair amount of energy to managing images and emotions via state media. Yang’s instant noodle lunch is just one of many examples.

This brings us to my second piece of evidence, considerably less circumstantial than the first: Chinese state media’s obsessive promotion of this comment.

As a result of China’s banquet culture and the volatile dynamics of China-US relations, the idea that Yang Jiechi had instant noodles before a high-level meeting with the United States tapped into a particular narrative of disrespect that was guaranteed to get emotions surging.

This emotive narrative tells us that Yang Jiechi was humiliated by the evil American imperialists who had him travel all the way to Alaska but did not even organize the type of banquet that reflected his importance. And insofar as Yang is cast here as the representative of the Chinese people, despite of course never having been elected, this slight comes to mean that you were personally humiliated by the United States and should as a result be very angry.

Guancha, a pseudo-intellectual nationalist agit-prop site, was eager to make the most of these noodles. An article by Liu Zhiqin of Renmin University’s Chaoyang Institute of Financial Studies begins by discussing the insult apparent in the meal, seeing it as part of a broader initiative to suppress and humiliate China: Yang Jiechi ate instant noodles, you should feel angry!

Yet Liu also saw in these noodles a metaphor for China’s diplomatic strategy. Chinese diplomacy, Liu tells us, is a bit like instant noodles: hard when it needs to be, but also soft when it needs to be. This raises the urgent question of whether the best approach in a diplomatic standoff with China is simply to add hot water and wait a few minutes.

After manufacturing rage and riding out an awkward metaphor, Liu concludes on a triumphant note: the noodle incident demonstrates the fighting spirit of China’s diplomats. The fact that Yang Jiechi was able to stand his ground in the hours of dialogue that followed on a meager lunch of instant noodles should be, Liu tells us, a source of great pride for the Chinese people.

If such noodle-based meditations had remained solely in the realm of state media silliness, we could all have a good laugh, let Guancha write its noodle think pieces that no one should take seriously, while the rest of us get back to issues that actually mattered. However, even a few China scholars on Twitter and in media commentaries allowed themselves to fall into the trap of this pre-scripted narrative.

In this narrative, the perceived slight of Yang’s lunch reflects a deep cultural misunderstanding on the part of the United States, which would undoubtedly cast a negative shadow over the talks: after all, whenever anyone comes to Beijing, regardless of who they are (even including a separatist like myself, in the past, of course), they are treated to an elaborate banquet that shows respect. Such a line of analysis, in my reading, highlights the often all too thin line between “China-watching” and “tantrum-affirming,” wherein an understanding of what makes the fragile Chinese regime angry (pretty much anything beyond utter obsequiousness nowadays, to be honest) is misrepresented as a contribution to knowledge production.

The end result of this manufactured controversy is that from China to the United States to everywhere in between, everyone was discussing what Yang Jiechi had for lunch. Yet Yang Jiechi’s lunch is, not to put too fine a point on it, the least important topic that anyone could be discussing. Who really cares what Yang ate?

We should care about what Uyghurs held indefinitely and arbitrarily in concentration camps are eating and doing and experiencing. We should care about what the people of occupied Tibet are eating and doing and experiencing. We should care about what political prisoners in Hong Kong and the growing number of exiles from Hong Kong are eating and doing and experiencing. Does anyone think that any of them would complain for even a second about an instant noodle lunch? Does anyone think that any would be outraged at the sight of their persecutors having a less than elaborate lunch that supposedly does not show them sufficient respect?

Both the Chinese public and the international community need to stop viewing China’s interactions with the world from the perspective of China’s oppressors, worrying about endless slights here and humiliations there, and should instead begin to view these relations from the perspectives of the oppressed.

And from that perspective, Yang is infinitely lucky to be dining on instant noodles before meeting with US representatives, rather than sitting in a jail cell for his complicity in the Chinese Communist Party’s ongoing crimes.

(Kevin Carrico is Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at Monash University and the author of the forthcoming Two Systems Two Countries: A Nationalist Guide to Hong Kong)

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