China
Quantum Entanglement: Love Song Reinforces China’s South China Sea Claims
China’s latest propaganda song, “I Miss You on the South China Sea,” portrays coast guard personnel as relatable figures longing for loved ones. Released to coincide with the 10th anniversary of a ruling against China’s maritime claims, it reflects Beijing’s narrative strategy to project a benign presence in the disputed region.
UPDATED on July 22, 2026 at 10:16 p.m. ET
The video opens with an aerial shot of a lone China Coast Guard ship at sea on a calm day, as soft, whimsical music carries us into China’s latest propaganda song.
“Azure sky, crystal sea, chasing gulls, blazing sun, patrolling the South China Sea, guarding endless loneliness, endless vastness, and guarding this sea, this peace and harmony.”
The lyrics of the first verse introduce the setting – this is a song about an enlisted member of the coast guard stationed on the disputed sea, thinking longingly about someone he loves back home.
In later verses, he asks her what color the clouds are where she is, what perfume she’s wearing, and if she’s drinking coffee or tea, because he’d like a taste too.
The song, “I Miss You on the South China Sea,” is Beijing’s latest attempt to use popular culture to shape international perceptions of one of Asia’s most contentious maritime disputes, analysts told Radio Free Asia.
The English version of the music video was released this month by Chinese state media to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the 2016 international arbitral tribunal ruling that rejected the legal basis of Beijing’s sweeping claims over most of the disputed waters.
A Mandarin version debuted about six months earlier during the Lantern Festival, a Chinese cultural event that marks the end of Lunar New Year celebrations and the coming of spring.
Though the English version is seemingly intended to appeal to an international audience, the analysts questioned whether this campaign is likely to resonate beyond viewers and listeners already sympathetic to China.
“China’s state media spends little time actually thinking about how the message will be received elsewhere,” Ed Moon, an independent cross-Strait analyst and founder of intelligence site Strait Signal, told RFA. “Its major focus is on ensuring that the overall message correctly aligns with the official narrative.”
At one point, the singer uses a quantum physics term romantically, telling his beloved that he would cross time and space to prove with her “what quantum entanglement is.”
But despite the apparent awkwardness of the English lyrics, the song attempts to portray China Coast Guard personnel as ordinary people with very real feelings of longing for home and those they love, while their duties have called them far away to the remoteness of the open sea.
Controlling the narrative
The video reflects a broader effort by Beijing to complement official statements with emotionally driven storytelling, as China increasingly seeks to communicate its positions through documentaries, influencers, short videos and other forms of popular media.
“China wants to project its presence in the South China Sea as peaceful, benign and wholly normal. The focus on the human aspect of the coast guard crew members fits this pattern,” Moon said, adding that Beijing’s state media is primarily concerned with ensuring content aligns with the Communist Party’s official narrative rather than persuading foreign audiences.
Within China’s political system, he said, Beijing’s sovereignty claims are treated as historically and factually self-evident, leaving little perceived need to explain them to overseas audiences.
Instead, Moon said, China has increasingly outsourced the task of “explaining” the country to foreign employees working within its media system and to overseas influencers who produce favorable content about China. As a result, English-language state media has become less important than maintaining consistency with Beijing’s messaging.
He also noted a growing emphasis on producing content in both Chinese and English, describing it as evidence of tighter coordination across state media outlets and a renewed focus on overseas Chinese communities, which Beijing increasingly sees as receptive audiences.
The song represents an effort to use culture as a political tool while softening the image of the China Coast Guard, Jason Ng Sze Chieh, a lecturer at INTI International College Subang in Malaysia, told RFA.
“An attempt to instrumentalize…
Read the rest of this article here >>> ‘Quantum entanglement’: Love song asserts China’s South China Sea claims
