A case study highlighted in the book was Xinhua News Agency, the CCP’s official news media.
“[Xinhua] has signed content-sharing agreements with a wide range of publications in developing and developed countries, and in some countries is increasingly being seen as a news source no different than the AP or Reuters, etc.,” author Joshua Kurlantzick, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told The Epoch Times in an email.
Although Xinhua’s content is used less by U.S. media, “China Watch”—an advertorial insert of articles from the CCP English mouthpiece China Daily—is more common, according to Kurlantzick. In his book, he said that China Daily ran such inserts in over 30 major news outlets with international reach.
“Some U.S. news outlets, like The Wall Street Journal, do excellent jobs of making clear these are ads, basically; others do not, and ‘China Watch’ could look to some readers like real copy, even though it comes from China Daily,” he said.
While the CCP had controlled or influenced local media in other countries, coupled with online disinformation campaigns partly learned from Russia, the overall effectiveness was a mixed bag, according to Kurlantzick’s book.
The CCP’s support of Russia during the Ukraine war, although a bit subdued lately, has hurt its global image, especially in Europe, he said.
“It has undermined China’s media offensive as well and—along with other factors like China’s economic coercion and aggressive diplomacy—is leading to highly negative views of China in many states,” he said.
However, with Xi Jinping securing his third term as the CCP’s general secretary until 2028, communist propaganda export is expected to grow.
During a visit to the People’s Liberation Army Daily in December 2015, Xi famously said, “Wherever the readers are, wherever the viewers are, that is where propaganda reports must extend their tentacles, and that is where the focal point and end point of propaganda and ideology work should be.”
On Oct. 25, days after the 20th Congress, Party newspaper People’s Daily released on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform, the top 40 “catchphrases” used in official Party reports; official English versions accompanied the Chinese originals.
This approach was to provide an official version of the Party jargon and mold CCP definitions into these English phrases when exporting propaganda, Sang Pu, political commentator and president of the Taiwan Hong Kong Association, told Voice of America. He added that “new journey,” the English version of the first phrase on the list, omitted the war-like undertone in the Chinese original—a typical tactic in CCP propaganda.
Kurlantzick told The Epoch Times that making Chinese state media register as foreign agents in the United States was an effective tool, but wouldn’t address the propaganda’s content-sharing or paid advertorials. He said programs to “foster Americans’ literacy about understanding quality sources” and “crackdown on China’s growing use of disinformation online” are essential.
His top three recommendations for democratic countries are training citizens’ digital literacy in discerning online disinformation, scrutinizing foreign investment in media and information sectors at the same level as in semiconductors and other sensitive industries, and rebuilding democracy’s global brand to diminish the appeal of authoritarian regimes.
