Xi Jinping’s recent speech about the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) overseas propaganda, in which he called on Chinese officials to create a “credible, lovable, and respectable” image for the nation, has gone viral.
Xi, who made the remarks at the CCP’s Politburo study session on May 31, also called on top officials in the regime to appear “open and confident, yet modest and humble” to the international community.
The CCP’s overseas propaganda policy is commonly known as “da wai xuan,” literally “big foreign propaganda” in English. It involves huge amounts of both manpower and money to spread the CCP’s narrative and ideology to foreign countries, thus achieving its goal of telling China’s story—the CCP’s way.
CCP’s Foreign Propaganda: An Underground Front
The main forces of the CCP’s overseas propaganda are mainly its official mouthpieces, including Xinhua News Agency, People’s Daily, and China Radio International—they’ve carried the same style as the CCP’s wolf warrior diplomacy since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out.Campaign Relies Heavily on CCP Funding
The “big foreign propaganda” is carried out on two fronts, with the CCP’s news agencies being set up in countries around the world to expand their reach. Among them, China Global Television Network (CGTN)—the overseas arm of the CCP’s domestic mouthpiece China Central Television (CCTV)—has set up operations in Africa, the United States, and the UK. By 2017, CCTV’s seven international channels, including Chinese, English, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, and Documentary (in English), have been broadcast in more than 170 countries and regions. These are the overt propaganda mainstays of the CCP’s regular army. They are loud but ineffective, because it doesn’t necessarily mean that the information they disseminate is accepted.The use of an underground front for propaganda and telling the CCP’s story has a large and imperceptible effect on the audience. In addition to its regular foreign propaganda outlets publishing media in various languages, the CCP has adopted three tactics to spread its propaganda in secretive ways.
The first tactic involves cooperating with influential local media in foreign countries via various means, including swapping space in the media for content from the other party—the CCP actually pays for its propaganda content. In doing so, the CCP plants content from its mouthpieces to appear in these local media.
The second tactic involves inviting journalists and editors from targeted countries to China for visits, training, and education, while offering them living expenses and allowances higher than they would get in their home countries. In return, the CCP asks these people to report on China in a way that is well received by the local audiences in their home countries.
The third tactic involves upgrading media equipment for the target country’s media companies. And in return, these companies are expected to report positively on the Chinese regime or the so-called contribution of Chinese overseas enterprises to the economic development of the local region, in the form of media interviews.
Covert Mouthpiece Journalists in the Free World
Chinese state-run media Xinhua News Agency launched its English-language news channel on July 1, 2009, and before that, the CCP had started several English-language newspapers such as News CHINA, which is the English version of China Newsweek and “a periodical subscribed by most foreign embassies to China and most Chinese embassies to foreign countries,” as quoted from its official website. Its governing body is the state-owned China News Service, which mainly targets overseas Chinese and “compatriots” from Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, according to its website.In late February 2009, China Daily, which is also part of CGTN, planned to set up its North America edition and correspondent stations in several places, including Washington. When it ran its recruitment ads for journalists, applicants flocked to apply for a job, since CGTN offered an attractive salary.
“The team recruiting for the new London hub of China’s state-run broadcaster had an enviable problem: far, far too many candidates. Almost 6,000 people were applying for just 90 vacancies of ‘reporting the news from a Chinese perspective.’ Even the simple task of reading through the heap of applications would take almost two months,” they wrote.
At a time when Western media are being forced to cut their budgets and staff due to the effects of the internet information abundance and financial concerns, China’s need for editors and reporters in all languages appears to provide some journalists with a seemingly good employment opportunity. The excellent salaries in Beijing’s foreign media are enough to make some Western journalists ignore the ethics and standards in journalism when promoting the CCP’s propaganda.
CCP Pays US Media to Secretly Brainwash Americans
China Daily has paid U.S. newspapers nearly $19 million since November 2016 for print and advertising, out of which nearly $11 million was paid to mainstream outlets The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, according to documents filed with the U.S. Department of Justice.“The articles in these inserts are intended to look like news and editorial material presented by the host newspaper (albeit accompanied by disclaimers, often in small print), but represent propaganda content prepared by the CCP’s foreign media apparatus. ... Significant outlays are involved in the purchase of these advertorial inserts,” he wrote.
Covert Propaganda Front Influences Global Audience
This hidden propaganda front plays a brainwashing role on a regular basis and a political role at critical moments that goes beyond the reach of the CCP’s regular foreign propaganda mouthpieces.“Many staff have taken part in educational schemes, sponsored trips, and fellowships in China, often for months at a time. In the journalistic community, there’s a consensus view that this training is having an impact. ‘The way they write their stories now, they reflect the way how Xinhua or how the state media in China is writing their stories,’ one journalist said, ‘It’s normally propaganda,’” the report reads.
“Another commented, ‘Instead of getting insights on journalism from free countries like the U.S., UK, Western Europe, and even Japan, they are learning state control.’”
The media is known as the “fourth estate” in the United States. The New York Times, which is almost worshiped by Asian countries, has become the voice of Chinese interests in the United States and the vanguard of the far left, and advocates for the interests of political factions funded by their country. The degradation of this public instrument means that the media is no longer the fourth estate, but an entity dependent on political and economic power.
The above analysis provides a picture of the huge amount of spending by Beijing on foreign propaganda. It highlights the fact that the CCP, which profits from the Chinese model of communist capitalism, has developed a sophisticated technique of corrupting Western societies through lucrative incentives, and is almost invincible.