The CCP’s Control of its Complex Global Media Apparatus Obscures the Spread of Communist Ideology (Part 3)

On July 11, 2019, Chinese democracy activists in the United States, who came to welcome Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen at her hotel, were physically assaulted by a group of people who identified as "patriots" and carried Chinese red flags. Huang Xiaotang/The Epoch Times

The main problem now is that the U.S. government still needs to find an effective means of restraining the CCP’s influence operations. Due to the language barrier, Washington or American media still needs to fully understand what is happening in the Chinese community, the scale, and the covert and complex media strategies of China’s foray into overseas markets.

Since the Hong Kong businessman and CPPCC (Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference) member Ho Chu Kwok acquired Sing Tao Daily in 2001, the paper’s stance has become pro-Beijing. The New York edition of Sing Tao Daily’s coverage of China’s affairs is provided by the Hong Kong headquarters, and its content always supports Beijing. More than half of its American coverage content comes from Star Productions, a Chinese company in Shenzhen, China.

However, it was not until 2021, when Ho Chu Kwok sold Sing Tao Daily to Guo Xiaoting, the daughter of Kaisa Group’s Chairman, that the U.S. Department of Justice was able to order Sing Tao Daily to register as a “foreign agent,” requiring it to report its financial sources and expenditure to the U.S. government every six months. The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) is intended to inform the public and does not regulate the operation of agents. Sing Tao Daily only indicates its agent identity in a small line of text at the bottom of its front page that reads: “This material is published by Sing Tao Newspapers New York Ltd. on behalf of Sing Tao News Corporation Limited. More relevant information can be obtained from the Department of Justice in Washington, DC”, but few readers would notice it. The law has a very limited deterrent effect on the CCP’s infiltration behaviors and its “real-world impact.”

Since being labeled as a “foreign agent,” Sing Tao Daily has become more direct than Qiao Bao as a primary CCP propaganda mouthpiece. On August 9 last year, the Eastern edition of Sing Tao Daily published a 2,000-word article by Zhao Jian, the Chinese Consul General in Chicago, directly expressing the CCP’s views on the Taiwan issue and indoctrinating Sing Tao readers with pro-Beijing perspectives.

Qiao Bao is registered as a private company in the United States, and its funding and operations remain a mystery. The formal name and publisher of the New York Qiao Bao is Pacific Culture Enterprise Inc. Qiao Bao also has a registered name of Asian Cultural and Media Group. According to the New York State registration website, they have used different company names in other years. The relationship between the Pacific Culture Enterprise, Asian Cultural Center, Rhythm Media Group, and Asian Cultural and Media Group is complex for outsiders since they are private companies.

As the Hoover Institution’s 2018 report “Chinese Influence and American Interests” stated, it is difficult to see the ownership structure of “quasi-party media.” For example, Asian Culture and Media Group control pro-Communist media SinoVision and Qiao Bao in the United States that appear to be private companies. The employees in the company have all worked for China’s state-owned China News Service.

Our sources insist that these employees “were dispatched to the United States by the Chinese regime to establish propaganda operations in the United States. Given its nominal status as a private company, taking action to shut down its operations would be fraught with even more legal and ethical challenges than those involving media corporations directly owned by the PRC,” the report said. The report pointed out that independent publishers and websites were similarly affected by the Communist regime’s claws.

Even though the Hoover Institution’s report recognized that the establishment of Qiao Bao and SinoVision was to serve the goals of the CCP, “most of the CEOs and editors of these operations are domestic news editors and reporters, and are officials in the State Department’s Overseas Chinese Affairs Office,” the report said. “According to Wang Aibing, the former executive of SinoVision, the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office provided SinoVision with $800,000 per year since 1990 and eventually increased the subsidy to between $2 million and $3 million per year. Wang accused the agency of widespread corruption in a letter to the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office in 2011.”

However, because private companies have autonomy and freedom to operate, U.S. law is powerless over this situation. The report raises the question: “If US law protects the rights of publishers of newspapers or websites to put their personal political imprint on their enterprises, how can the US government move to deny it to those of a pro-PRC bent?”

Scholars Suggest Closing or Selling Off CCP-Controlled Media Outlets That Influence Millions of Chinese-Americans

The key issue is that these are not standard American private companies, and their loyalty is questionable. As Lim Jim Koon, former editor-in-chief of the Singapore United Daily News, pointed out in a speech at the 7th World Chinese Language Media and Chinese Civilization Communication International Academic Symposium in September 2011, “Many overseas Chinese-language newspapers exist as ‘overseas Chinese newspapers,’ and some of them are loyal to China, not to their host countries. In terms of resources, including funding, personnel, and news sources, they rely heavily on support from China ... Rather than calling them ‘overseas Chinese-language newspapers,’ it is better to call them overseas extensions of Chinese newspapers.”

So how do we solve this problem? The Hoover Institution’s report suggests that U.S. authorities must establish the true “ownership structure” of Chinese companies that buy American media. Any media owned or controlled by foreign institutions, especially those serving foreign government positions, must register under FARA. The United States should also conduct a comprehensive review to assess whether organizations and their employees outside the scope of FARA regulations need to be registered as foreign agents. “In addition, there is an argument to be made for ensuring that employees of these organizations be given a disclosure package making them aware that they are working for a foreign agent institution.”

Seth D. Kaplan, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, also proposed in a Wall Street Journal opinion article titled “How China’s Propaganda Influences the West” that the U.S. government should require companies to disclose their ownership structure and financial relationships with any Chinese or CCP united front organization, and force media influenced by the CCP to “either sell or close down.”

He said the Department of Homeland Security must disclose the national security risks posed by social software such as WeChat and draft regulations requiring them to comply with U.S. free speech and privacy standards. If they do not comply, the government should prohibit them from entering the U.S. market because “the CCP is influencing the information consumed by millions of Chinese-speaking Americans. If Beijing’s propaganda campaign remains unchecked, all Americans will suffer.”