The inimitable China’s global propaganda campaign

On June 4^th the official twitter handle of India’s largest dairy, Amul was blocked after it backed the boycott of Chinese goods. Amid unrelenting Indo-Chinese face-offs across the LAC, stifling of Amul girl known for speaking her mind on Twitter triggered sneaking suspicion of Dragon’s role. Twitter, inaccessible to Chinese citizens and banned in the mainland is immensely popular with the Wolf warrior diplomats to wage propaganda wars. Corona outbreak has dented China’s popularity. To revive its image and resurrect the deteriorating global image of China, among the numerous propaganda mechanisms, China co-opted Twitter. Be it laying claims to Mt Everest or the unceasing pysch-ops battle waged by the Global Times, it has become the most favoured choice of China.

On May 29^th, Twitter blocked President’s tweet for allegedly ‘glorifying violence’. Few days back, Twitter even disabled Trump’s campaign video. But curiously the malicious and obnoxious posts by Chinese diplomat as part of their propaganda overdrive never faced Twitter’s censorship. Twitter’s censorship and implicit double standards sparked a debate on free speech. A startling disclosure by the China Daily recently has added a new perspective to the “neutrality” on the social media.

Documents filed by the China Daily, English newspaper owned by the publicity department of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) with the US Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) indicated that it paid $19 million for advertising and printing to American newspapers in the past four years. Twitter also figured in the list China’s advertisers.

The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal have been recipients of $4.6 million and $6 million respectively since November 2016 for carrying out China supplements- “the China watch” with a pro-Beijing spin. Even, The New York Times, Foreign Policy, The Des-Moines Register, and CQ-Roll Call received payment for advertising. The Los Angeles Times, The Seattle Times, The Atlanta-Journal Constitution, The Chicago Tribune, The Houston Chronicle, The Boston Globe also figured in China Daily’s client list. Given China’s murky arrangements, these reports may be hardly surprising but it lends credence to the popular perception of China’s attempts to stifle the free media.

Since the outbreak of virus, to escape the culpability and global wrath, China unleashed an aggressive propaganda warfare. The unmissable pro-Chinese overtones of the news reports from above-mentioned agencies has buttressed the popular concerns of China’s penetration of the Western media which has turned into a platform for pro-China sympathisers.

Pro-democracy groups like Freedom House and Hoover Institution have long warned America of a China government’s agenda to push propaganda through American media agencies. Decades of Cold war has conditioned America to be wary of Russian interference in the media. But America which has horribly misjudged the China’s intentions and agenda has overlooked China’s creeping penetration. While the payments have steadily shrunk since Covid outbreak, fresh disclosures have warranted analysts to study it much closer.

To achieve, “The Chinese Dream” Beijing formulated policies inspired by the Western doctrine. In the Cold war era, the US and Soviet Union vying for dominance evolved strategies to outsmart each other. After the collapse of Soviet Union, the US outshined all countries with meticulous strategies. During the 1991 Desert Storm, by excelling and integrating all the domains of the battle field (air, land, sea, space and electronic (information) spectrum, the US set a new benchmark to consolidate its dominance. China began to draw inspiration from the US military’s Joint for Information Operations and charted a framework for its own ascendency ².

Emulating American rise, after a 10-year rigorous study China brought out a White paper in 2004, seeking a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) ³. Reorienting PLA (People’s Liberation Army) for modern warfare, China rolled out an Information warfare (IW) with five integral aspects: destruction of the enemy command and control information centres;  attacking the information collection and intelligence centres by electronic jamming or electronic warfare; military deception through simulated attacks; operational secrecy and psychological warfare using TV, media to undermine the morale of the enemy. [American IW has six pillars- electronic warfare, tactical deception, strategic deterrence, propaganda warfare, psychological warfare, computer, command and control warfare].

Since 2004, China has used one or a combination of these attacks to intimidate its adversary. Phising attacks through emails, trojan malware, developing new virus have been part of this new strategy. The driving paradigm behind China’s new strategy has been Maoist People’s war concept of “overcoming the superior with the inferior” and Sun Zi’s notion of “winning the battle without fighting”. Additionally, to overcome its technological disadvantage, China adopted non-technological measures like camouflage, concealment and deception techniques as attractive asymmetric options.

After psychological warfare became integral part of the Beijing’s military strategy, China pursued it vigorously. It rolled out a sophisticated strategy to tell China’s story to international audience. Averse to political reforms, China mobilised all resources to launch a global propaganda campaign.

Central Propaganda Department (CPD) in charge of the Propaganda started in 1924 and as old as the CCP has been integral part of Chinese political system⁴. CPD catered to the domestic audience. Till late 1990s China’s approach has been largely reactive and defensive. It largely firewalled domestic subjects from the foreign influence by blacking out international broadcasts and expelling foreign correspondents who reported on sensitive issues like Tibet, Taiwan and Tiananmen post 1989.

With soaring global ambitions, China replaced the crude tools with a sophisticated and assertive strategy. Infusing funds, China launched- China Global Television Network (CGTN), the global arm of the China Central Television (CCTV), controlled by CCP in 2016 to revamp its global image. Keeping a tight leash on the domestic reporting, China began to exploit the vulnerabilities of free media globally. Introducing special fellowships, free graduate degrees in communication, incentivising salaries, special journalistic perks and free trips, China began to entice the journalists across the World to “tell the China story well”^5.

Soon China began to implant state-run China Radio International (CRI) content into the broadcasts of countries across the World. China even cultivated vocal supporters called the “third party spokespeople” to influence people’s perceptions and preclude any criticism towards PRC. CRI started in 1941 is now reporting in 65 languages. CRI funded Global CAGM has reportedly made deep in roads in Australia which has sizeable Chinese population. Alluding to the strategy of “borrowing a boat to go out to the Ocean” CRI is steadily expanding its reach ⁸.

Recently Australia has been worst victim of China’s propaganda machinery which inimically extended tentacles into political system as well. Besides cultivating businessmen, through influential Chinese-origin individuals, CCP expanded its propaganda campaign in Australia. Huang Xiangmo, a billionaire, with close links to CCP and a permanent resident of Australia donated funds to found Australia China Relation Institute (ACRI) for cultivating positive relations between both countries. He became the Chairman of ACRI. Despite claims of being independent and partisan, ACRI became a launch pad for organising free tours for high profile Australian journalists to mainland China. Journalists of sponsored trips began to sing praises of China and refrained from criticizing Chinese initiatives like BRI¹⁰.

Aside the occasional bullying and intimidatory tactics to crackdown on the outlets that refused to fall in line. After the bad press in the run up to 2008 Beijing Olympics when rights groups openly derided China’s high-handed crackdown in Tibet. China intensified its global campaign pledging $6.6 billion to strengthen global media. Through Digital Silk Road initiative, China made inroads into Africa struggling to establish digital infrastructure. By building optic fibre cables, television satellites and offering enticing salaries, China recruited African journalists to recount the benevolence of China along with Africa story. Beijing slowly penetrated Africa. After its initial success in Africa, China replicated the same process in several low-and middle-income Asian countries.

Despite China’s insistence of win-win cooperation, BRI faced severe international criticism. To reshape international reporting on BRI, and to “tell stories about China well and spread China’s voice well”, Beijing hosted 100 foreign journalists from leading media agencies in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, South East Asia and African countries for 10 months. The package program included language classes, plush accommodation, lucrative fellowships and guided free tours of China. All the participating media agencies subsequently carried out glowing reports on China but without mentioning that the reports were generated as part of Chinese government hosted fellowship. IANS, Jansatta and The Indian Express of India participated in this program.⁹ One of the participants in the program later disclosed that they were barred from reporting South China Sea disputes and compelled to produce positive stories to complete fellowship.

China is using time-tested techniques of the developed Western countries to advance its global rise. But unlike those countries China’s CCP is intolerant to plurality of voices. Journalists working for state run-global Chinese media agencies are goaded to use special access privileges to spy for Beijing.

Under the façade of journalism, recruiters of global-Chinese media agencies are restrained to serve as low-level intelligence officers, spies, propaganda agents, and eyes of the CCP. Wary of eroding journalistic edicts, Washington asked Xinhua established in 1931 to serve as CCP propaganda channel and CGTN to register under FARA in 2018 ⁵.

In 2009, Hongkong millionaire Tung Chee-hwa with close ties to CCP, founded The China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF). To foster engagement, the foundation, regularly conducts fully funded travel of US journalists, academicians, politicians to China. While CUSEF denies having any political goals, it has been part of PLA’s Sanya Initiatives, which brings high ranked officials of China and US military officials together. CUSEF even uses the same PR firm as Washington Chinese embassy. In 2016 CUSEF hired Podesta group to lobby Congress on China-US relations¹³. Through BLJ Worldwide LTD, PR firm it not only runs pro-Beijing website, China US Focus but manages to place three Chinese articles in US media agencies per week by paying $20,000 a month (as per FARA filings of 2010) ¹².

A 2016 report claims that China Daily paid over $1 million per year to the Britain’s The Daily Telegraph to carry out “China Watch” supplement once a month. Indeed, China Daily, freely distributes weekly newspaper, “China Daily European Weekly” in certain parts of London ⁷. The Daily Mail has agreement with People’s Daily, Chinese language mouth piece. Epitomizing Mao’s strategy of “Making the Foreign Serve”, China is roping popular media agencies across the globe to aggressively promote its interests.

Besides the trusted state media agencies, China is marshalling new tribe successful Chinese business men to acquire media houses of repute. Jack Ma’s acquisition of the 115-year old Hongkong’s South China Morning Post (SCMP) known for its objective journalism has been part of this new strategy. Under the veneer of adhering to the sanctity of independent reporting, China is promoting pro-China content through these reputed media houses.

The ambit and expanse of Chinese ambitions is truly overwhelming. Along with the short-term fellowship programs and free tours, China has an insidious long-term ambition of completely revamping the western idea of journalism by indoctrinating and grooming a new generation of journalists with Chinese ideology (unquestionable supremacy of the party and intolerance towards multiparty system). At the 3^rd Plenum of eighteenth party congress, China released Document 9 expounding fears over western journalism infiltrating Chinese ideology and opposing the leadership of the CCP in the media ¹¹.

Reflective of China’s intolerance for dissent and poor press freedom it is ranked, 176 out of 180 countries as per Reporters Without Borders (RSF) 2018 World Freedom Index. While ruthlessly censoring domestic media, China is wooing global media agencies to preclude any criticism⁶. As per China’s Pursuit of a New World media order, China is investing $1.3 billion annually to increase global presence of Chinese media.

Reactive authoritarian regimes are known to coopt the propaganda machinery for narrative setting. But the multifaceted approach of China, its opacity, the scale, depth of investments and its global penetration is truly astounding. Latest report of Huawei launching a media blitz highlighting its role in building mobile network before security review is just a tip of iceberg of China’s larger information war tactics¹². While the West is caught unawares, China is infiltrating global media agencies with brute money power, coercion and intimidation to create a new world media order-where intolerance of dissent and kowtowing to CCP will become the new normal.

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