
You Watch But Don’t Absorb
As independent journalists face mounting pressure in Kyrgyzstan, Chinese state media have quietly built influence over two decades. Adina Masalbekova tells Lingua Sinica how it happened.

On May 27, 2026, Global Times (環球時報) held a stop of its “Overseas China Week” series in Bishkek, launching a photo exhibition titled “Linked by Mountains and Rivers, Bound by Shared Hearts — China and Kyrgyzstan Hand-in-Hand for the Future” alongside the 2026 China-Kyrgyzstan Media Cooperation Forum. Attendees included People’s Daily deputy editor-in-chief Cui Shixin (崔士鑫), Kyrgyzstan’s Deputy Minister of Culture, Information, Sports and Youth Policy Salkyn Sarnogoeva, Kyrgyz Tuusu Publishing House head Galina Baitekerek, and a Chinese embassy counselor. The exhibition was organized around four themes described by Global Times as “shared security responsibilities,” “integrated development opportunities,” “joint ecological construction,” and “mutual learning among civilizations,” and included images of joint counter-terrorism drills, the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway, and a Chinese-built waste-to-energy plant in Bishkek. The event also displayed the Russian-language edition of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China and Global Times feature coverage decoding the book, alongside AR translation glasses made by Chinese company LLVision. Global Times reported that Kyrgyz visitors, including a Kyrgyz National University Chinese-language teacher and the editor-in-chief of Slovo Kyrgyzstana, offered favorable impressions of the exhibition’s content and presentation. Global Times said the “Overseas China Week” series had previously appeared in South Africa, South Korea, Brazil, Argentina, Germany, and Kazakhstan.
