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Tag: external propaganda

A Global Propaganda Laboratory

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in Features. No Comments on A Global Propaganda Laboratory

Hainan province, long China’s testing ground for economic and policy innovation, has emerged as a key experimental front in Beijing’s latest campaign — leveraging local and regional media to boost the country’s global “discourse power.” Earlier this summer, the Hainan International Media Center (HIMC), an office directly under the province’s propaganda office, unveiled a liaison center in Dubai, planting its flag in the Middle East. In Kuala Lumpur on Friday, it opened a new ASEAN Liaison Center (東盟聯絡中心), staking out Southeast Asia as a priority region for outreach.

Established in 2019, the HIMC was among China’s earliest provincial-level international communication centers (ICCs), following on the heels of the municipality of Chongqing, which launched its ICC in June 2018. The province’s unique position as a trade port experiment along what the CCP leadership has in recent years dubbed the “Maritime Silk Road” makes it a natural laboratory for President Xi Jinping’s “centralization+” approach to international messaging. It is also a key military region in the South China Sea from which China presses its territorial claims, a constant agitation for many ASEAN member states.

The launch ceremony for the HIMC liaison hub was attended by more than 60 guests under the theme “Media Linking Minds and Cultures Across Southeast Asia,” including Datuk Seri Wong Chun Wai (拿督斯里黃振威), chairman of the Malaysian National News Agency, Teh Hao Ran (鄭豪然), executive editor of Kwong Wah Yit Poh (光華日報), and Niu Xiaomin (牛曉民), deputy editor-in-chief of Hainan Daily Media Group (海南日報報業集團). The formation comes as Hainan prepares for the December 18 start of its free trade port’s closed-loop operation (封關運作), a development that officials say will dramatically increase connections with ASEAN countries. ASEAN has been Hainan’s largest trading partner since 2021.

The center, guided by Hainan’s provincial propaganda department and led by Hainan Daily Media Group, aims to serve as what officials described as a “comprehensive cooperation bridge” linking Hainan with ASEAN countries through international communication, economic cooperation, cultural exchange, and think tank collaboration.

The overseas expansion reflects Xi’s 2021 directive to “tell China’s story well” (講好中國故事) — terminology that has been core to the party’s international communication objectives since August 2013 — and make China “credible, lovable and respected” (可信、可愛、可敬), as Xi urged in a May 2021 speech to a collective study session of the CCP Politburo on “external propaganda” (外宣). Officials at the Kuala Lumpur ceremony invoked the same language, emphasizing the center’s mission to “tell good stories of China and Hainan” (講好中國故事、海南故事) to ASEAN audiences.

A Forum Fizzles

Written by David Bandurski on . Posted in Flash Reports. No Comments on A Forum Fizzles

So the first Ministerial Meeting of China’s Global Civilization Initiative (GCI) didn’t top your news agenda? Despite the grandiose terms in which leaders have previously described this third initiative to signal the country’s global leadership in key areas — including also security (GSI) and development (GDI) — state media apparently made little effort to externally publicize what was meant to be its opening party of sorts. Just a smattering of English reports touted the gathering, which took place in Beijing on July 10 and 11. Serbia seemed the only nation to formally announce its participation as a diplomatic matter.

First introduced in March 2023, this initiative is built around a broader concept of “civilization” that Xi has trumpeted since the 20th National Congress of the CCP in October 2022 as a new grandiose concept to shore up his own domestic legitimacy [READ “China’s ‘Xivilizing’ Mission”]. So far, however, the GCI has been relatively understated as a foreign relations strategy. China’s leaders might have hoped to move it centerstage, but they seem not to have even preannounced the ministerial meeting.

Remarks shared by the Central Propaganda Department-run Guangming Daily on the GCI meeting from former Indonesian president Megawati Saekarnoputri.

Naturally, there was a bit of fuss about the meeting in the pages of the People’s Daily, where a congratulatory letter from Xi Jinping made the front page on July 11. In his message, Xi stressed that at this critical juncture in international affairs, civilizational dialogue must transcend isolation and conflict. According to state media, the event attracted more than 600 political, cultural and educational leaders from approximately 140 countries and regions. Among the participants, featured in a CCTV+ video that received a paltry 247 views, was “American Tai Chi practitioner Jake Pinnick,” who called for dialogue and cooperation.

Also emerging from the event was a global“action plan” (行动计划) for civilization. The plan shows a strong focus on developing nations in the Global South. More on that in due course.

A Taipei Girl in Beijing

Written by Dalia Parete on . Posted in Flash Reports. No Comments on A Taipei Girl in Beijing

“She criticizes Taiwan, and this actually resonates with many young media friends in Taiwan.” So, with mendacity, began a June 11 profile of Taiwanese writer Guo Xueyun (郭雪筠) in Shanghai-based outlet The Paper (澎湃), coming two days after she published an essay in Guancha (觀察網), another of the city’s online outlets.

The coverage exemplifies China’s cultivation of sympathetic Taiwanese voices to support unification messaging. Writing under the byline “Taipei Girl Looks at Mainland China” (台北女孩看大陆), Guo has become a recurring fixture in China’s state-run and tightly controlled media, where only one narrative on Taiwan is accepted — that “unification” with China is inevitable, and the deepest desire of the population.

Born around 1990, Guo graduated from the advertising department at Taiwan’s Fu Jen University before moving to Beijing in 2012 for graduate studies at Peking University. Her generational perspective — contrasting Taiwan’s current struggles with China’s (much-mythologized) current prosperity — reinforces the state narrative that Taiwan would benefit from closer ties leading eventually to what China views as “unification,” and many Taiwanese view as annexation. In a 2018 interview with Beijing Youth Daily, she reflected on feeling both amazed and ashamed during her initial Beijing experience to discover that while Chinese typically saw the positive aspects of Taiwan, the reverse was not true.

Guo Xueyun, China’s not-so-secret weapon on Taiwan issues, on the lecture circuit. SOURCE: Tianjin University.

Guo’s transformation from struggling student to prominent author is of course also a story of concerted institutional backing. Her debut book, Taipei Girl Looks at Mainland China (台北女孩看大陸), was published in 2016 by People’s Literature Publishing House (人民文學出版社), controlled by China Publishing Group (中國出版集團有限公司) — a government company under the State Council. Her 2022 novel, I Am in Beijing (我在北京), was released through Jiuzhou Publishing House (九州出版社), a publisher directly controlled by the Taiwan Affairs Office (中共中央台灣工作辦公室), the CCP body that coordinates propaganda and messaging toward Taiwan.

China’s America Moment

Written by LS Staff on . Posted in Flash Reports. No Comments on China’s America Moment

Donald Trump’s use of the National Guard and US Marines to quell protests in Los Angeles against his immigration policies became a major story across Chinese media last week. Op-eds filled with images of turbulence interpreted the news as pointing toward imminent “civil war,” words used in several reports. Pursuing their long-term goal of discrediting the US political system, Chinese state media are now pushing at a door the Trump administration has opened wide.

Scenes of aggressive police action in LA are reported by Hong Kong’s government-run Ta Kung Pao.

China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency reported that its journalists had been injured while covering the protests. The article purported to deliver the will of the protesters, quoting them as saying they were “hard-working local community residents who wanted to express their opinions peacefully.” The report reached second-place on the Baidu search engine’s list of hottest news topics on June 9. The same day, another trending post from a prominent self-media account predicted that the events in California were a “prelude” to deeper conflict. “America’s ‘civil war’ has begun” (美国”内战”开始了), the author declared, calling the unrest “the first large-scale street conflict of the Trump 2.0 era” and comparing downtown Los Angeles to “a Middle Eastern war zone.” The post received close to 1.6 million reads.

In Hong Kong, media similarly mirrored these narratives of American decline. The online news outlet HK01 and state-backed newspaper Ta Kung Pao (大公报) both framed the conflict as a consequence of long-term social divides within the US, with HK01 warning that without resolution, America would “eventually fall into the abyss.”

For more on Chinese media portrayals of protests in the United States, and our perspective at CMP on how Trump administration actions have been a huge assist for China’s external propaganda efforts, read “A Trump Card for China’s Media.”