To counter Western propaganda and dominance, China has started making use of media as a weapon for the projection of its soft power. Under President Xi Jinping, China has seen a shift in its media-related policies and started focusing on tactics to shape the information narratives internationally. In this regard, the country has invested heavily in media. Thus, the Chinese government has spent around $6.6 billion since 2009 to improve the country’s global image. Hence, it took various steps, including the internationalization of its media and the use of dramas and films to promote its propaganda and soft side.
Internationalization of Media
In 2009, the Chinese government announced the acceleration of its efforts for the internationalization of Chinese media. Hence, funding of almost $6 billion was allocated for financing the media sector. It was followed by the opening of the “Big Four” Beijing media agencies in the international arena. Later on, when Xi Jinping became president in 2012, the institutionalization further intensified. In a speech at the National Propaganda and Ideology Work Conference in 2013, Xi Jinping asserted:
“[We] must meticulously and properly conduct external propaganda, innovating external propaganda methods, working hard to create new concepts, new categories and new expressions that integrate the Chinese and the foreign, telling China’s story well, communicating China’s voice well.”
Consequently, China’s biggest state-owned media companies started setting up bureaus and hiring correspondents all across the globe. For instance, CCTV (now CGTN) established an Africa bureau in Nairobi in 2012. Now, it has 6 channels in 171 countries, which provide broadcasts in Arabic, English, Spanish, and French. Moreover, it has also signed cooperation agreements with 70 foreign media institutions, including BBC Worldwide. The same is the case with other Chinese media outlets.
Xinhua News Agency currently has 180 international offices, even more than Associated Press, Reuters, and AFP, and provides publications in eight international languages. Likewise, China Radio International (CRI) has become the second-largest radio organization in the world, which broadcasts in 65 languages.
Apart from expanding its media outlets in other countries, China also conducts exchange programs for foreign reporters from several countries, along with organizing training for them in its local cities. Most importantly, the Chinese government targets journalists in developing countries in Africa by hiring and training them. However, China’s internationalization of media is not limited to this. Rather, the country has also started adopting unusual and innovative tactics like providing state media content to other countries at lower charges or even free of charge.
For instance, StarTimes is a Chinese television entity that provides cheap cable TV packages to 30 African countries with Chinese state-run TV channels. Moreover, Chinese companies have also bought stakes in established local media entities of other countries to disseminate their message and spread pro-China content. For example, a Chinese news agency, GBTimes, has acquired stakes in radio stations in Europe. Similarly, Chinese state-run organizations have bought a 20% stake in a South African media platform named IOL and have published pro-China pieces in it.
Similarly, Beijing has also started launching bilateral cooperation agreements with local media outlets. For instance, when Italy officially joined BRI in 2019, Xi Jinping signed a series of media cooperation agreements with Italian media organizations, including the Italian state-run news agency ANSA. According to a report by the Henry Jackson Society, “An expanding presence in Italian media gives Beijing a platform to spread its official views, while potentially inhibiting more critical debates from emerging.” Hence, China has also used this tactic to facilitate its soft diplomacy.
The Role of Chinese Cinema
China has also used the instrument of cinema to enhance its image and promote its cultural diplomacy, which was in line with the country’s “going-out policy.” According to the most recent stats, China has the largest number of movie theaters in the world with 65,500 cinema screens. Hence, it serves as a center of attraction for foreign companies, especially Hollywood, which want to generate revenue from running their movies there.
However, China has set the quota for high-budget foreign films to just 34 a year. This limitation compels Hollywood producers to go for a joint venture with Chinese companies, evident from the fact that 41 films were co-produced between 2002 and 2013. However, in these co-production projects, China always has the upper hand and thus influences the moment of the exhibition in the movies while keeping the demands of Chinese financiers in mind.
In addition, China also influences the co-productions by censoring and tempering the script and molding it to meet the pro-China narrative. For instance, Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014) was co-produced by Paramount and Jiaflix Enterprises and China Movie Channel (owned by CCTV); hence, its script was tempered to avoid censorship in China. Likewise, two versions of Iron Man 3 (2013) were produced. The Asian one incorporated pro-China elements like beverages from the Yili brand and acupuncture, which were absent in the North American version.
Likewise, to please Chinese censors, Sony was forced to delete the scene where aliens destroyed the Great Wall of China from the movie Pixels (2015). Thus, China doesn’t allow touching sensitive issues related to the country in a bad light, like Tibet. Robert Daly, director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC, also shares the same perspective that “there have been no films in recent years that depict the Chinese Communist Party or mainland Chinese characters in a critical light. […]Instead, China has saved the world in ‘2012’ and ‘The Martian’.”
Impacts of China’s Media Expansion
China resorted to various measures like the internationalization of its news outlets, investing in news agencies of other countries, co-producing with Hollywood, and censoring films to promote China’s cultural diplomacy. But has China succeeded in attaining this goal? Through the expansion of state-run media in foreign countries and co-producing with Hollywood, China has managed to expand its cultural influence all across the globe. It is even evident from the 2019 Asia Power Index, which ranks China as the 2nd out of 25 countries in cultural influence.
Similarly, the content control by China has not only controlled negative representations of China abroad but also what is displayed within China. Hence, China’s media tactics played a crucial role in attaining dual functions of China’s cultural diplomacy, i.e., countering the cultural hegemony of Western countries, along with counterbalancing cultural modernization and Westernization within China, while keeping the nation united and loyal to the government. The Chinese media collaborations with Western media and Hollywood have also posed a threat to the US media and have put China in a position of power in the global arena.
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