VANCOUVER—When you’re a Chinese journalist in Canada, you feel the pressure to go easy on the Chinese Communist Party, says Lei Jin, it’s no secret.

Jin was fired from his job as editor-in-chief at Burnaby, B.C., based Global Chinese Press Inc. in 2017 after writing about the death of Chinese human rights advocate Liu Xiaobo in a Chinese prison.

Then, Jin made headlines when he filed a complaint with the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal on the grounds that he was fired for his political beliefs. Tribunal documents from the case show his former employers insist he was let go for multiple incidents of insubordination and poor performance. The tribunal hears the case in early February.

But his allegation against his former employer pulled back the curtain on what many in Chinese communities have long said is a problem. And a report released Thursday by a United States think tank says it’s a growing one: China’s attempts to influence foreign media.

Jin stressed he would not talk about his specific case, but said it’s common knowledge the mainland China government exerts pressure to curb criticism in Chinese-language media in Canada. But it’s still rarely a topic of discussion in public forums.

“Most people, they don’t want to talk about it, it’s very sensitive,” he said. “They don’t intimidate you directly, but you feel the pressure indirectly.”

Jin is now on a break from journalism until his case is heard.

But his case was mentioned in Wednesday’s report from Washington, D.C.-based think tank Freedom House, which aims to further democracy around the world, detailing how Beijing is expanding its efforts to control and influence media, including here in Canada.

The report details incidents of intimidation as well as misinformation campaigns as Beijing tries to pressure media outlets to not just curb criticism of China’s Communist Party, but to actively promote its policies as examples for other countries.

It’s not simply expanding state-controlled media abroad to give a one-sided version of the news, Cook’s report said. In some cases Chinese officials have phoned reporters or publicly attacked them for their coverage of China, including 52 statements targeting media in Sweden for its coverage of China.

“Over the past decade we’ve see Chinese Communist Party leaders really oversee a dramatic expansion of the regime’s ability to shape media content and narratives about China around the world,” author Sarah Cook, a research analyst for China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, told the Star in phone interview. “What really ended up coming out of the research in this report is that the trend has really accelerated since 2017.”

According to the report, such tactics include “Russian style” misinformation campaigns and attempts to manipulate web searches on global platforms. The report also discusses Chinese media abroad and its role in spreading pro-CCP narratives while demonizing those who criticize the regime.

Beijing is ramping up its push to influence how media outlets outside of mainland China cover the country, Cook said. Such influence includes avoiding coverage of the “dark side” of China’s foreign engagement, such as corrupt deal-making and elite capture, the practice of bringing influential people in other countries on side while ignoring the good of the country itself.

According to the report, Beijing has spent as much as $10 billion a year on soft power initiatives in its attempts to expand the presence of Chinese state media abroad. Firm numbers are not available.

The danger of the influence of misinformation campaigns and pressure to not cover the Chinese government negatively abroad through “corrupt” and “coercive” tactics is not something to shrug off, Cook said.

“That’s when the basic activity itself and the way in which they’re carrying out these campaigns and tactics starts to undermine international norms and fundamental features in democratic governments, like transparency, the rule of law, fair competition,” she said. “It has a real world impact.”

Cook’s report points out that the 10th World Chinese Media Forum hosted in China by the government and the United Front Work Department (UFWD), the CCP’s organization responsible for attempting to influence politics in foreign countries, was attended by representatives from 51 Canadian media outlets.

Marcus Kolga, a disinformation expert with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, said the efforts can be seen on the ground in Canada.

Kolga, who specializes in Russian disinformation but has started to look at Beijing’s initiatives, said he even noticed it in the last federal election when candidates seemed to remain silent about the Hong Kong protests.

“I think Chinese propaganda is having a much greater affect when it comes to riding-level politics than Russian propaganda,” Kolga said, also pointing to the UFWD’s efforts. “It does influence local mainland Chinese communities and does affect the views of some local politicians.”

He said he isn’t surprised that Beijing would try to skew results in search engines, stressing many corporations do the same thing. Kolga said it’s difficult to employ any official efforts to combat misinformation or censorship other than to be aware that a narrative is being pushed behind the scenes.

“It’s a free country,” he said. “We try to exercise free speech here.”

Last month, human rights organization Safeguard Defenders filed a complaint with Canada’s Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission alleging China’s state-run media outlet, China Global Television Network, was broadcasting forced confessions of political prisoners on its service available in Canada. The organization is also asking Canada to use its Magnitsky Law, legislation that would allow the country to impose sanctions on the CGTN staffers responsible. Kolga said the approach was “interesting.”

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Meanwhile, Cook said, governments around the world could take action by pushing back against Chinese envoys trying to intimidate media.

The report offered several recommendations to contain China’s attempts to influence foreign media, including introducing policies that would force Chinese media outlets to be transparent about ownership structures and paid advertorials, as well as supporting independent Chinese media.

With files from Tessa Vikander

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