BEIJING: The Chinese Communist Party has detailed its ambitious but secretive strategy for transforming the internet into a force for keeping it in power and projecting ''soft power'' abroad.

An internal speech by China's top internet official, apparently posted by accident on an official internet site before being promptly removed, outlines a vast array of institutions and methods to control opinion at home and also ''create an international public opinion environment that is objective, beneficial and friendly to us''.

''Those efforts provided powerful public opinion support for unifying thinking, consolidating strength, assisting in our diplomatic battles and safeguarding our national interests,'' said Wang Chen, who is deputy director of the Propaganda Department, head of External (foreign) Propaganda and also director of the State Council's Information Office.

Mr Wang's speech was made to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress on April 29 and posted on the Congress's website on May 4, before being removed, sanitised and re-posted on a more mainstream government website the following day. It was picked up by Human Rights in China and included in its report released yesterday, China's Internet: Staking Digital Ground.

''China has this goal of establishing a Chinese intranet, removing China from the global internet, and you can see that in this report,'' said Anne-Marie Brady, an expert on China's propaganda system at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. ''The average Chinese person knows basically how the propaganda system works but there's no need to advertise so blatantly what the government is doing,'' she said, explaining why large sections of the original speech were deleted.