Media coverage of China’s increasing global presence has often focused on the country’s rapidly growing economic impact, and potentially negative implications for foreign countries. These anxieties, while deserving of sober consideration and policy responses, threaten to overshadow the risks to democracy posed by the expanding global influence of the authoritarian CCP—including through its efforts to harness media outside China to advance the party’s agenda. The CCP has developed the world’s most multilayered, dynamic, and sophisticated apparatus of media control at home, while vastly expanding its ability to influence media reporting, content dissemination, public debate, and in some cases, electoral politics, outside China. And where the potential for undermining press freedom has not been activated yet, the groundwork is being laid for future influence, if—or more likely when—Beijing decides to deploy it.

The expansion of the CCP’s foreign media influence is a global campaign, and the United States is among its targets. The results have already affected the news consumption of millions of Americans. Moreover, the varied and aggressive ways in which the CCP seeks to influence media narratives abroad undermine democratic governance and electoral competition in other countries, including US allies like Taiwan. The cumulative effects of these efforts, if unchecked, could have far-reaching implications for democratic governance, press freedom, and US influence worldwide.

The Many Facets of Communist Party Overseas Media Influence

The CCP’s global media influence campaigns are multifaceted. Traditionally, they have sought to promote positive views of China and a benign perspective of the CCP’s authoritarian regime; encourage investment in China and openness to Chinese investment and strategic engagement abroad; and suppress or curtail negative coverage of China’s political system. In recent years, a new narrative has presented China’s authoritarian governance style as a model for developing countries, and in some cases simultaneously challenged the attractiveness of both democracy and US international leadership.

Chinese authorities influence news media content around the world through three primary strategies: promoting the CCP’s narratives, suppressing critical viewpoints, and managing content delivery systems.

Promoting CCP narratives

In a 2016 speech, CCP leader Xi Jinping told state media, “Wherever the readers are, wherever the viewers are, that is where propaganda reports must extend their tentacles.”[1] Even prior to Xi’s ascension to the top of the Communist Party, the Chinese government had begun investing billions of dollars to expand the global reach of state media outlets. Through a variety of news distribution partnerships and through social media, Chinese state media content now reaches hundreds of millions of people in numerous countries and languages. Efforts to more deeply penetrate foreign media markets and spread preferred CCP narratives show no sign of ebbing. A November 2018 Financial Times investigation found that the Chinese state-run television broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) provides free content to 1,700 foreign news organizations.[2] Between September and November 2018 alone, China’s official Xinhua News Agency signed news exchange agreements with wire services in Australia, Belarus, Laos, India, and Bangladesh.

The CCP also embeds its narratives in foreign media through proxies and allied figures, including Chinese diplomats, friendly media owners and journalists, and foreign politicians with business interests in China. For example, New Zealand member of Parliament Todd McClay, who attended a CCP-organized dialogue in 2017, recently referred to reeducation camps in Xinjiang as “vocational training centers,” echoing the terminology used by the Chinese government to justify the detention and political indoctrination of over one million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities. Similarly, former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder—who has profited after leaving office by aiding German companies in their contacts with Chinese officials—dismissed the mass detentions as “gossip” in a 2018 interview with Reuters. In the developing world in particular, the CCP’s foreign propaganda efforts appear to have had some effect in boosting or retaining a positive image of China, and Xi Jinping personally.[3]

Suppressing critical viewpoints

The CCP and its agents, allies, and proxies also work to suppress critical coverage of China abroad. Chinese diplomats downplay negative coverage of China in op-eds and media appearances, particularly on topics like mass detentions in Xinjiang or the troubles facing China’s economy. Diplomats have repeatedly engaged in outright harassment of journalists in order to curb criticism, as in early 2019, when Chinese diplomats in Sweden and Russia intimidated reporters who had written critically about the country’s economy, or in support of democracy in Taiwan.[4] The Chinese government and its proxies also discourage investigative journalism into the dark underbelly of modern China or the CCP’s overseas political influence efforts by obstructing the work of foreign correspondents in China, and threatening foreign journalists with costly defamation suits in courts based in their home countries.

The CCP has also successfully co-opted media owners, who then marginalize critical reporting in their own outlets, notably in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and outlets serving the Chinese diaspora. Occasionally, this extends to English-language media,[5] as occurred in September 2018 when a partially Chinese-owned newspaper in South Africa discontinued a weekly column after its author wrote about abuses in Xinjiang.[6] Indirect pressure is also applied via proxies—including advertisers, satellite firms, technology companies, and foreign governments—which take action to prevent or punish the publication of content critical of Beijing, while undermining the financial viability of news outlets critical of the CCP.[7] Separately, cyberattacks and physical assaults that are not conclusively traceable to central Chinese authorities but serve the party’s aims have taken place.

Managing content delivery systems

Finally, over the past five years, technologies that deliver content to news consumers have opened new avenues for Chinese government influence abroad. In Africa, the Chinese television distribution firm StarTimes—which has become a key player in the transition from analog to digital television in Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Zambia, and elsewhere—holds the power to determine which stations its viewers can access. Although privately owned, StarTimes has benefited from a close relationship with the Chinese government and occasional subsidies. Meanwhile, Chinese tech giant Tencent’s WeChat instant messaging service, which is ubiquitous in China, now reaches an estimated 100 to 200 million people outside the country. Recent evidence suggests these communications are increasingly monitored and censored according to Chinese government standards.

Chinese state media’s increasing number of news distribution deals, Chinese diplomats’ aggressive acts of media suppression, and the institutionalization of Chinese content delivery systems abroad point to escalations in the ability—and willingness—of Chinese officials to undermine independent news coverage abroad, and ultimately weaken the watchdog role played by media in democratic settings.

Implications for Democratic Governance and Media Freedom Globally

The strategies Chinese officials, state media, and other actors employ to exercise influence over media around the world have the potential to undermine key features of democratic governance and best practices for media freedom. In some cases, this potential is already being realized.

Flouting transparency

Chinese state media publications distributed in other countries routinely omit any mention of government links that would signal their origin to uninitiated news consumers. Indeed, it is precisely because news consumers in many countries are typically not attracted to or convinced by Chinese government propaganda that layers of obfuscation are employed to distance content from its authoritarian origins.

Chinese state media thus employ deceptive taglines in their advertising. The People’s Daily, for example, touts itself to potential foreign followers of its Facebook page as “the biggest newspaper in China,” making no mention of the fact that it is the CCP’s official mouthpiece. Such disingenuous self-identification extends to paid print advertorials. The state-run China Daily’s “China Watch” supplement, which has been published in mainstream media outlets across 30 countries[8] —including in the Washington Post, New York Times, and the Sydney Morning Herald—rarely includes explicit mention of the Chinese outlet’s official ties.

In many cases, this lack of transparency extends to the economic arrangements surrounding various activities, be it how much China Daily is paying for each advertorial, how many and which journalists travel to China on government-paid trips, or what financial benefits news exchanges provide to each party.

These CCP efforts to conceal the origin, scale, and nature of Chinese state media involvement abroad compromise the integrity of resulting public debate, and erode cultures of transparency at outside media operations.

Undermining competition

The CCP executes a variety of strategies that undermine fair competition between state-owned or friendly news outlets and critical ones, often reducing the latter’s financial viability.

Chinese government obstruction or imposition of penalties on outlets viewed as critical, in addition to limiting their audience, can prompt stock losses and dent income from advertising. The 2012 blocking of the Chinese-language web edition of the New York Times, for example, resulted in lost advertising revenue and a 20 percent overnight drop in the paper’s stock value. Chinese government representatives also pressure businesses not to place advertisements in critical outlets. As a result of such efforts, Hong Kong’s Apple Daily lost advertising contracts from players in the lucrative real estate industry and two London-based investment banks. In 2019, the paper’s remaining advertisers have faced strident public denunciations from former Hong Kong chief executive CY Leung, currently the vice chairman of a mainland government advisory body.[9] Damaging cyberattacks by China-based actors against overseas Chinese or international media—a regular occurrence for some key targets—also impose financial costs on cash-strapped outlets, which must pay for clean-up and prevention efforts.

The Chinese government and its partners have also found ways to provide other advantages to Chinese state media abroad relative to competitors. For example, after overseeing the transition from analog to digital television in a number of countries in Africa, StarTimes has prioritized Chinese state media channels in its package offerings at the expense of independent international news stations. In Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria, television packages that include channels like BBC World Service cost more than basic versions with local channels and Chinese state media. More generally, as Beijing has expanded its aid and investment in foreign media sectors, it has tended to favor state-owned outlets over independent, private competitors, mirroring the media landscape in China.[10] In other instances, apparent behind-the-scenes pressure by Chinese officials has resulted in critical media outlets like the US-based New Tang Dynasty Television (NTDTV) being deprived of press credentials to newsworthy venues—like the UN General Assembly[11] —while Chinese state-media have retained reporting access.

Interfering with diaspora communities

Twenty years ago, many Chinese in the diaspora got their news from relatively independent papers or broadcasting operations based out of Hong Kong or Taiwan. Today, Chinese state media or pro-Beijing private outlets are more influential, and thus more able to encourage diaspora voters to hold perspectives similar to Beijing’s and to back policies in their home countries that are advantageous to the CCP.

In the United States, the CCP’s ability to influence media consumed by Chinese Americans is particularly evident in the cable television market, which CCTV dominates relative to the Taiwanese station ETTV and the US-based NTDTV.[12] Reports of behind-the-scenes Chinese pressure on US cable companies and the online popularity of stations like NTDTV relative to CCTV indicate that something other than market forces are at play in shaping this hierarchy.[13] Chinese officials also cultivate partnerships with stakeholders in privately owned, US-based Chinese-language media outfits.[14]

CCP authorities exert enormous influence over the Chinese-language Australian media, where most such publications, with notable exceptions run by dissident communities, are pro-Beijing.[15] The few independent diaspora publications face direct obstructions to their operations by Chinese officials, as occurred last year, when diplomats from the Chinese consulate in Sydney bullied a local council into banning the Vision China Times from sponsoring a Chinese New Year event and convinced at least ten businesses to pull their advertisements.[16] CCP interference in Canada’s media market was exposed by the separate firings of two journalists at the Global Chinese Press after they published content deemed by executives to be displeasing to Beijing. In New Zealand, the CCP’s long-term efforts to co-opt diaspora outlets—and with them coverage of local politics—has left the diaspora in a state, according to one Chinese scholar, where “the Chinese community can only realistically aspire to political representation by its own members through individuals approved by Beijing.”[17]

CCP control of news distribution outside China is further increasing as WeChat’s popularity expands in the diaspora, and as politicians correspondingly use the service to communicate with Chinese diaspora constituents. In Canada, WeChat censors deleted a member of Parliament’s message to constituents praising Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement protesters, manipulated dissemination of news reports related to Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou’s arrest, and blocked broader media coverage of Chinese government corruption and leading officials. In the United States, Chinese Americans have seen WeChat posts silenced in group conversations about local Asian American political issues. In Australia, a recent study of news sources available to the Chinese diaspora found negligible political coverage of China on the WeChat channels of Chinese-language news providers. Incredibly, between March and August 2017, none of the WeChat channels published a single article on Chinese politics, despite the run-up to the important 19th Party Congress that fall.

Establishing channels for political meddling

Although Chinese government efforts to use media influence for electoral meddling have been limited, important incidents have recently emerged. In Taiwan, several examples of “fake news” stories and doctored images originating in China tainting the reputation of the Taiwanese government have spread widely on social media, with some picked up and reported as fact by Taiwanese news stations.[18] Some observers believe such activities—alongside other factors—had an impact on local elections in November 2018 when the ruling party, which is disfavored by Beijing, suffered a number of surprising losses.[19] In April 2019, Taiwanese media reported that suspected Chinese government agents had made quiet offers to buy popular pro-Taiwan Facebook pages ahead of next year’s general elections.[20] Recruitment advertisements for live streamers with pro-unification views have also emerged online.

The run-up to the 2018 midterm elections in the United States also saw CCP-backed efforts to reach American voters—in particular, soybean farmers. In July, the China Global Television Network (CGTN), the foreign-facing arm of China’s state-owned broadcaster, released a two-minute animated video about the impact of bilateral trade tensions on the US soybean industry, concluding with the question, “Will voters there turn out to support Trump and the Republicans once they get hit in the pocketbooks?” In September, the print edition of the Des Moines Register included a China Watch supplement with articles describing how a trade war would harm American soybean farmers—content far more targeted and politicized than is typical for the China Watch insert. While the impact of these efforts was limited, they reflect willingness by Chinese state media to use established avenues of content dissemination in an effort to influence American voters.

These examples primarily involved propaganda and disinformation spreading on non-Chinese owned social media platforms like Facebook, LINE, and YouTube. But the growing use of the China-based WeChat application by both diaspora communities and non-Chinese speakers in countries like Malaysia, Mongolia, and Australia, creates a fertile foundation for future CCP electoral meddling. As Australian professor John Fitzgerald recently noted, “We are entering uncharted territory. WeChat was not designed to work in a democracy.”

Undermining the rule of law

When attempting to restrict the operating space for independent diaspora or offshore Chinese media, Chinese officials have undermined the rule of law in other countries by maliciously harnessing court systems and flouting conflict-of-interest and other standards meant to ensure honest business practices.

Chinese officials have applied pressure on critics in foreign media through those countries’ own court systems, and at times have pressured local officials to aid them. In Southeast Asia, several cases have emerged involving the Sound of Hope radio network. Based in the United States and founded by practitioners of the Falun Gong spiritual group, which is banned in China, the station broadcasts uncensored news about rights abuses and corruption in China, among other debate-based and cultural programming. In Thailand, police, reportedly at the urging of the Chinese government, recently detained a Taiwanese national who had helped facilitate the station’s broadcasts into China. The case was ongoing as of May 2019 and marked the third of its kind in the region; two similar cases have taken place in Indonesia and Vietnam—the latter resulting in two men being imprisoned.

Journalists and news outlets reporting critically about Chinese government actions or pro-Beijing officials outside mainland China also face threats of or actual defamation lawsuits. Leung, the former Hong Kong executive who has been denouncing Apple Daily advertisers, has brought a defamation suit in Hong Kong against a journalist with a separate outlet who wrote about his possible links to organized crime. In the Czech Republic, lawyers representing the powerful Chinese energy and financial conglomerate CEFC sent letters threatening lawsuits over articles linking the firm’s owner to Chinese military intelligence.[21] In 2018, Chinese Australians with ties to the Chinese government filed defamation suits against two media companies over a high-profile investigative documentary examining the CCP’s political influence in Australia.

In other instances, Chinese investments in foreign communications sectors have raised concerns about conflicts of interest, corruption, and questionable bidding practices. In Taiwan, attempts by a company owned by a China-friendly media tycoon to purchase stakes in a major cable company sparked fears that such cross-ownership would cause cable providers to advantage pro-Beijing stations at the expense of independent or pro-independence ones. (Following vigorous public debate, the deal was rejected by regulators.[22]) In Zambia, a partnership between the Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC) and Chinese service provider StarTimes to create a joint venture—TopStar—reportedly violated domestic laws against any single media entity having licenses for both content transmission and content creation. The deal was also made without approval from either ZNBC’s board or Zambia’s parliament, leading to suspicions of corruption.

Future Trajectory

Having an economically powerful authoritarian-led state rapidly expand its influence over media production and dissemination channels in other countries is a relatively new phenomenon. The current impact of Chinese media influence operations on democratic institutions and practice remains relatively limited, although it disproportionately affects diaspora communities. Nevertheless, the sheer scale, economic clout, and expanding network of relationships involved highlights the CCP’s enhanced ability to interfere aggressively abroad, should it choose to do so. In addition, Beijing has demonstrated a willingness to ignore or violate outright diplomatic norms, human rights protections, and laws of foreign countries to achieve its ends.

However, the ability of the CCP to achieve its desired goals through its foreign media influence campaigns is still contested. Critical reporting about Chinese government actions within and outside of China appears with regularity, reaching large audiences. A number of independent Chinese-language media in Hong Kong, the United States, and elsewhere have become more professionalized and influential over the past several years. Civil society groups, media owners, and former officials in countries where Chinese influence is expanding have begun to speak out and urge their governments to uphold good governance standards when considering Chinese investment in communications infrastructure.

Looking ahead, individuals and organizations wishing to explore principled responses to the threat to global freedom and democracy posed by China’s globalizing media influence should focus on investigating and exposing stealthy and deceptive activities, increasing the sophistication and scale of policy debates, and upholding local legal standards.

Recommendations

The following recommendations for policymakers in democratic nations will help counter the potential negative impact of Beijing’s foreign media influence campaigns: