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29 August 2020

Black and White and Red All Over: China’s Improving Foreign-Directed Media

Elizabeth Bachman

Since the mid-2000s, successive leaders of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have called explicitly for Beijing to improve its external propaganda capabilities and international influence.1 Hu Jintao (胡锦涛) first elevated these efforts in 2004, and they gained renewed urgency after the 2008 Beijing Olympics; international protests over China’s human rights record largely overshadowed the lead-up to the games. The following year, the Chinese government started investing billions into efforts to improve Chinese foreign-directed media and combat a perceived anti-China bias in Western reporting.

These funds paid for Chinese state media and broadcasters to produce content in a broader range of foreign languages, establish overseas bureaus, and develop increasingly sophisticated content aimed at foreign audiences.3 Although these efforts began in the previous decade, they have grown in scale and sophistication since Xi Jinping (习近平) became general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 2012. Under his leadership, the Party has made a concerted effort to tighten its control over China’s internal and external propaganda apparatuses. He has overseen the formal consolidation of Party control over China’s print media, with recent administrative reorganizations moving direct control of the media out of state structures and into the hands of the Party.4

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