In a pandemic-ridden year, where the Chinese government was being heavily criticized for its mismanagement
of the Coronavirus, the former was hell-bent on improving its “image” by influencing media houses in countries around the world, reveals a newly published investigation by the International Federation of Journalists.
This, as per experts, was being done in an attempt to create alternatives to a global news industry dominated by the BBC and CNN, and induce the Chinese government’s narratives in everyday news cycles.
The Brussels-based international journalist union conducted a survey in 50 countries, with 54 journalist unions, and concluded that Beijing began to put its global media infrastructure to use as soon as the pandemic started to spread, and fed positive narratives about China in national media. “More than half of all countries said that coverage of China in their national media was more positive since the start of the pandemic. The percentage of nations reporting China to have a visible presence in their media ecosystems was up from 64 percent to 76 percent in a year,” the report reads.
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The journalists interviewed by Louisa Lim, a former NPR bureau chief in Beijing, toward the outset of 2020, admitted that a lot more Chinese content was embedded into their news ecosystem. Italian journalists reported that 50 articles a day, originally sent by the Chinese government’s news agency Xinhua, was being carried on its domestic news wire agency, ANSA. Lim said, on a podcast that she hosts with the co-author of the report, Julia Bergin.
We also found an uptick of misinformation in these articles, along with the fact that they were catered to Italian audiences specifically. One Chinese narrative that they tried to push here was that washing hands did not help protect against Covid-19. Another was that the virus had originated in Italy, and not China.
The women are researchers at the University of Melbourne. University of Monash’s Johan Lidberg also contributed to the report. The Serbian news ecosystem also saw at least one pro-China article published every day. Research also found that China was providing content to international agencies in non-Anglophone languages. “Anecdotal reports indicate that Beijing has stepped up its content offerings, in particular by tailoring content including disinformation for specific countries and translating state-run messages into local languages,” the report reads. Residents of some countries also viewed China as the supplier of the most accurate Covid-19 information, which hints at the country’s rising influence on global narratives.
The dominance of China-sponsored news also became pertinent after the country shut itself off from foreign journalists. In the past year, Beijing expelled at least 18 foreign journalists and froze approval for new journalist visas. The vacuum of China’s media coverage is now being filled by Chinese-state-approved content. Findings reveal that the government is now organizing training programs and sponsored trips for global journalists, furnishing content sharing agreements feeding state-sponsored messages into the global news ecosystems, signing MoUs with global journalism unions, and increasing ownership of publishing platforms.
China is coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic with a highly positive global coverage of the government’s actions and policies, especially since 40% of countries responded that the dominant narrative in their national media was that “China’s fast action against Covid-19 has helped other countries, as has its medical diplomacy.”
Widespread medical diplomacy campaign during the pandemic helped the Red Dragon spread propaganda in many developing countries, portraying Beijing as a reliable partner. This was especially true in countries like Peru, where higher-ups were granted early access to China’s Covid-19 vaccine. “Peruvian state news agency and the state-controlled newspaper El Peruano are like stenographers of the Chinese embassy,” Peru National Association of Journalists Secretary-General Zuliana Lainez told the New York Times, whilst also discussing the role of the Chinese embassy in modernizing Peru’s newsrooms.
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China was one of the first countries to step in during Italy’s massive Coronavirus crisis. In the African country of Tunisia, the Chinese embassy provided free hand sanitizers and masks to journalists’ unions, in return for publication of pro-China content.
The authors wrote, “Beijing’s tactics in this narrative war are incremental but steady…the evidence from the global survey shows the narrative landscape is being redrawn globally, story by story.” This, NYT media reporter Ben Smith says, is indeed a patchwork strategy created to surface an alternative to global news media dominated by perspectives of the BBC and CNN.
But according to the Foreign Ministry, China is merely being blamed for something that the USA has been doing for decades.” The US abused its discourse hegemony and unscrupulously carried out false information attacks on China under the guise of “freedom.” Faced with wanton smear attacks, China certainly needs to speak out, explain the truth about a series of important issues and leave objective and true collective human narratives and memories,” a statement from the Spokesperson Office of China’s Foreign Ministry said.
The statement further said that all countries need to have their own voices, and the global media structure should be dominated by CNN or BBC, and opined that as the second-largest economy, “China certainly deserves its place in the international public opinion structure.”
But many journalists engaged in China’s “narrative growth” do not view the development as something to be worried about. The deputy director of the Italian news service ANSA, Stefano Polli, opined that his agency’s contract with Xinhua is merely a commercial arrangement. Italian journalists that Lim interviewed also mentioned that they trust their country’s fact-checking system to denounce the news the disinformation they have to promote as part of the contract.
IFJ’s Anthony Bellanger said that while “China is a growing force in the information war, it is also vital to resist such pressures exerted by the U.S., Russia and other governments around the world.”
