Propaganda is used by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and historically by the Kuomintang (KMT), to sway domestic and international opinion in favor of its policies. with propaganda operations in the country being directed by the CCP's Publicity Department.
Aspects of propaganda can be traced back to the earliest periods of Chinese history, but propaganda has been most effective in the 20th and 21st centuries owing to mass media and an authoritarian government. Under the general secretaryship of Xi Jinping, propaganda in media has become more prevalent and homogeneous.
Terminology
While the English word usually has a pejorative connotation, the Chinese word xuānchuán (宣传 "propaganda; publicity", composed of xuan "declare; proclaim; announce" and chuan or "pass; hand down; impart; teach; spread; infect; be contagious") is generally neutral. The term is not used for censorship, as it might connote in other parts of the world.
Xuānchuán first appeared in the 3rd-century historical text Records of the Three Kingdoms where its usage referred to the dissemination of military skills. In pre-modern times, the term was used to refer to dissemination of ideas and information by ruling elites. The meaning of "to explain something to someone, or to conduct education" might first appeared in Ge Hong's (c. 320) Baopuzi criticism of effete scholars who Emperor Zhang of Han (r. 75–88) extravagantly rewarded.
<blockquote>These various gentlemen were heaped with honors, but not because they could breach walls or fight in the fields, break through an enemy's lines and extend frontiers, fall ill and resign office, pray for a plan of confederation and give the credit to others, or possess a zeal transcending all bounds. Merely because they expounded an interpretation [xuanchuan] of one solitary classic, such were the honors lavished upon them. And they were only lecturing upon words bequeathed by the dead. Despite their own high positions, emperors and kings deigned to serve these teachers.</blockquote>
It was chosen to translate the Marxist-Leninist concept of Russian propagánda in the early 20th-century China. Within the broader context of Marxism-Leninism, "propaganda" has neither dismissive nor negative connotations.
Some xuanchuan collocations usually refer to "propaganda" (e.g., xuānchuánzhàn 宣传战 "propaganda war"), others to "publicity" (xuānchuán méijiè 宣传媒介 "mass media; means of publicity"), and still others are ambiguous (xuānchuányuán 宣传员 "propagandist; publicist"). The term xuanchuan also conveys the meaning of education, whereas the English word propaganda does not. David Shambaugh, a scholar of Chinese politics and foreign policy, describes "proactive propaganda" in which the Chinese Communist Party Propaganda Department writes and disseminates information that it believes "should be used in educating and shaping society". In this particular context, xuanchuan "does not carry negative connotations for the CCP, nor, for that matter, for most Chinese citizens." The sinologist and anthropologist Andrew B. Kipnis says unlike English propaganda, Chinese xuanchuan is officially represented as language that is good for the nation as a whole. However, the CCP is also sensitive to the negative connotations of the English word propaganda, and the commonly used Chinese term xuanchuan acquired pejorative connotations. In 1992, CCP general secretary Jiang Zemin asked one of the CCP's most senior translators to come up with a better English alternative to propaganda as the translation of xuanchuan for propaganda targeting foreign audiences. Replacement English translations include publicity, information, and political communication domestically, or media diplomacy and cultural exchange internationally.
Mao era
thumb|365x365px|Chinese enlistment poster to volunteer in the [[Korean War with the grave of an American soldier]]
The origins of the CCP propaganda system can be traced to Yan'an Rectification Movement and the rectification movements carried out there. Following which it became a key mechanism in the Party's campaigns. Mao explicitly laid out the political role of culture in his 1942 "Talks at the Yan'an Forum on Art and Literature". The propaganda system, considered a central part of CCP's "control system", drew much from Soviet, Nazi, imperial China, Nationalist China, and other totalitarian states' propaganda methods. David Shambaugh observes that propaganda and indoctrination are considered to have been a hallmark of the Maoist China;
According to academic Anne-Marie Brady, in her book Marketing Dictatorship, CCP propaganda and thought work (sīxiǎng gōngzuò 思想工作) traditionally had a much broader notion of the public sphere than is usually defined by media specialists. In 1955, the Ministry of Culture sought to develop rural cultural networks to distribute media like other performances, lantern slides, books, cinema, radio, books, and to establish newspaper reading groups. By the mid-1950s, relations between China and the Soviet Union were deteriorating, and Mao became increasingly interested in promoting China's own national path. This propaganda often emphasized Japanese war crimes. Propaganda sought to criticize the government for its war in Vietnam while praising the public for anti-war protests. Past propaganda also encouraged the Chinese people to emulate government approved model workers and soldiers, such as Lei Feng, Chinese Civil War hero Dong Cunrui, Korean War hero Yang Gensi, and Dr. Norman Bethune, a Canadian doctor who assisted the CCP Eighth Route Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It also praised Third World revolutionaries and close foreign allies such as Albania and North Korea while vilifying both the American "imperialists" and the Soviet "revisionists" (the latter of whom was seen as having betrayed Marxism–Leninism following the Sino-Soviet split).
The propaganda of the Cultural Revolution incorporated strong anti-imperialist rhetoric, particularly in the context of the Vietnam War. However, as domestic political struggles intensified in the early Cultural Revolution, international messaging became less emphasized.
Art
The early period, from the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution to the death of Lin Biao in 1971, focused on the destruction of “old culture” and the consolidation of the Mao cult. Artistic production during this phase emulated the revolutionary aesthetic associated with the Yan’an period, emphasizing bold militant imagery and ideological clarity.
In January 1967, established artists were publicly denounced, and younger artists including members of the Red Guards established control over the manufacturing of art. Immediately afterwards billboards facing the Tiananmen Square were commandeered by two competing Red Guard groups from various art schools. The artwork painted on those billboards would go on to inspire the designs of subsequent billboards.
Starting in 1970 and continuing after 1971, control over cultural production became increasingly centralized. Jiang Qing, who had previously shown a preference for Socialist Realism, would emerge as a leading figure in cultural policy, being appointed director of the Culture Group under the State Council in 1970. Under her tenure, the government emphasized art that combined academic techniques with folk elements while using the rhetoric of serving the people and continuing the Mao Cult.
Big-character posters
Big-character posters became especially influential in the early phases of the Cultural Revolution. Although used prior to 1966, they gained prominence after Mao endorsed their use following a May 25, 1966 poster by Nie Yuanzi and her colleagues at Peking University, in which they criticized three university administrators for their lack of commitment to the Cultural Revolution. From then on, these posters were used to criticize officials and spread ideological messages.
Performance and mass participation
Propaganda was also disseminated through performance. Mao Zedong Thought Propaganda Teams operated nationwide between 1966 and 1968, staging plays and musical performances to disseminate ideological messages. Children and students also often participated in these teams, serving as what the government saw as models of ideal socialist behavior. Local governments and production brigades occasionally provided financial and material support, all contributing to their reputation as successful propagandists.
Slogans also played a significant role in shaping public attitudes in this period. One widely circulated phrase, created by middle schoolers was, “If the father’s a hero, the son’s a brave; if the father’s a counter-revolutionary, the son’s a bastard” which reinforced notions of hereditary class identity. Mao himself advocated for this approach in interpreting history through the principle of making the past serve the present.
In the seventies following the suppression of the Red Guards and in conjunction with the Criticize Lin, Criticize Confucius campaign, the Chinese government worked to expand access through libraries and coordinated national campaigns in order to more effectively disseminate written propaganda. Advertising and news coverage built anticipation for new publications, encouraging widespread readership, and on occasion this caused issues with excessive demand for propaganda resulting in shortages.
Effectiveness and reception
Scholars have had differing views on the effectiveness of the Cultural Revolution's propaganda. Repetition ensured consistent exposure to key messages, while the use of diverse media including visual art, opera, and music allowed propaganda to reach a broad audience. However, not all art was received well, with audiences being discontent with films in the latter half of the Cultural Revolution. This was due to an increased frequency of film screenings coupled with a previously established issue of predictability and the new issue of less variety in films owing to Jiang Qing's actions in curating, which resulted in boredom for some viewers.
Modern era
thumb|Propaganda sign in [[Xiamen, China facing Kinmen, Republic of China. Sign says "Peaceful Unification. One country two systems".]]
Following the death of Chairman Mao in 1976, propaganda was used to blacken the character of the Gang of Four, which was blamed for the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. During the era of reform and opening up and "Four Modernizations" initiated by Deng Xiaoping, propaganda promoting socialism with Chinese characteristics was distributed. The first post-Mao campaign was in 1983 which saw the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign.
In 1977, Deng initiated a propaganda campaign to promote science as the cornerstone of China's modernization, in advance of the 1978 National Science Conference.
In the 1990s, propaganda theorists described the challenges to China's propaganda and thought work as "blind spots"; mass communication was advocated as the antidote. From the early 1990s, selective concepts from mass communications theory, public relations, advertising, social psychology, patriotic education and other areas of modern mass persuasion were introduced into China's propaganda system for the purpose of creating a modern propaganda model.
21st century
thumb|Giant poster listing the twelve [[Core Socialist Values of the Chinese Communist Party (2017).]]
The 2008 Summer Olympics were portrayed by the Chinese government as a symbol of China's pride and place in the world, and seem to have bolstered some domestic support for the Chinese government, and support for the policies of the CCP, giving rise to concerns that the state will possibly have more leverage to disperse dissent. In the lead-up to the Olympics, the government allegedly issued guidelines to the local media for their reporting during the Games: most political issues not directly related to the games were to be downplayed; topics such as pro-Tibetan independence and East Turkestan movements were not to be reported on, as were food safety issues such as "cancer-causing mineral water." As the 2008 Chinese milk scandal broke in September 2008, there was widespread speculation that China's desire for a perfect Games may have been a factor contributing towards the delayed recall of contaminated infant formula.
In early 2009, the CCP embarked on a multibillion-dollar global media expansion, including the 24-hour English-language news channel China Global Television Network (CGTN) in the style of Western news agencies. According to Nicholas Bequelin, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, it was part of CCP general secretary Hu Jintao's plan to "go global" and make "the voice of China better heard in international affairs", by strengthening their foreign-language services, and being less political in their broadcasting. Bequelin notes that their function is to channel a specific view of China to an international audience, and their fundamental premise remains the same; that all information broadcast must reflect the government's views. The Chinese government encouraged the adaption of Western style media marketing in their news agencies due to internal competition with national commercial media.
In 2011, then Chongqing party secretary Bo Xilai and the city's Propaganda Department initiated a 'Red Songs campaign' that demanded every district, government departments and commercial corporations, universities and schools, state radio and TV stations to begin singing "red songs", praising the achievements of the CCP and PRC. Bo said the aim was "to reinvigorate the city with the Marxist ideals of his father's comrade-in-arms Mao Zedong"; although academic Ding Xueliang of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology suspected the campaign's aim was to further his political standing within the country's leadership.
Since Xi Jinping became the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012, censorship and propaganda have been significantly stepped up. Propaganda has become more prevalent and homogeneous. In 2018, as part of an overhaul of CCP and government bodies, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT) was renamed into the National Radio and Television Administration (NRTA) with its film, news media and publications being transferred to the Central Propaganda Department.
Starting in June 2021 and continuing through at least 2024, China's judicial system has engaged in a propaganda campaign to promote court cases decided in favor of platform economy workers against the companies for which they did work. The judicial system's newspapers and magazines have promoted coverage of typical cases and relevant studies. China initially denied the existence of the Xinjiang internment camps and attempted to cover-up their existence. In 2018, after being forced to admit by widespread reporting that the Xinjiang internment camps exist, the Chinese government initiated a propaganda campaign to portray the camps as humane and to deny human rights abuses occur in Xinjiang. In 2020 and 2021 they expanded the propaganda campaign due to international backlash against government policies in Xinjiang and worries that the Chinese government no longer had control of the narrative. Douyin, the mainland Chinese sister app to ByteDance-owned social media app TikTok, presents users with significant amounts of Chinese state propaganda pertaining to the human rights abuses in Xinjiang.
Chinese government propaganda attacks have targeted international journalists covering human rights abuses in Xinjiang. After providing coverage critical of Chinese government abuses in Xinjiang, BBC News reporter John Sudworth was subjected to a campaign of propaganda and harassment by Chinese state-affiliated and CCP-affiliated media. The public attacks resulted in Sudworth and his wife Yvonne Murray, who reports for Raidió Teilifís Éireann, fleeing China for Taiwan for fear of their safety.
Between July 2019 and early August 2019, the CCP-owned tabloid Global Times paid Twitter to promote tweets that deny that the Chinese government is committing human rights abuses in Xinjiang; Twitter later banned advertising from state-controlled media outlets on 19 August after removing large numbers of pro-Beijing bots from the social network. China has spent heavily to purchase Facebook advertisements in order to spread propaganda designed to incite doubt on the existence and scope of human rights violations occurring within Xinjiang.
In April 2021, the Chinese government released propaganda videos titled, "Xinjiang is a Wonderful Land", and produced a musical titled "The Wings of Songs" in order to portray Xinjiang as harmonious and peaceful. It is near impossible to get accurate information about the situation in Xinjiang domestically in China, concerns within the domestic audience are also downplayed because many aspects of the abuse such as forced labor are seen as commonplace by many Chinese citizens. In 2021, Chinese officials ordered videos of Uyghur men and women saying that they deny the U.S. charges that China that is committing human rights violations.
Critics have said that government propaganda plays into existing colonial and racist tropes about the Uyghurs by depicting them as dangerous or backwards. Domestic propaganda has increased since the international community began considering designating the abuses against the Uyghurs as a genocide. Domestic pushback against the genocide label is also emotional and follows a similar pattern of denial to the genocide committed against the Native Americans. Leaders of the East Turkistan Government in Exile and the East Turkistan National Awakening Movement warned that such rhetoric marks an escalation in China's campaign of repression.
COVID-19 pandemic
In 2020, CCP general secretary Xi Jinping and the rest of the CCP began propagating the idea of "winning a battle against America" in containing the coronavirus pandemic. The numbers are notably misrepresented by Chinese authorities, but the CCP has continued to take to the media, pointing out "the failures of America", even though the numbers are manipulated. The now former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused the CCP of spreading disinformation on 17 March. Chinese officials in Japan have referred to the disease as the "Japanese coronavirus", even though there is no such evidence it originated there. The CCP has also used transmitting "positive energy" to promote itself. After Mike Pompeo's accusation that the virus originated in a lab in Wuhan, which Anthony Fauci denied on 5 May, Chinese officials launched a smear campaign on the same day against him with multiple propaganda outlets calling him a liar. During the George Floyd protests, the CCP criticized the US for failing to address racial equality. On 30 May 2020, Morgan Ortagus urged on Twitter for "freedom loving people" to hold the CCP to impose plans on Hong Kong for national security legislation. Her counterpart, Hua Chunying, responded back with "I can't breathe", obviously a reference to Floyd's last words. Some people responded with "I can't tweet" and some have accused the government of using the same police brutality tactics that killed Floyd, with Chinese censors simply deleting the complaints. In Wuhan, where the outbreak first emerged, television shows and documentaries portrayed the response positively, as a heroic success taken care of by "warriors in white coats". Alexander Kekulé's theory of coronavirus-disease 2019 coming from Italy instead of Wuhan which was taken out of context has sparked Chinese propaganda newspapers following the narrative, with even one headline saying, "China is Innocent!" Kekulé himself says it is pure propaganda. State-owned outlets such as Xinhua and the People's Daily have blamed elderly deaths in Norway and Germany on COVID-19 vaccines, even though there is no scientific evidence, and have accused English media of downplaying it.
In 2020, propaganda from China has been controlled by state media and CCP-run outlets such as the nationalistic tabloid Global Times, which portray the handling of COVID-19 as a success. On 11 June 2020, Twitter announced that they deleted over 170,000 accounts tied to a Chinese-state linked operation because they were spreading false information about the COVID-19 pandemic. On 22 June 2020, the United States Department of State designated several Chinese state media outlets as foreign missions. In December 2020, an investigation by The New York Times and ProPublica revealed leaked internal documents showing the state's instructions to local media regarding the death of Li Wenliang. The documents address news organizations and social media platforms, ordering them to stop using push notifications, make no comment on the situation and control any discussion of the event happening in online spaces. The documents also address "local propaganda workers", demanding they steer online discussions away from anything that "seriously damages party and government credibility and attacks the political system". Pro-Chinese government spam networks also attempted to discredit U.S. vaccines.
On the 29th of April 2020, an animated video was posted on Twitter and YouTube, called Once Upon a Virus, used Lego figures to represent China through hospital workers and Lady Liberty representing America, was posted by Xinhua News Agency. The Lego Group, for their part, said they had nothing to do with the video in question. In the video, the hospital worker repeatedly warns the US about the outbreak, but they dismiss them, talking about lockdowns being a violation of human rights, or paywalls. By that point, Lady Liberty is hooked up to an IV and looks severely ill, and at the end, the US says "We are always correct, even when we contradict ourselves", and China responds with "That's what I love best about you Americans, your consistency". The Chinese government delayed warning the public about the outbreak, even as doctors tried to warn people via social media. The Associated Press reports "China's rigid controls on information, bureaucratic hurdles and a reluctance to send bad news up the chain of command muffled early warnings".
100th Anniversary of CCP
In 2021 the state orchestrated a propaganda and information control campaign to bolster the 100th Anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party. Chinese state owned media claimed without citing sources that the CIA was recruiting spies speaking various Chinese dialetcs including Cantonese, Shanghainese, Hakka and Hokkien, an assertion which went viral in the Chinese internet. In 2021, the Ministry of Education of China announced that CCP general secretary Xi Jinping's socio-political policies and ideas would be included in the curriculum from primary school up to university level. The 4-volume Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for the New Era textbooks for primary, secondary and tertiary school students were subsequently introduced in the new school year in 2021, educators were instructed to "plant the seeds of loving the party, the country and socialism in young hearts".
Russian invasion of Ukraine
During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Chinese diplomats, government agencies, and state-controlled media in China have adopted a sympathetic view of Russia, while emphasizing that the war was caused by the United States and NATO.
On the eve of the attack, Shimian, a digital outlet owned by newspaper Beijing News, accidentally posted an internal memo of the Chinese Cybersecurity Agency to media outlets. The outlets were told to "publish neither information favorable to the United States nor critiques of Russia", the media were also tasked to censor user comments and trend hashtags released by the three state-owned media, Xinhua News Agency, China Central Television (CCTV) and the People's Daily.
Xinhua, CCTV and Global Times often posted unverified news from Russian state-controlled network RT, that were later proven to be erroneous; examples of which were when Global Times posted a video saying that a large number of Ukrainian soldiers had surrendered, or when CCTV reported that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had fled Kyiv during the initial stages of the war. In the midst of the invasion, China Global Television Network (CGTN) interviewed Denis Pushilin, a Ukrainian separatist leader, who claimed that the "vast majority of citizens want to be as close to Russia as possible".
Besides official state media channels, private Chinese tech giants such as Tencent, Sina Weibo and ByteDance also amplified conspiracy theories created by Russian state media, such as the false claims of nefarious US biological weapons laboratories in Ukraine and propagating the notion that Ukrainian government consists of neo-Nazis and that the Ukrainian army were sabotaging their own nuclear plant. Chinese streaming platform iQiyi also cancelled the broadcast of the English Premiere League to avoid showing the football teams' support for Ukraine.
There were also numerous reports of censorship of anti-war comments by Chinese academics, celebrities and micro-influencers on social media. David Shambaugh, American professor and sinologist, wrote in 2007 that the CCP's propaganda system extends itself as a sprawling bureaucratic establishment, into virtually every medium concerned with the dissemination of information. numerous public places, such as media and news organizations, educational institutions, literature and art centers, and cultural exhibitions come under CCP's propaganda oversight. Shambaugh believed that this expansive definition implies that every conceivable medium which transmits and conveys information to the people of China falls under bureaucratic purview of the CPD. in addition to internal circulation papers and local gazetteers, approximately 68 million internet accounts with more than 100 million users, and more than 300 million mobile phone users who fall under the system's purview.
According to Brady, propaganda work by the CCP has been historically divided into two categories: directed towards Chinese people (internal or duinei) and directed towards foreigners and the outside world (external or duiwai) as well as four types: political, economic, cultural and social. It additionally manages the China Media Group, which controls several of China's largest news agencies. In 2014, the OEP was absorbed into the larger Central Propaganda Department, turning the SCIO into an external nameplate of the department.
Control of media
Media operations and content are tightly controlled, In 2005, Reporters Without Borders published a report about China's official news agency, the Xinhua News Agency, calling it "the world's biggest propaganda agency", and said that it was "at the heart of censorship and disinformation put in place" by the government.
The CPD weekly sends censorship guidelines to prominent editors and media providers and Chinese state media generally employ their own monitors for censorship. reports that through control of the "ideological domain, material means and living necessities," editors and reporters are conditioned to keep news and reports aligned with the interests of the CCP. Control is also directed at sources of information, as ordinary people are restricted from providing news to Chinese media, and more so to foreign media.
In terms of intensity and scope, spiritual control has been reinforced under the CCP's rule, and has become a basic feature of citizens' daily life, according to Victor Shaw. To an extent, the "freedom of silence" cherished by some older Chinese scholars was not even possible for an illiterate peasant in a remote area under the CCP mass propaganda.
Propaganda on the internet
Traditionally, the CCP propaganda apparatus had been based around suppressing news and information, but this often meant the Party found itself in a reactive posture, according to Chinese media expert David Bandurski. In later years the internet played a key role in the spread of propaganda to Chinese diaspora. PRC-based Internet sites remain a leading source of Chinese-language and China-related news for overseas Chinese. The internet is an extremely effective tool for guiding and organizing overseas Chinese public opinion, according to Anne-Marie Brady. While there was no compulsion for overseas Chinese to attend the rallies, those who did were given free T-shirts, souvenirs, transport, and accommodation, donated by local embassy officials and China-based donors. This is done by specially trained internet users who comment on blogs, public forums, or wikis, to shift the debate in favor of the CCP and influence public opinion. though some speculate that they are probably not paid anything for the posts, instead being required to do so as a part of their official party duties. According to The Guardian, the growth in popularity of such astroturfing owes to the ease with which web 2.0 technologies such as Twitter, Wikipedia and YouTube can be employed to sway public opinion. The BBC News reports that special centers have been set up to train China's 'army of internet spin doctors'. Maggie Dennis, the foundation's vice present of community resilience and sustainability, said that there had been an yearlong investigation into infiltration concerns. Dennis observed that the infiltrators had tried to promote "the aims of China, as interpreted through whatever filters they may bring to bear". Dennis said, "we needed to act based on credible information that some members (not all) of that group [WMC] have harassed, intimidated, and threatened other members of our community, including in some cases physically harming others, in order to secure their own power and subvert the collaborative nature of our projects". After Zbigniew Brzezinski's having termed Central Asia the "Global Balkans" Idriss Aberkane has argued the resorting to unilateral, state-endorsed Peace Journalism could be a way for China to "de-balkanize" Xinjiang. This he has called "coercive Peace Journalism".