Its news, features and entertainment shows are in Russian. But it is made in Beijing. China is projecting its voice across the globe with a new channel targeting 300 million viewers across the former Soviet Union — part of an expansion of foreign language state media fuelled by a reported injection of up to 45 billion yuan (US$6.6 billion).
The Russian service launched by the Chinese state broadcaster CCTV on Thursday arrived months after an Arabic channel which followed established English, French and Spanish services. Portuguese is coming soon. The Global Times newspaper has launched an English edition; its older rival, China Daily, is setting up overseas bureaus.
And the state news agency Xinhua has taken its first step into television — short news programs to be screened outside embassies and in supermarkets in Europe and on 3G phones. The logical next stage is a Chinese CNN or al-Jazeera, and some predict not one but two new international channels: a 24-hour English news service and Chinese business coverage.
“Some see this as a historic moment for making China’s voice heard in the world. You can put forward the projects you’ve always wanted to do and the government will probably wire you the money,” said one journalist working in the state media. “Others aren’t so sure it will work in the way that, say, CNN has. Western audiences are used to a different approach.”
Officials have promoted the “going out” strategy for years, but now they can afford to invest in it.
“The Olympics was a big driving force,” said Steven Dong (董關鵬), a media adviser to the central government.
Many see the Chinese anger at Western coverage of the fatal riots in Tibet last year as a key turning point.
“There is continuous bias and misunderstanding against China in the rest of the world,” Zhang Changming (張長明), the vice president of CCTV, complained as he unveiled the Russian channel, citing “biased and untrue reporting about weather and food quality problems” before the Olympics.
“One of the major goals of the expansion of international channels is to present China objectively to the world,” he said.
Advocates say the government is engaging with the outside world, providing more access for Western media, but critics see more sophisticated management of the news.
“This is the international dimension of what we’ve called Control 2.0,” said David Bandurski, of the China media project at Hong Kong University — referring to apparent greater transparency, yet tighter controls on non-state media.
Propaganda authorities hope to set the agenda by getting their version of stories out first. The Xinhua 3G service will deliver video to people’s mobiles before they switch on their televisions and see what the BBC is saying.
On some stories, in some outlets, more information will be released earlier and more discussion permitted. But key subjects or criticisms are taboo.
The top-down, heavily centralized nature of the international expansion “presents clear problems of credibility, which would seem to undermine the objective,” Bandurski said.
Dong insisted that CCTV “does criticize some levels of the government very seriously,” but said: “Chinese culture is not a debatable culture. It’s more about modesty and harmony.”
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
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