China is seeking to expand its “soft power” around the world through an international propaganda offensive in which its Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership is investing billions of dollars.
The ambitious strategy originated with party leader and Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), who sees “soft power” — as influence on other countries through culture and ideas is often described — as “an increasingly important factor in national strength.”
While the international economic crisis has caused cuts in the news business worldwide, it is playing no role in China as government money is flowing into the new initiative while Beijing seeks to expand its influence on international opinion in the Information Age.
Liu Yunshan (劉云山), the director of the Publicity Department of the CCP’s Central Committee and the country’s propaganda chief, called it an “urgent strategic task for us to make our communication capability match our international status.”
“Nowadays, nations that have more advanced skills and better capability in communications will be more influential in the world and can spread their values further,” he wrote in an essay in the Chinese political magazine Qiushi, which means Seeking Truth.
A chief tool in the campaign is the state-run media in China, where most media outlets are government-controlled and whose few independent media are subject to censorship, earning the country poor rankings on media freedom from the advocacy group Reporters Without Borders.
One of those state-run media outlets, the Xinhua news agency, has launched a TV news service under the government’s media expansion plan, following in the footsteps of the Arabic channel Al-Jazeera.
The first news shows were offered worldwide in the summer and they are to be expanded into a global 24-hour Chinese TV service.
At the service’s inauguration in July, Xinhua president Li Congjun (李從軍) said the new channel would interpret global events “objectively” and “impartially” from a Chinese angle, giving foreign readers and viewers a “novel perspective.”
The new news channel is expanding China’s already large radio and TV presence in the world. Central China Television, or CCTV, broadcasts to about 100 countries in many languages — including in Arabic to 22 countries since the summer.
China’s status as guest of honor at next week’s Frankfurt Book Fair is also part of its “soft power” campaign as is a World Media Summit, to which Xinhua invited representatives from 100 foreign media outlets to Beijing this week.
The CCP’s most important propaganda arm organized the conference to create a platform for itself to discuss global media challenges on an equal footing with independent news organizations from other countries and to seek possible new cooperation.
In the meantime, China is striving to build its own international media empires, following the Western examples of Time Warner Inc and News Corp.
A plan released by China’s State Council at the end of last month looks to transform the country’s news, entertainment and culture companies into free-market entities.
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