The Diplomat author Mercy Kuo regularly engages subject-matter experts, policy practitioners, and strategic thinkers across the globe for their diverse insights into U.S. Asia policy. This conversation with Dr. Audrye Wong – Jeane Kirkpatrick Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and assistant professor of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Southern California – is the 435th in “The Trans-Pacific View Insight Series.”
Explain the meaning and methods of China’s informational statecraft.
The Chinese government is seeking to reshape public narratives about China and the Chinese Communist Party – to reclaim global “discourse power,” as put by the CCP itself, which sees Western-dominated narratives about China as unfair and inaccurate. Beijing is explicitly seeking to influence the political and informational environment in other countries.
This entails trying directly to insert itself into online and media debates through overseas propaganda and the adoption of a disinformation playbook using bots, trolls, and AI. But it also includes attempts to structurally alter the information environment through media ownership and content partnerships, as well as the funding of academic institutes and cultural institutions. The fundamental goals of informational statecraft are to promote a positive image of China and the Chinese government’s policies (in Xi’s words, to “tell China’s story well”), and of course to suppress and rebut criticism of the Party.
What is the correlation between China’s geopolitical influence and informational statecraft?
China sees informational statecraft as a way of achieving core geopolitical goals: achieving widespread recognition of itself as a great power, while undercutting U.S. leadership and influence. Shaping attitudes and beliefs, at the public and elite levels, is a powerful precursor to shaping policy choices.
My research on Chinese state media accounts on Twitter has found that “Autocratic Advantage” propaganda framing China as a positive-sum player on the international stage and touting its successes in economic development is quite prevalent, especially toward the Global South. This can be quite powerful not just at creating positive views of China but also decreasing support for democracy and increasing support for a China-style political system, all of which serves to improve China’s reputation and decrease opposition to its policies.
On the flip side, Wolf Warrior-style diplomacy attacking the legitimacy of the United States and other Western countries helps to undermine America’s global reputation and following. Additionally, the ramping up of Beijing’s disinformation tactics and electoral interference efforts in the United States and elsewhere, even if these have currently had limited influence, underscores the worrying implications of how a fractured U.S. democracy will lead to less effective foreign policy, allowing China more opportunities to assert its interests and claim leadership.
What is the role of the Chinese Communist Party’s discourse power in Chinese informational statecraft?
This is a case where the CCP is able to leverage its powerful and longstanding domestic propaganda apparatus for foreign policy goals. The Chinese state has fine-tuned its ability to control information flows within China through censorship, diversion, and structural intervention into media platforms. It is marshaling these resources outward, targeting foreign public audiences as well as overseas Chinese audiences.
As many media outlets grapple with financial difficulties, Chinese state media easily step in to provide content for free or at low cost. The Chinese government also frequently sponsors tours to China for foreign journalists and politicians. At the same time, China likes to co-opt (sometimes unwitting) Western voices to increase the credibility of its narratives, such as quoting reputable Western researchers on the dysfunction in U.S. democracy or hiring foreign YouTubers to rebut criticism of Beijing’s genocidal policies toward Uyghurs in Xinjiang. China also reaches out to local social media influencers in target countries, whose voices are then amplified by the Chinese propaganda apparatus.
Identify the regions in which China’s informational statecraft seems most effective.
Chinese propaganda messaging in the Global South can be quite persuasive, where information about China’s positive governance outcomes becomes an aspirational reference point for those seeking to improve their standard of living. Such tactics also dovetail with common dissatisfaction with political leaders seen to be corrupt and failing to deliver public goods, and certainly play into existing legacies and suspicions of Western hypocrisy and colonialism. This in turn limits U.S. ability to marshal support for its policies, particularly those on issues that China cares about, such as Taiwan and Xinjiang.
Beijing’s ability to use its financial heft to shape and constrict local information ecosystems in the developing world, whether through content-sharing agreements or direct financial ownership, means that Chinese-provided narratives fill an information gap – given relative lack of expertise and alternative viewpoints – and thus tend to dominate public discourse about China. Relatedly, much of such messaging engenders elite and public perceptions of China’s economic indispensability that amplifies the impacts of China’s economic statecraft and feeds into more accommodating approaches toward Beijing.
Assess the ability and effectiveness of the United States and its allies in countering China’s informational statecraft tools.
Countering disinformation and propaganda is an inherently challenging mission, as seen in the Russia case. That social media and private companies have been able to identify and remove accounts associated with various disinformation campaigns is a promising sign, although this is likely just the tip of the iceberg.
Thus far, Chinese disinformation campaigns have had relatively limited user engagement and successful outreach, but more recent incidents involving attempts to generate tailored disinformation to local communities (e.g. about wildfires in Hawaiʻi) as well as hacking attempts on U.S. cyber infrastructure suggest that Beijing is ramping up its activities.
Globally, the United States and its partners should more actively counter China’s claims and ensure that audiences have easy access to a diversity of viewpoints and information sources. This can be done through direct messaging via agencies such as Voice of America, but perhaps even more effectively and sustainably by equipping local publications and media providers with training and resources to carry out high-quality reporting. Enlisting the voices of vibrant non-Western democracies such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan could further delink the notion of democracy from purported Western hypocrisy and imperialism and undermine Beijing’s narrative that non-Western countries should have a different set of values and political systems.