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Josh Kurlantzick’s new book ‘Beijing’s Global Media Offensive: China’s Uneven Campaign to Influence Asia and the World’ is a comprehensive account of China’s attempts to become a media superpower, in a way commensurate with its growing economic clout. The book looks into where and how Beijing has failed in its efforts to date, and explains where it is meeting with success, as well as offering ideas on how countries like the U.S. should respond. Josh’s early career was spent in journalism, and he is now the senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. The following is a lightly edited transcript of a recent interview.

Q: In your book you provide a great amount of detail on how China’s media influence is growing globally. But you also say that, in many ways, its efforts have been a failure: very few people, for example, watch CGTN [China’s state-run English language channel], or read English-language newspapers like the China Daily or the Global Times. So what should we be worried about and why?

There are several points to the book. The first is to understand why this has happened, and the reasons why this has shifted in the last ten years, given that China wasn’t really that invested in trying to influence other countries’ domestic politics [before]. Obviously there were some efforts, going back to Mao’s time, and there was always an interest in influencing Taiwanese politics. There were some efforts to intervene and influence the politics of Southeast Asian nations. But the efforts were fairly limited.

They are now trying to wield influence within the politics of many other places, including ones which have much higher safeguards, and which are major democracies. Xi Jinping has completely shifted China’s outlook to one in which it needs to be forward-facing and much more assertive. These campaigns to change the discourse in other countries are also important to them in terms of trying to protect the party; and they have begun to amass the tools and the cash to do these things. Until the late 2010s, other than those countries I talked about or Taiwan, most countries weren’t really focused on Chinese influence efforts, especially in 2016 when the entire focus was Russia. 

The book talks about how China has done several things. They’ve dramatically invested in and expanded their state media, like [state-owned newswire] Xinhua, CGTN and China Radio International (CRI), and tried to place them all over the world as legitimate outlets. Their goal was to make them like [Qatar’s] Al Jazeera — which has some flaws, obviously, but is considered a credible outlet in a lot of places. There’s been an increasing effort to use both state companies and pro-Beijing proxies to take over Chinese language media outlets in many countries, and that has been quite successful: there is simply no independent Chinese language media coverage in the United States. All of the local outlets that used to be owned by fairly independent owners or groups have been taken over by pro-Beijing owners. In fact, they have gained control of the Chinese language media sphere almost everywhere, except Taiwan and a few other places. And that’s huge, because of the dramatic number of Chinese speakers and readers around the world. 

The third thing that China has done is dramatically increase their old-fashioned type of influence in foreign countries’ politics, like directly paying politicians — which has happened in Australia, and which the Canadian government now believes may have happened in the 2019 federal election. It’s happened a little bit in the U.S.: two Chinese operatives have been prosecuted by the Justice Department for meddling in some elections in New York in the recent midterm season. 

China’s efforts also include greater control over other means of discourse, like Chinese student associations, which have dramatically shifted in how they talk about China; and in spending tons of money on research institutes and universities. And then finally, a much, much greater outreach in the social media sphere, on English platforms, but also definitely on WeChat. On English platforms there has been an effort to use a wide range of disinformation tactics, many of which seem to be copied from Russia, but which are much more sophisticated than they were in the past. 

The book also talks about what has and hasn’t been successful. The state media outlets other than Xinhua have been a complete disaster. They invested a huge amount of money: for example CGTN. It has hired all these non-Chinese foreign correspondents, some of whom were quite respected, and yet gained almost no audience. The State Department, through Gallup, assesses the audience share of different international media outlets in virtually every country in the world. CGTN’s share, even in places where China is actually pretty well liked, like in Africa, is just minimal. A lot of the foreign reporters that they hired with a big splash have left, because Xi has become more authoritarian, and the system has become more authoritarian and brittle. CGTN can’t get out of the box like Al Jazeera could: It’s the same thing for CRI. 

Xinhua is a different story. Xinhua has content-sharing agreements with a whole ton of outlets in Asia and in democracies as well. And there should be a long term fear that Xinhua becomes normalized as just another news wire, like Bloomberg or Reuters or the Associated Press. That’s a real possibility, particularly in a lot of developing countries, and even in wealthier countries where journalism is dying and people are cutting costs. 

You talk about ‘soft power’ and ‘sharp power’ in the book quite a lot. Can you explain those terms and how you measure the success China’s had in using them?

Soft power is the ability to woo citizens of other countries through the power of attraction. That can come from several ways. It can come from the private sector — a traditional example would be the U.S. getting a public image boost from Hollywood movies. It can also come, to some extent, from government efforts. The U.S. did this somewhat successfully during the Cold War by sending musicians around the world and promoting U.S. culture. And a third way to promote soft power would be to use means like aid assistance to woo people in other countries. The ultimate aim is to bolster your country’s public image. And the idea is that the more favorable your image is with elites and publics in other countries, the easier it should be, potentially, to get policy enacted. 

That was true of China in the late 2000s, and in the late 1990s too, when their very positive image in some parts of the world helped them in a lot of ways; it helped them negotiate a free trade deal with Southeast Asia, and build close relationships with ASEAN. Their soft power has now completely collapsed.

Sharp power is something different. Sharp power is generally done coercively and clandestinely, and often is used in a corrupt or corrosive manner. It involves a country using tools that are not out in the open to wield power. One obvious example of sharp power would be the scandal over paying Australian politicians, but more corrosive efforts would be things like taking control of Chinese student associations. China has a vast program for inviting media from other countries to visit, at least before zero-COVID, and then using that to silence debate about China within those countries. 

What do you see as China’s main objectives in its use of media influence overseas? 

In Xi’s first term, there was a whole discussion over discourse power in China. Xi has talked about how China needs to have the ability to tell a good story, if it’s going to be a great power at the same level as major Western major democracies. There’s still some element of that. Xi has been the first Chinese leader since Mao to try to use a media information campaign to promote the idea that China’s model of authoritarian capitalism is potentially superior to that of the West. So there’s some element of persuasion. 

But it has moved in the last couple of years — as the discourse about China in the U.S. and other countries has become so negative — to a more defensive posture, where they are trying to use this to shut down and censor discussion of China’s problems. It went from a more mixed approach to one that now is much more heavily focused on promoting self-censorship, and trying to shut down critics all over the world. 

And to what extent do you see this as something that’s coordinated, as something that’s coming directly from Beijing?

It’s fairly directed. When you’re talking about the work with Chinese student associations and foreign politicians, a lot of it traces back to the United Front Work group — that’s not an independent actor, that’s coming directly from the center. Xi has been more vocal about this than any other Chinese leader. The investments in CGTN and Xinhua definitely came from the center, and they’ve invested a lot of money in the English language inserts that appear in major publications around the world, and are often not well differentiated between real copy and advertorial content. Some news outlets do a really good job of that, but others don’t, and that’s a serious problem. 

Ultimately, if the Emperor says something, people follow. So this is fairly centrally directed, more than things like the Belt and Road Initiative, for example, where it was sort of put out there and then became something where all sorts of actors became involved. On the other hand, I don’t think there’s memos going from Xi Jinping to business people who are pro-Beijing, to take over different outlets around the country and the world and make them more pro-Beijing. There has been a lot of communication in a lot of these countries between the Chinese Embassy and Chinese student groups, and with owners of media. Obviously, Xi has continued to tolerate and even promote the foreign ministry’s most assertive actors. 

Why do you think they made the decision to be more assertive? 

It’s a combination of things. One, Xi is totally isolated. Two, at the beginning, wolf warrior diplomacy was incredibly popular with the Chinese public. [Foreign Affairs spokesman and leading ‘wolf warrior’] Zhao Lijian’s promotion led to a sort of trickle-down effect, where a lot of the Chinese diplomats I’ve interacted with seem to think now that that’s the way to be. I used to be able to have lunch with Chinese diplomats and it was cordial, and that has sort of vanished. Third, China’s in a defensive crouch because of all their problems, and this is a way to hit back. And then fourth, there is just this incredibly deteriorating environment between the U.S. and China.

Russia has obviously been prominent in people’s minds in the way it’s used social media to interfere in other country’s political processes, most notoriously in the U.S. Do you see that as an area where China has sought to do more and has the potential to do more? 

China is learning from Russia. The FBI and the Justice Department have reported that China has started using Russian-style tactics, probing the servers of the major parties in the U.S., looking for vulnerabilities, and where they could possibly hack them and spread disinformation. What Russia had been doing was more successful. Remember, Russia had more experience, going back to the Georgian war, and then the first Ukraine conflict. What they did very well, besides the hacking, is that they had a better understanding of the actual organic divisions and problems within the United States. A lot of their disinformation circled on genuinely divisive issues, and they were much better at creating real-seeming false personas. 

China has created an enormous cloak of self censorship about a lot of issues in Malaysia and Thailand, where Xinhua has signed a lot of content sharing agreements, and Chinese proxies have bought up almost all Chinese language media. 

China was not good at that, but they have started to become better. All the major [U.S. social media] platforms found Chinese operations running up to the 2022 U.S. midterms, and they were more sophisticated, playing on genuinely organic U.S. tensions over race and class and other issues. In Taiwan, and in some other places, they have been sophisticated in that for a long time, playing on societal divisions and fostering chaotic disinformation. I do think that they intend to continue that and to expand that, and that they probably directly learned some of those techniques from Russia, because there was a lot of overlap and meetings between the two of them. 

Having said that, some of those efforts have backfired in the past, right?

It has failed recently in Taiwan because it has a level of resiliency that most other countries don’t, because this has gone on for a long time there. Taiwan in general is a very good example of what countries should be doing to respond to all sorts of foreign influence and disinformation. They are quite attuned to disinformation online, they have programmes to promote media and information literacy among their citizens. And despite the fact that a lot of the biggest outlets are pro-China, Taiwan also has a number of scrappy independent media outlets, which have really played a role in exposing a lot of the Chinese disinformation. 

There are other places where China’s sharp power has been quite effective. Until Australia really woke up, and developed much stricter laws about foreign influence and donations, China had played a significant role in shaping Australian discourse in a more pro-China way. In New Zealand, Anne-Marie Brady, a very well known professor, showed that one of the country’s members of parliament Yang Jian — who had been prominent in taking the leader of the National Party, one of the two major parties in New Zealand, on a China trip where he basically was just atrocious, completely minimizing the Xinjiang genocide — this guy played a major role in shaping China policy until the National Party lost power. And yet concealed the whole time was the fact that he had come from Chinese military intelligence, which obviously showed a lack of effective scrutiny in New Zealand. That was an example of very effective sharp power. China has created an enormous cloak of self censorship about a lot of issues in Malaysia and Thailand, where Xinhua has signed a lot of content sharing agreements, and Chinese proxies have bought up almost all Chinese language media. 

You talk about ‘borrowed’ and ‘bought’ boats in the book. Could you explain that concept and talk about some of the ways in which Chinese organizations have spread their influence through the media sector in countries in Southeast Asia?

The idea of ‘borrowing boats’ is that you use a local media outlet to get your message across. Borrowed boats don’t only apply in Southeast Asia. But in Thailand, Xinhua has signed a huge number of content-sharing agreements with many of the best media, and so its content is showing up in fairly quality media, including the best media outlet company in the country, the equivalent of the New York Times. That’s a borrowed boat, it’s really been problematic, and it continues. I can’t give you an answer as to how effective it’s been, but it’s narrowing the media landscape for any critique of China in Thailand. Both Reporters Sans Frontieres and other global media watchdogs have noted this ‘borrowed boat’ effect and how it has created self-censorship about China in a number of countries. 

‘Bought boats’ simply means that someone, a state company, or a pro-China individual, actually buys the media outlet, like what’s happened in the U.S. Most of the truly independent Chinese outlets that produced content for Chinese speaking communities in the U.S. and Australia, have been bought by figures who are clearly highly sympathetic to Beijing, and most of the critical reporting has vanished.

So when we see Chinese media companies or individuals buying media outlets overseas, should the presumption be that they’re operating in Beijing’s interests or under Beijing’s direction? 

No, of course not. Chinese people are a massive slice of the globe. There are still some independent outlets in the U.S. and other places. And there’s a huge diaspora of ethnic Chinese people who are fiercely opposed to the CCP. Many of them play central roles in government policy in many countries. So no, you can’t have a policy that any person of Chinese extraction who buys a media outlet warrants scrutiny. 

Democracies do need to have something similar to what the U.S. has, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. That used to be focused on investments that could have a military use: now, they’re starting to realize that media and information are important weapons, and are altering their focus to scrutinize any major foreign investment by a foreign company or individual into any prominent media, or information outlets in a country. I don’t think that that’s going to get down to the level of a tiny paper with 6,000 readers in New York, but it’s a start. 

Let’s talk about a specific example of a social media company that’s already got enormous influence — TikTok, the hugely successful app that’s owned ultimately by Chinese company Bytedance. What should be our approach to TikTok? 

That’s a perfect example of something that needs much stricter scrutiny. I read some scary statistic that 30 percent of younger people get their news from TikTok, which is a catastrophe, whoever owns it. 

TikTok requires special scrutiny, because it’s going to be the dominant social media platform in the world, if it isn’t already. TikTok is very sketchy about their lines of communication and ownership. Yes, the chief executive is based in Singapore, but a lot of evidence has suggested that he doesn’t have the level of power of a real CEO. A state company is heavily invested in it. 

We don’t want to compromise our own values. The critical thing is scrutinizing new foreign investment; supporting independent voices, which major democracies have done a little bit of but not much.

TikTok has to be divested in the U.S. to an American company which is willing to pay a fair market value price. They would have complete control and it would be a completely separate entity; and all of the users’ information would remain on servers inside the United States. That has to be done. And I would think that the U.K. and the European Union should do the same thing, especially given the Europeans have much more stringent rules about user data than the United States. I don’t really like that, but the risk is too high and TikTok is way too opaque about its lines of control to allow them to continue without divesting. That’s my hardline view.

Where do you draw the line between trying to repress China’s growing media influence and values around freedom of speech? In the book, you write quite a lot about enforcing more transparency about what’s going on.

It’s a good question. We can’t just ban outlets. Labeling outlets as state owned outlets is good. And in the U.S., forcing them to register as foreign agents is good. That has to apply to the likes of Al Jazeera, too. It might have to apply to other countries. 

We don’t want to compromise our own values. The critical thing is scrutinizing new foreign investment; supporting independent voices, which major democracies have done a little bit of but not much. That needs to be ramped up significantly. That was one of the success stories in Taiwan, where scrappy local media exposed a lot of disinformation. The U.S. and other major democracies used to put a lot more money into local independent media. 

Digital literacy is critical. One thing that we didn’t mention, which is really important, is that one of the reasons why Xi’s model or China’s model was able to gain more coherence in the early and mid-2010s is because democracies just seemed to be falling apart. Democracies need to get their house in better order. 

And finally, the U.S. and some other countries, have their own state media: some of them have been quite successful in providing independent journalism in countries that are closed, particularly Radio Free Asia and, in the past, Radio Free Europe. From the U.S. perspective, significant amounts of money needs to be reinvested in those organizations, because they also serve the role of an independent media in a lot of these countries where China is narrowing the space for independent media. Radio Free Asia is a perfect example. They provide really quality coverage, in the authoritarian states in Southeast Asia and other places in Asia. 

Ultimately, if China’s message is unpopular in the rest of the world, if it’s pursuing policies that most countries disagree with, won’t it be the case that whatever efforts it makes to try and influence the media landscape will fail? 

Yes, China’s public image has deteriorated in a lot of places, due to its economic coercion and a lot of other problems. But you’re assuming an environment like the U.K. where there’s a lot of investigative reporting going on, and people are getting the real news. If you’re talking about countries where the veil is coming down, and they’re not getting accurate information about China, then China may be able to utilize some of these unpopular techniques. 

Should we be more confident in our own systems and values? It’s a good question. More people live in autocracies now than democracies, as Freedom House has noted, which is a shift from a few years ago. So the die is cast on that, unfortunately. I wouldn’t have said that five or ten years ago. I hope we can have confidence. But we’re in a moment where some democracies have held up well, but others haven’t held up that well, including the United States to some extent. 

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