Beijing’s global media influence machine — Q&A with Sarah Cook

Sarah Cook is the research director for China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan at Freedom House, an American nonprofit organization founded in 1941 and dedicated to monitoring and defending human rights and civil liberties around the world.

She heads up the The China Media Bulletin and has authored a number of Freedom House reports, including Beijing’s Global Media Influence 2022 — Authoritarian Expansion and the Power of Democratic Resilience.

We spoke by video call in November. This is an edited transcript of our chat.

—Jeremy Goldkorn

Beijing’s global media influence is a fascinating topic. But why did you do this report now?

I’ve been following the way the Chinese Communist Party influences media outside of China for over 10 years. This is just the latest report that Freedom House has published on that topic. In 2012, I did one called the Long Shadow of Chinese Censorship. And then in early 2020, we published Beijing’s Global Megaphone, which looked at the different tactics that Beijing is using to try to influence media, not only through propaganda, but also through censorship, other pressures, or control over infrastructure.

This time, we wanted to get a better understanding of how this was evolving and playing out, particularly during the pandemic and across a wide set of countries, while also looking at the degree of local response and resilience.

How well equipped are democracies to respond to the challenge posed by the CCP’s media influence activities? How much impact do the party’s efforts actually have on the media ecosystem, particularly in democratic settings?

We looked at Europe, the U.S., Australia, and we also looked at what’s going on in parts of Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East. We worked with local researchers in 30 countries to delve into how these dynamics are playing out. The project took about two years to complete because it’s a lot of information. So then we published the findings in September, 2022.

Where are Chinese influence attempts most concerning?

I find the covert and coercive dimensions the most concerning. It’s not the open propaganda where it’s clear that this is coming from a Chinese state media outlet that poses a threat to media freedom or accurate understanding of China…

If I may interrupt, they also don’t do it very well, when they’re doing it in the open…

Yes, exactly. Well, when people know that it’s a major Chinese state media outlet like CGTN, then audiences are skeptical and the content doesn’t do very well. But when PRC-linked actors use coercion, or use influence that they’ve gained among political elites to encourage these elites to suppress their own media, it’s different and much more impactful.

We found that in 16 countries, diplomats or other Chinese officials had tried to pressure journalists. That often tends to backfire but sometimes it can have an effect on coverage. But we also found that in 17 of 30 countries, local government officials or media owners had taken steps to suppress coverage related to China. There were also incidents of the Hong Kong government or Huawei applying pressure over content or coverage they were displeased with. Not surprisingly, in 16 countries, journalists or commentators also reported self-censoring, with people being careful of what they say.

The suppression of information is not only about what’s happening in China or say, an interview with the foreign minister of Taiwan. But in other cases, it relates to investigations or reporting about Chinese engagement locally, local activities, and local business dealings, investment, or environmental issues.

What are the typical methods and channels that they use?

We looked at a broad range of influence tactics: propaganda, censorship, disinformation, control over content infrastructure, and trainings organized for media and officials.

One big trend is that Chinese embassies, state outlets, or other party-state actors take Chinese-produced content, whether it’s from Xinhua or China Radio International or CGTN, and they pay to insert it into local mainstream media to piggyback on their audience reach. The China Watch inserts in American and British newspapers got a lot of attention a while back, but it’s so much bigger than that. In country after country, mainstream media outlets have been running content that is produced by Chinese state media or other government entities. It’s not always labeled clearly as such.

It’s not only print media, but broadcast media as well. And that’s where I think the labeling and the origin get trickier. So, you have a number of countries including the U.K., Brazil, and Kenya where there have been regular slots on television where China-produced or co-produced programming was getting aired, to reach local audiences on a daily or weekly basis.

We counted over 130 outlets in just the 30 countries we were looking at. In terms of impact and labeling, in some cases it’s more clearly labeled, in some cases it’s less. In some cases it’s more engaging, in some cases it’s less. I happen to speak Hebrew so I worked on the Israel report.

They’re doing it in Israel?

There’s actually a China Radio International fellow, he’s Chinese, speaks perfect Hebrew. It’s really impressive. Very charming young guy. He became a media personality in Israel in his own right.

Some of what he does is just fluff, it’s charming, it’s engaging, but some of it gets more into the whitewashing of human rights abuses. And he’s the one who’s called on by primetime television news programs to talk about current events, like the conditions in Wuhan during the early days of the pandemic. There was some criticism within Israel, some pushback. Who he is, his affiliation, where his loyalties lie, these were not always made clear when programming was aired and earned criticism from some scholars and journalists in the country.

China Radio International has actually been much more effective than some of the other Chinese state media at creating engaging content and fostering influencers who communicate effectively to local audiences in dozens of languages.

How about self-censorship by media organizations? And what incentivizes non-Chinese actors to run the Chinese state content or to self-censor?

In some cases, it’s just monetary. A lot of the outlets that take Xinhua content, they do it for monetary reasons: it’s free content.

On the resilience side, one of the interesting things we heard from editors in Kenya and Senegal is that they’ll use Xinhua content, which they get for free, for food, for culture, for sports coverage, but when it comes to hard news about China, they’re using international news wires or the BBC.

But yes, absolutely it’s money. And it’s not just Chinese officials. If you look at Huawei, there were a couple cases, I think one in the U.S. and one in Romania, where you had a professor who wrote an op-ed saying that Huawei should have access to 5G. And later it turned out that the person had actually been paid, but that wasn’t initially disclosed.

On self-censorship, it gets trickier because some of it relates to access to China, access to trainings paid for by the Chinese government. Everybody who spoke to us pretty much spoke on condition of anonymity. And there were even some journalists in certain countries that said to our researchers, “Look, I actually would really still not talk about this even being anonymous because I’m worried that it might affect my ability to travel to China. Somehow they would find out…”

There are also media owners or local officials taking actions that suppress certain coverage or, in a number of countries, overturn regulatory decisions related to television infrastructure. Sometimes they are currying favor with the Chinese government, sometimes they don’t want to lose advertising from companies like Huawei, or sometimes owners or officials have their own business interests in China in a different sector that they don’t want reporting in their local media holdings to jeopardize, which has happened in Taiwan.

In Panama, around the time when they switched diplomatic relations from Taiwan to the PRC, one of the journalists that was interviewed said, “I was told by my editor, ‘Just be careful about how you’re reporting. We really don’t want to lose any advertising right now during this sensitive period.’”

That economic leverage comes either through direct pressure, because sometimes those media owners or officials will get a call from the Chinese embassy, or a type of preemptive self-censorship that occurred in several countries, including in the United States.

There was one case at ESPN where there were some leaked directives from editors around the time of the whole Daryl Morey tweet talking about how to be careful about reporting on Hong Kong politics and things like that.

ESPN. That incident really exposed the sport industrial complex, its China vulnerability, I guess, with famous basketball players downplaying human rights abuses in China, which is very different treatment from the way human rights abuses in the United States are talked about at the NBA.

ESPN have all these partnerships with Tencent and other streaming services and TV stations in China.

So is Beijing succeeding in its efforts to influence international discussion?

I think in terms of how people understand China or how favorably they view the Chinese government, overall, public opinion has declined. I think in terms of things related to say poverty alleviation and economics, in terms of some aspects of the COVID response within China, the propaganda push has been effective.

In Chinese-language media, there’s still quite a bit of dominance. They [have successfully] co-opted elites and used other forms of political influence to aid in propaganda talking point repetition and censorship or the self-censorship issue we discussed. They have also had some success in laying the groundwork for the future by developing control via companies with close ties to the CCP over key nodes in the way information is disseminated, whether it’s digital television in parts of the world, whether it’s certain apps, or whether it’s the mobile phone devices that are being used.

I think that’s where you see real traction being gained, whether it’s fully being activated now or not. In terms of narratives and changing the conversation, that’s a lot trickier. There’s a lot of negative sentiment globally related to China and the CCP, and the Chinese government’s own actions really undermine their narrative. And not only related to say what’s happening in Xinjiang or Hong Kong, which the period we looked at was 2019 to 2021, but in a country like the Philippines, where even with Duterte or a government that’s more pro-China and pro-Beijing, you can have all of the propaganda you want related to how great or China is, or win-win relations, or whatever it is.

But then you’ve got nationwide reporting on how fishermen are being affected by what’s happening in the South China Sea, that really sours public sentiment vis-à-vis the Chinese government.

How about in Taiwan?

Taiwan is an interesting case because we assessed both Beijing’s media influence efforts and the local resilience and response, and Taiwan was at the top of both of those. So, it’s complicated.

I think there are certain elements and certain pockets, especially within some of the bluer [i..e aligned to the KMT] media outlets where there is this capture of the owners and the owner puts pressure on journalists. And even in some of the greener [i.e. supportive of the DPP and of independence] outlets where you might have them trying to sell dramas to China and then they’re trying to get that market access. One example, before the coverage period of our new report, there was talk show that invited Uyghurs and Tiananmen dissidents, and they ended up getting shut down actually on one of the outlets that’s usually seen as not being pro-China.

The newer thing in Taiwan is disinformation. It’s very sophisticated. It’s a constant barrage of fake accounts and false information being inserted into the information ecosystem, not only trying to influence elections at certain points, but more broadly to undermine the reputation of the current government.

But the difference between 2018 and 2020, and even 2022 has been the response and resilience, not just from the government. A lot of the effort has been led by civil society being very creative, really at the forefront of documenting and exposing these kinds of networks, and content farms and things like that. There are also educational efforts in various forms of media literacy, not only for students, but also for the older generation who tend to be a bit more susceptible to some of these types of messaging and disinformation.

So, I wouldn’t underestimate the impact, but I wouldn’t necessarily overestimate it either.

What about those foreigners creating pro-China content on YouTube and other social networks?

There’s also some evidence that the Chinese government is behind them. And they are quite successful because viewers ask: “Is this an individual person who’s like me or is this someone who’s coming and working for Chinese state media?” And it’s not always clear.

And they may not be paid by Chinese state media. They might have some kind of non-monetary partnership with CGTN or CRI, and then their videos get reposted by all of these networks of Chinese state media organizations, which lifts the viewer numbers and so they can monetize from Youtube. So there might not be direct cash flow, but there’s maybe amplification and the ties back to the Chinese government are unclear. And so, it’s hard for Google or Twitter. Should this stuff be labeled? Is it state affiliated? It’s not clear, it’s not like somebody who is listed as a CRI correspondent…

What are your recommendations for media companies?

I think it’s good for companies to discontinue paid content from the Chinese government and some of the inserts. We’ve actually seen that happening. There were 10 countries where there was discontinuation of some of these partnerships, including the Washington Post, the New York Times. Right now, Time and USA Today have taken up some of that money when you look at the FARA filings.

We found 10 countries where outlets discontinued partnerships with Chinese state media or otherwise rejected attempts to insert content covertly. There was one example in the Philippines of journalists being approached by some Chinese agent to publish something and not label it, and editors pushed back. In Argentina that happened and editors pushed back. In Kenya, the media council actually formally censured the state broadcaster because they had run Chinese state content without labeling it.

These ethical questions of how to engage with Chinese state media are becoming more part of the conversation, not only in places like the U.S. or Europe but also in the global south.

Secondly, media companies should find ways to incorporate ethnic Chinese or overseas Chinese or Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kongers into the newsroom, even if they’re being also cognizant of some of the security precautions that might be needed, but that really does provide important perspectives, linguistic access in terms of getting that into mainstream media for members of the local Chinese diaspora.

And then there are the don’ts. If you’re going on a junket to China, if you’re writing a story, make sure it’s labeled that that’s what it is. In general, adopting ethical guidelines that help maintain independence. The Philippines Union of Journalists actually did this. They’re talking about maintaining editorial independence, but also avoiding xenophobic or racist language.

The last thing I would say is for the owners on the business side to not intervene in the editorial decisions. And if there is pressure from the Chinese embassy or something like that to respond vociferously and even to report to the local government and expose it, so that they can also respond effectively to Chinese embassy interference attempts.

It sounds like there has been more resilience around the world to influence attempts than I would have thought.

That was one of the really inspiring things about this project. We found examples of direct pushback in all 30 of the countries in the report.

I would say three things stood out. One is the discontinuation of the inserts, but two, just the coverage of CCP influence efforts, whether in the political sphere, or in the media sphere using freedom of information acts, using other forms of investigative journalism. That had a real multiplier effect on public debate and conversations about what are some of the safeguards we need. Not necessarily saying, “Let’s not trade with China, but look, let’s be realistic about what this country is, what kind of regime is ruling it. We’re a democracy or we have certain protections for human rights and press freedom. What are some of the safeguards for transparency and avoiding corruption? What are some of the safeguard we want in place?”

Those were things that were happening in newsrooms in Peru, in Nigeria and Israel.

Then I think the presence of exiled communities is really important, whether they’re Hongkongers or Uyghurs or Falun Gong believers or others that end up talking about and raising awareness of what’s happening to their counterparts in China but also some of the transnational repression elements they encounter in the country where they are living.

Then the last thing is actually just old-fashioned boring media regulations. Freedom of information acts are really important. And journalists should use those types of laws to find out about loans taken from the Chinese government, or how much money was given to a public broadcaster.

Last question: Can you tell me about the China Dissent Monitor?

I don’t do the implementation, but I’m an advisor on the project. It’s a really exciting new project, a database of incidents of dissent with an emphasis on offline protest on street protests, but trying to also capture and reflect the full range of dissent in China.

It pulls from social media posts, news reporting, civil society documentation, and reports that are submitted from various partner organizations. Using that information, my colleagues have built a database of incidents, starting in June, where they code each incident by where it takes place, the number of people participating, the general theme that they’re trying to protest against? Who is it? Is it a company? Is it a local government? Is it the central government? Did they gain any concessions? Was there any repression that they faced?

Just since June they have documented over 700 cases. Many of them are offline protests, in almost every single province and municipality. A lot are related to banking and real estate issues. Dozens of cases were related to COVID lockdowns before the protests in November that got international attention. In about a quarter of the cases, there have been documented repression, though there may be more than that, but in a good number of cases, there are also concessions, especially when protesters are dealing with local governments or companies that people protest because there aren’t necessarily institutional channels to air their grievances. Some cases get concessions, so then it becomes more worthwhile to take the risk of protesting.