China is working to influence media outlets beyond its borders in an effort to impose its ideology and deter criticism of its actions, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said yesterday in a report.
In China’s Pursuit of a New World Media Order, the press freedom group detailed what it said was China’s impact on a global decline in press freedom and analyzed Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) strategy to control information outside his own country.
The group found that Beijing was using advertising buys, paid for journalists’ trips and used an expanding global propaganda network to impose its “ideologically correct” terminology and to obscure darker chapters of the country’s history.
Photo: Taipei Times
Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Christophe Deloire said in a statement that he hoped the report released yesterday would help spur countries to action.
“If democracies do not resist, ‘Chinese-style’ propaganda will gradually invade the world’s media, competing with journalism as we know it,” he said.
The project to control the media is less well-known than Xi’s signature Belt and Road Initiative, but just as ambitious, and China’s strategy includes extensive advertising buys in global media, including the Wall Street Journal, Le Figaro and the Daily Telegraph, the report said.
Written entirely by teams from state-owned media, these supplements carry official Chinese messages for foreign readers, the report said.
There has also been a major investment in developing media capable of reaching people worldwide, with state-run broadcaster China Global Television Network now in 140 countries and China Radio International airing in 65 languages.
Tens of thousands of journalists from emerging countries have been brought to Beijing on all-expenses-paid trips to “train their critical mind” in exchange for favorable coverage of China in their home outlets, the report said.
The Chinese government has carried out unspecified acts of blackmail, intimidation and harassment on a “massive scale,” it said.
“Through its embassies and its network of Chinese culture-and-language Confucius Institutes, China no longer hesitates to harass and intimidate in order to impose its ‘ideologically correct’ vocabulary and cover up the darker chapters in its history,” the report states.
“The new world media order which the Chinese authorities are promoting around the world is against journalism,” said Cedric Alviani of group’s East Asia Bureau in Taipei. “It is a new media order in which the journalist works for the state not for the citizen.”
Beijing is also exporting its censorship and surveillance tools, including the Baidu search engine and WeChat instant messaging platform, and encouraging authoritarian states to copy its repressive regulations, a particularly effective strategy in Southeast Asia, Alviani said.
Beijing’s influence is far reaching in the Chinese-language media outside China, the report said.
In Taiwan, the China Times underwent a radical change in its editorial policies after being bought by a pro-Beijing company in 2008, the report said.
The New York-based World Journal — owned by Taiwan’s United Daily News Group and which has many overseas Chinese readers in Thailand and the US — has also toned down its coverage of China, the report said.
The Chinese-language media in the US are now dominated by Qiaobao (China Press) and the SinoVision TV channel, which are discreetly controlled by the Chinese authorities and use content taken directly from China’s state media, it said.
In Australia, Beijing is said to have infiltrated about 95 percent of the Chinese-language newspapers, the report said.
The Sing Tao, a Hong Kong Chinese-language tabloid daily founded in 1938 that has many overseas Chinese readers in Asia, Australia and North America, was taken over in the late 1990s by a pro-Beijing businessman, the report said.
China yesterday dismissed the report, with Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Geng Shuang (耿爽) accusing Reporters Without Borders of a long-time bias against China.
“Their accusations aren’t worthy of rebutting,” he said at a regular news briefing in Beijing.
NO HUMAN ERROR: After the incident, the Coast Guard Administration said it would obtain uncrewed aerial vehicles and vessels to boost its detection capacity Authorities would improve border control to prevent unlawful entry into Taiwan’s waters and safeguard national security, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday after a Chinese man reached the nation’s coast on an inflatable boat, saying he “defected to freedom.” The man was found on a rubber boat when he was about to set foot on Taiwan at the estuary of Houkeng River (後坑溪) near Taiping Borough (太平) in New Taipei City’s Linkou District (林口), authorities said. The Coast Guard Administration’s (CGA) northern branch said it received a report at 6:30am yesterday morning from the New Taipei City Fire Department about a
IN BEIJING’S FAVOR: A China Coast Guard spokesperson said that the Chinese maritime police would continue to carry out law enforcement activities in waters it claims The Philippines withdrew its coast guard vessel from a South China Sea shoal that has recently been at the center of tensions with Beijing. BRP Teresa Magbanua “was compelled to return to port” from Sabina Shoal (Xianbin Shoal, 仙濱暗沙) due to bad weather, depleted supplies and the need to evacuate personnel requiring medical care, the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) spokesman Jay Tarriela said yesterday in a post on X. The Philippine vessel “will be in tiptop shape to resume her mission” after it has been resupplied and repaired, Philippine Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin, who heads the nation’s maritime council, said
REGIONAL STABILITY: Taipei thanked the Biden administration for authorizing its 16th sale of military goods and services to uphold Taiwan’s defense and safety The US Department of State has approved the sale of US$228 million of military goods and services to Taiwan, the US Department of Defense said on Monday. The state department “made a determination approving a possible Foreign Military Sale” to the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the US for “return, repair and reshipment of spare parts and related equipment,” the defense department’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency said in a news release. Taiwan had requested the purchase of items and services which include the “return, repair and reshipment of classified and unclassified spare parts for aircraft and related equipment; US Government
More than 500 people on Saturday marched in New York in support of Taiwan’s entry to the UN, significantly more people than previous years. The march, coinciding with the ongoing 79th session of the UN General Assembly, comes close on the heels of growing international discourse regarding the meaning of UN Resolution 2758. Resolution 2758, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1971, recognizes the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the “only lawful representative of China.” It resulted in the Republic of China (ROC) losing its seat at the UN to the PRC. Taiwan has since been excluded from