Chinese discourse power: Capabilities and impact

Government abstract

This report is a part of the Digital Forensic Analysis Lab’s (DFRLab’s) “discourse energy” collection, which outlines the technique, capabilities, impacts, and responses to China’s makes an attempt to form the worldwide info surroundings. The collection argues that China’s leaders imagine the nation can acquire the geopolitical energy essential to ascertain itself as a world chief, to unfold its norms and values, and to decenter US energy within the worldwide system by gaining “discourse energy” (话语权). In idea, discourse energy is a story agenda-setting means centered on reshaping world governance, values, and norms to legitimize and facilitate the expression of state energy.

Whereas the primary report launched China’s discourse energy technique, this second report examines its efforts up to now. This report assesses this by means of a body of “media convergence” (融媒体), a Chinese language time period that refers back to the integration of inside and exterior Chinese language Communist Occasion (CCP) propaganda, the net and offline channels for its dissemination, and the mechanisms of oversight on which communications programs rely.

Extra particularly, this report examines “media convergence” throughout three vectors: channel enlargement, content material innovation, and governance of technological infrastructure and digital connectivity.

The primary vector, channel enlargement, refers to creating or higher leveraging supply autos for China’s messaging throughout totally different media platforms. The intention is to reveal a rising worldwide viewers to Chinese language narratives and norms within the hopes of eroding the worldwide “discourse dominance” of the West. This report examines this pattern by means of each conventional and social media. As for conventional media, China has spent over $1.5 billion yearly since 2008 on propaganda, with a lot of that going towards initiatives within the International South. That is particularly apparent within the methods of China’s flagship information group, Xinhua, which describes itself as “mild cavalry” in China’s world public opinion warfare. Xinhua has described its media technique as utilizing a mix of “shipbuilding to exit to sea” and “borrowing a ship to exit to sea” (“造船出海”与”借船出海”相结合)—that’s, increase China’s personal capability to successfully disseminate its message internationally, whereas utilizing overseas social media platforms to disseminate propaganda. As a part of these efforts, Xinhua has over time tremendously expanded its networks to now have the biggest variety of overseas correspondents of any information company on this planet. Different methods embody each coercing and incentivizing journalists overseas to interact in additional favorable protection of China.

Chinese language state entities have tremendously expanded their presence on social media as properly. As of January 2021, Xinhua distributed on common seven thousand 300 articles, pictures, movies, and different media content material in fifteen languages every day, garnering over 200 million abroad social media followers throughout varied platforms (together with Fb, Twitter, and YouTube). Certainly, China-based Twitter account creation skyrocketed by over 6,000 % over a interval of simply three months in 2017, following stories on the scenario in Xinjiang within the Western press. On the identical time, nonetheless, there’s a balancing act that the party-state faces when in search of to painting China as a assured chief to world audiences whereas additionally being topic to widespread nationalism and home discontent in its actions.

For example, tensions between totally different bureaucratic departments belie the official sanctioning of the assertive “wolf warrior” model of coercive diplomacy. In some cases, it seems that totally different components answerable for exterior messaging throughout the Chinese language authorities have initially contradicted one another, typically going so far as refuting one another’s public statements, earlier than consolidating round a single message. One such instance occurred between the Central Propaganda Division and wolf warrior diplomat Zhao Lijian across the origins of the COVID-19 virus.

Self-censorship is usually a nefarious facet impact of the editorial pressures that Chinese language state information businesses deliver—not simply in China’s favor but additionally for authoritarian governments with which it’s aligned. With regard to China’s efforts in shaping public opinion, most research have discovered that China’s messaging at a common degree just isn’t particularly resonant with native audiences; nonetheless, some preliminary research have proven that Chinese language propaganda may be efficient at persuading audiences that the “China mannequin” is superior to that of democratic political programs in delivering development and stability. On social media platforms, Chinese language officers have typically engaged in coordinated affect and data campaigns, together with these spreading disinformation on the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The second “prong” of China’s technique of media convergence is content material innovation, which incorporates tailoring content material (and the narratives baked into it) in a approach that greatest resonates with a specific viewers, in any other case often known as “exact communication” (精准传播). China sees entry to public opinion knowledge overseas as important to enhancing its means to tailor content material. Because the occasion secretary and president of the net arm of the CCP’s flagship Folks’s Day by day said in a 2022 handle, the web “homes an enormous quantity of…knowledge and is ready to precisely replicate social sentiments…. Utilizing large knowledge [analytics] and synthetic intelligence (AI), the web is usually a instrument for strengthening the Occasion’s management.” To this finish, China just lately launched 4 State Key Laboratories devoted to utilizing large knowledge to raised tailor content material to particular audiences, in addition to unfold “constructive vitality” by means of digital and social media.

Along with shaping content material, one other tactic is to obscure the truth that the content material originates from Chinese language state sources. This can be a phenomenon often known as “political native promoting,” wherein Chinese language state-run media organizations buy house in information retailers overseas to publish state-sanctioned content material “camouflaged” as impartial information articles. In a 2020 report, Freedom Home highlighted that, particularly in digital variations of native newspapers, “China Observer”—an English-language column produced by Chinese language state media outlet China Day by day—typically goes unlabeled as being state sponsored.

Lastly, a associated technique entails China’s makes an attempt to regulate native media environments by way of content-sharing agreements, which in some instances find yourself flooding native media environments with free or low-cost pro-CCP content material. An enormous a part of this push is to international locations inside China’s Belt and Highway Initiative (BRI), a majority of that are within the International South.

The final body for analyzing China’s digital discourse energy technique is governance. This contains making certain China-sponsored requirements, norms, and governance protocols in prioritized industries are broadly adopted, particularly within the International South. China has, as an example, been energetic in shaping info and communications applied sciences requirements within the Worldwide Telecommunication Union by means of a “flooding the zone” technique wherein all China-affiliated members, be they from academia, personal business, or authorities, vote as a bloc. This ensures that requirements proposals from Chinese language entities find yourself receiving the variety of votes wanted to be adopted by the standards-setting physique.

These exchanges serve to unfold Chinese language cyber norms, reminiscent of “cyber sovereignty” (网络主权), which is China’s imaginative and prescient for web governance that upholds a authorities’s sovereign proper to regulate the web inside its borders. The party-state spreads this norm by advising governments on how one can form legal guidelines and insurance policies to control the applied sciences (typically Chinese language-provided, Chinese language-standard-compliant) in their very own societies. This course of turns into a constructive suggestions loop, creating a level of each technical and coverage lock-in by way of China-provided technical infrastructure, the requirements by means of which it operates, and know-how and knowledge governance frameworks. On the identical time, China leverages its media relationships to flood native environments with tales of the advantages of China’s funding in creating international locations’ futures.

These relationships additionally enable China to realize entry to huge knowledge sources. One Chinese language agency outlined on this report, Nebula, makes use of its large knowledge and cloud computing applied sciences to acquire huge quantities of information associated to worldwide public opinion on information subjects associated to China. It makes use of quite a lot of evaluation strategies, together with semantics and clustering, to know public preferences and “consider the distinction between this understanding and media expectations…serving to Chinese language media construct prime worldwide discourse energy and affect.” The Chinese language state can then use this knowledge to hone its messages additional and improve its censorship and propaganda equipment. It could possibly deploy these improved instruments and applied sciences in banal methods, like serving to the tourism bureau craft a compelling narrative of “Lovely China.” Nonetheless, it could actually additionally use Nebula’s sentiment knowledge to assist the Folks’s Liberation Military have interaction in additional focused info operations and psychological warfare campaigns in opposition to international locations like Taiwan.

This report finds that, anecdotally, China’s efforts acquire bigger floor in international locations the place civic freedoms are already restricted and the place profitable the help of a small coalition of political elites issues over profitable public help. Within the quite excessive case of Zimbabwe, China is overtly and actively antagonizing and concentrating on journalists and civil society activists. These findings forged doubt on assessments of Chinese language affect that look solely at public opinion knowledge. Such analysis might miss the truth that in some home contexts, China sees elite seize as rather more vital than profitable hearts and minds.

Briefly, China’s discourse energy efforts are uneven. Whereas the recognition of its state and conventional media lags behind that of Western international locations, its efforts to form the environments inside media and data areas are rather more efficient—and are in actual fact the main focus of China’s discourse energy technique. China is creating another order within the International South, and any effort to make significant progress on technological governance might want to stem from an understanding of the ecosystem that China has created, the push and pull components dealing with the international locations that have interaction with it, and on clearly messaging what some great benefits of a democratic strategy to such points presents to the worldwide majority.

Associated content material

The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Analysis Lab (DFRLab) has operationalized the examine of disinformation by exposing falsehoods and pretend information, documenting human rights abuses, and constructing digital resilience worldwide.

Picture: A world map of China, 3d rendering. Credit score: Ran Sinee, Shutterstock.