Beijing as an Outcast

By He Qinglian on December 12, 2011

After a succession of diplomatic setbacks in the last two years, this year has been even worse for Beijing. In just the several weeks from G-20 Summit and APEC Summit in early November to East Asia Summit in the middle of that month, the United States has initiated frequent offensives that were seamlessly interrelated and ended with the meeting between US President Barack Obama and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao at the East Asia Summit. The result: the United States got a complete victory, returning to the Pacific politically and militarily; and China suffered a total defeat, losing the dominant position of the Asia-Pacific region that the country thought was firmly within its grip.

Why has Chinese media’s coverage of the “Occupy Movement” turned cold?

Why has Chinese media’s coverage of the “Occupy Movement” turned cold?

By He Qinglian on Oct 17, 2011

Those who keep a close eye on information from Chinese media would find that after October 15, Chinese media’s coverage of “Occupy Wall Street” became much less enthusiastic all of a sudden. While before that date every media outlet had special reports of the movement that were placed at prominent spots of their websites; the massive global “Occupy Movement” received almost no attention.

The “Double-faced characteristic” of Global Times and Huanqiu Shibao

Written on August 20, 2011
(translated by krizcpec)

The two papers mentioned in the title are actually two versions of the same paper, a key media stronghold that Beijing has given the crucial external propaganda missions of “shaping the national image and competing for the right to speak” abroad, and promoting the idea that “the whole world is jealous of how good we are” at home. It is because of something happened recently that I wrote an article specifically on this paper, something that Chinese media practitioners refer to as a reflection of the split in the character of that paper.

On August 9, 2011, the English version of the paper ran an exclusive: Ai Weiwei breaks his silence (authored by Liang Chen). That story did not appear in its Chinese version.

Traps made by Chinese Media

Written in April 2007
(translated by krizcpec)

For those foreign media that aspire to enter China, it surely is good to know that their reports have been reproduced on Chinese media and attracted comments from readers. “Losers and Winners”, an article about a documentary of the same title, published on November 13, 2006 on Deustche Welle. That article was first reproduced on Global Times (Huanqiu Shibao/环球时报), a subsidiary of Xinhua News Agency and widely circulated in China after it appeared on Xinhua Net, attracting much discussion among netizens. However, Deutsche Wellewould definitely feel startled if it realize its article has been reproduced with the title altered, key content removed and became a report promoting the spirit of the Chinese workers – work hard in arduous conditions, triggering sentiment of national pride in some Chinese netizens. 

The Daydream of Xinhua News Agency

(Translated by krizcpec, copyedited by Michelle BUCHANAN)

The Chinese government has been feeling quite satisfied with its “great external propaganda plan” lately, for a few reasons: Earlier this year, the BBC had to end its Mandarin broadcast because of insufficient funds; the question of whether the Voice of America Chinese broadcast can continue remains uncertain; and only [Xinhua News Agency], with the full support of the Chinese government, is spending a considerable amount of money attempting to take over the [Chinese] media market, just at the time when Western media is being forced to leave.

The Localization Strategy of China’s Great External Propaganda

The latest overseas developments of China’s propaganda media machine.

Translated by Paul Mooney

The Chinese government has long believed that the “right to have one’s say” is not fairly distributed around the world, with 80 percent of news and information reporting monopolized by Western media.¹ Under the government’s “Great External Propaganda Plan,” which aims at promoting and vying for China’s right to have its say [in the international community], China has spared no expense to continuously nurture various external propaganda media. Since the American economic crisis began in 2008, The Christian Science Monitor and several other mainstream Western media outlets have shut down newspapers and magazines one after the other in order to cut costs. The Chinese government feels that this is the perfect opportunity to expand the presence of Chinese media around the world. If the Southern Media Group’s huge bid to purchase Newsweek had not made Americans feel the threat, then the plan by the state-run Xinhua News Agency to set up its North American headquarters in Times Square, next door to such world famous news organizations as Reuters, The New York Times, News Corp., and others, surely succeeded in making the American media feel that “the Chinese are coming.”² “While our media empires are melting away like the Himalayan glaciers, China’s are expanding,” said Orville Schell, director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York and a former dean of the journalism school at the University of California, Berkeley. “They want to get every hallmark of the world of credible journalism they can, and being in New York City, in an iconic location, is part of that.”³