Over the past decade, China has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in its international media network.
The Xinhua News Agency,
China Global Television Network,
China Radio International, and
the China Daily web portal
produce material in multiple languages
and use multiple social-media accounts to amplify it.
This huge investment produces plenty of positive coverage of China
and benign depictions of the authoritarian world more broadly.
Nevertheless,
️Beijing is also aware that news marked “made in China” doesn’t have anything like the influence that local people, using #local #media, would have if they were uttering the same messages.
That, in the regime’s thinking, is the #ultimate #form #of #propaganda:
Get the natives to say it for you.
Train them, persuade them, pay them
—it doesn’t matter;
whatever their motives,
they’ll be more convincing.
Chinese leaders call this tactic “borrowing boats to reach the sea"
- @anneapplebaum
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/09/right-wing-influencers-working-autocracy-inc/679793/