In the initial days of the coronavirus brawl, China tried to obstruct data of the fast-spreading virus, arresting those who attempted to speak out. But months later, as the pandemic devastated families and economies globally, Beijing endeavored to reset its public perception through foreign media, according to research declared by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) records.
A study of 54 journalist organizations in 50 nations observed a growth in the number of countries recording a noticeable Chinese behavior in their media, from 64% to 76% in a year. In nations where China has extended support and training to local media, a greater percentage said coverage of Beijing was more convenient, the IFJ report found.”The coronavirus story over the past 12 months has been successfully used by China to create a more positive image of China, in several countries,” Jeremy Dear, the IFJ’s deputy general secretary, said.
Survey respondents were directed to evaluate on a range of 1 to 10 coverage of China after the commencement of the pandemic, with 1 being the most negative and 10 being the most positive. The survey discovered that the mainland whose China coverage noticed the greatest positive shift was Europe, scoring 6.3, while North America perceived the most negative change, scoring 3.5. Beijing’s influence was observed most positively in Africa, where half of those viewed reported it as useful, and all reported China as a noticeable appearance in their media. China is “putting a lot more effort and resources into trying to shape the media narrative,” including stress from ambassadors and diplomats, offers of media practice or more productive employment deals, and free content to news portals under economic catastrophe. A decline in advertising income during the pandemic more added to narrowing newsrooms globally.
Beijing solicited to restrict foreign media inside China, rejecting visas to journalists or dismissing them. The actions came in response to the U.S. inflicting visa caps on the staff of five Chinese-run outlets, including the Xinhua News Agency, and the U.K. media control Ofcom (Office of Communications) excluding China Global Television Network (CGTN), stating the license holder did not have editorial liability for the network’s content. Ofcom regulates TV, radio, and video-on-demand areas as well as fixed-line telecoms and mobiles. Despite these “sometimes contradictory attempts by China to influence global media,” Dear said, “all of them have their purpose, trying to support a growing economic and political power of China and … (telling) one story, very centrally directed.”
China’s foreign ministry has protected its media outreach at a May 11 briefing. Hua Chunying, the foreign ministry spokesperson, stated that as the world’s second-largest economy and most significant developing nation, “of course we should have, and we deserve, a place in the international media landscape.”The U.S. has launched a disinformation attack on China under the pretext of media freedom,” Hua said, adding that China never aims other nations. Hua noted that the U.S. “authorizes 300 million dollars to be reserved for each financial year to ‘counter the malign influence of the Chinese Communist Party globally’.” Hua was referencing the intended Strategic Competition Act of 2021, a Senate bill “to address issues involving the People’s Republic of China.”
Media analysts have steered to variations between state-run media such as CGTN and media financed by governments but editorially autonomous, such as the U.K.’s BBC and Germany’s Deutsche Welle. VOA and its sister channels, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), are backed by the U.S. Congress, but an editorial firewall protects them from political intervention.
All nations to some extent “try to use soft power, of which media very often is, to improve their political and economic position in the world,” Dear said. “That is what China is doing, and it’s a reflection of its growing economic and political power.”The pandemic provided Beijing an occasion “to promote the socialist system and the leadership of the Communist Party as superior to the Western system of democracy, universal values, and freedom,” Dan Garrett, an ex-intelligence analyst at the Pentagon, told. “You have an aspect of the current information campaign from Beijing that is oriented towards discrediting Western media as biased, as racist, as anti-China.”
In all but three of the nations involved in the IFJ research, China provided pandemic support, medical supplies, and personal shielding equipment. The IFJ report discovered that usually the supplies reported in local media as contributions by Beijing had been bought from China by governments. In Serbia, the government has joined itself with China since Beijing backed it during the Kosovo battle in the late 1990s and the NATO bombing of Serbian stations in the Yugoslav region of Kosovo.
Beginning on in the pandemic, Serbia’s Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic visited Beijing, stating, “You didn’t fear NATO bombs. My visit shows we’re not afraid of the virus,” the IFJ report said. China also provided supplies and the bulk of Serbia’s vaccines. In April, Prime Minister Ana Brnabic said Serbia had received about 2.5 million doses of the Chinese-produced Sinopharm vaccine and slightly less than a million vaccines from all other manufacturers combined. China’s influence and its backing by Belgrade “exist without any doubt,” said Dinko Gruhonjic, editor in chief of the Serbian media outlet VOICE and program director of the Independent Journalists’ Association of Vojvodina.
“It is simply put as official propaganda, claiming that European Union and the West abandoned Serbia in need. And that the country would be doomed without the help of ‘Chinese brothers’ who provided sanitary materials, vaccines, and other means of help,” Gruhonjic told .”It was one of the dominant narratives in most pro-government media, including billboards placed around Belgrade in support of the alleged friendship between the Serbian and Chinese people,” Gruhonjic said. The billboards appeared in Belgrade last year, saying “Thank you, brother Xi.” They were purportedly supported by a pro-government tabloid newspaper, according to RFE/RL.
The Serbian government holds or controls almost all media in the nation, the IFJ reported.”The Serbian public accepts those narratives and propaganda. The majority consume state and pro-government media and is convinced that allies of Serbia are from the East of the globe and the enemies are from the West,” Gruhonjic said. Besides regarding an extended Chinese appearance in their media, more than 80% of those viewed worldwide flagged anxieties over spreading disinformation in national media.
Garrett, of the nongovernmental organization Securing Tianxia, said that China, Russia, and others “rely on individual citizens and individual newsreaders’ inability or a lack of time to comprehensively review media sources to get the full story from multiple different sources.” I think it is a very challenging problem for your average media consumer,” he continued. The IFJ report discovered that Beijing’s control was observed more undoubtedly in Africa than in any other continent. China has proposed media content, training, and sources to several African countries where local news outlets endure economic hardships.
“China has really invested in its media in Africa, and specifically in Kenya so that they can have their own media houses to tell Chinese stories,” Eric Oduor, secretary-general of Kenya Union of Journalists, told VOA. An initial statement by the IFJ found that in Kenya, most of the biggest terminals have content-sharing agreements, including the Kenya Broadcasting Cooperation, which has a state-of-the-art studio built with Chinese funding. The state-run CGTN and Xinhua News Agency have headquarters in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, where they grow and share content with local media terminals.
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“I don’t believe that there are any expectations that journalists (are) supposed to abide by,” Oduor said. When officials are in Kenya, like during President Xi Jinping’s visit, “they attempt to promote and operate with journalists and also media managers so that they can have the range for their own stories.”For the IFJ, its conclusions emphasize the value of independent news and media knowledge and encouraging news managers to learn the values of receiving free content from China.
“What we’re seeing here is a very centrally directed narrative, whether it’s about the Belt and Road Initiative, whether it’s about coronavirus, whether it’s about the Uyghurs, whether it’s about the South China Sea. All of these problems that are politically or economically vital to China,” the IFJ’s Dear said. “That’s why journalism is so important. … It doesn’t just accept what any government says. It asks questions of that government. It gets other points of view.”
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