The Globalization of Chinese Propaganda

Since the beginning of the era of reform and opening, China’s interactions with the rest of the world have become steadily broader and deeper. During this period the policies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have permitted, and sometimes even encouraged, the gradual expansion of the ways in which China’s state, economy, and society engages with its foreign counterparts. After abandoning its revolutionary foreign policy following Mao’s death and instead adopting an official doctrine of international peace and development, the Party-state has expanded its diplomatic activities, raised the level of economic interaction between China and other countries, deepened its participation in international institutions, and increased China’s involvement in social and cultural exchanges with the rest of the world.¹ This shift toward opening up to and engaging with the outside world has ensured that China’s contemporary development has been inextricably bound up with the process of globalization— the accelerating and deepening of global interconnectedness. At the same time, according to nearly any method of assessment, China’s power in international politics is increasing. Scholars discuss China’s growing global diplomatic status, economic clout, and soft power; they debate whether or not its increasing military capabilities are a threat and highlight the issues raised by its newfound influence in Africa, Southeast Asia, the Pacific, and South America.²

What role does propaganda play in the Chinese political system? What is the relationship between power and propaganda? How should we begin to think about the influence of domestic propaganda on China’s engagement with discourses beyond its borders? This chapter attempts to address these questions in order to provide a general foundation on which further investigation and analysis can be built. The first section briefly explains the contemporary development of Chinese views on propaganda. The second section examines the various ways in which scholars, using concepts such as soft power and public diplomacy, have understood the influence of the Party-state’s domestic propaganda practices on China’s international relations. The third section develops an approach to propaganda and power that can be applied to the Party-state’s practices at both the domestic and international levels, highlighting the relationship—but also the difference—between the Party-state’s use of propaganda to exercise power and its broader engagement in ideological struggles over discourse. The Party-state’s use of propaganda practices involves both the articulation of particular discourses and the disruption and suppression of unwanted articulations that could threaten the Party-state’s hegemonic political project.

Propaganda practices involve the Party-state exercising power in order to affect how discourses are publicly articulated. The Party-state uses propaganda practices to reproduce its official narrative about key political concepts and issues as well as to suppress any rival narratives that threaten to undermine the shared meanings that legitimize CCP rule. This is intended to prevent the emergence of a coherent alternative political project that could challenge the existing political order. Although these attempts to control public discourse cannot guarantee that people will always accept the assumptions embedded in the official narrative, they are designed to increase the likelihood that the Party-state’s official narrative will prevail in its ideological struggles with alternative interpretations of Chinese politics and society. This chapter focuses on the propaganda practices the Party-state uses to exercise power in the domestic political context and begins by identifying the official institutions that are responsible for carrying out the Party-state’s propaganda practices. This shows the extent to which such institutions are embedded in the structure of the Chinese political system and highlights the fact that all areas of public discourse to some degree fall under the purview of the Party-state.

The power of Party-state propaganda practices is not confined to the domestic political sphere. The Party-state also uses propaganda practices in its relations with those outside its own sovereign territory. This chapter examines the propaganda practices the Party-state uses internationally, beginning with an explanation of the role that such practices play in the broader context of the Party-state’s attempts to exercise power in the world. The second section identifies the official bodies that are responsible for carrying out the Party-state’s foreign propaganda practices. This shows the extent to which these official organizations are embedded in the structure of the Chinese political system and highlights the role of propaganda across the range of organizations that are responsible for foreign affairs. The third section explains the range of propaganda practices the Party-state uses to exercise power and focuses in turn on the international news media, public diplomacy, and the Party-state’s use of propaganda practices in relation to individuals and organizations outside China’s borders. Finally, the chapter highlights some of the main features of the official Party-state discourse that these foreign propaganda practices are designed to support.

The way the Party-state conceptualizes propaganda practices shapes its understanding of the purpose of such practices. The Party-state’s broad goals in relation to propaganda practices in turn drive its propaganda strategy and the use of those practices. This chapter investigates how the Party-state conceptualizes propaganda practices and the relationship between those practices at the domestic and international levels by focusing on the concept of soft power and how it has been reinterpreted in China. The purpose here is not to analyze or assess how much soft power China might have, however, but rather to examine the way the concept has been interpreted. By looking at how the concept of soft power is viewed by the Party-state it is possible to gain an understanding of how the Party-state interprets the relationship between domestic and foreign propaganda practices.

Propaganda strategy is the Party-state’s broad, long-term approach to propaganda. Propaganda strategy is used by the Party-state to maintain its ability to exercise power through propaganda practices in response to changes in the context in which that exercise of power takes place. The environment in which discourse is publicly articulated in China has undergone a dramatic transformation since the beginning of the period of reform and opening. Although this has altered the conditions under which the Party-state attempts to use propaganda practices to exercise power, the Party-state’s flexible response to these changes has allowed it to continue to exercise power over other actors in this area.

The Party-state’s use of propaganda practices to exercise power becomes the most concrete and comes into the sharpest focus when there is a public opinion crisis. In a crisis scenario information spreads quickly and the potential for public emotions to manifest in the form of protests or other political action is higher than usual. Party-state propaganda authorities are forced to make urgent decisions about how to deal with narratives that challenge the official discourse and threaten to undermine CCP legitimacy. Although the authorities make day-to-day tactical decisions about how to implement propaganda practices in the absence of any particular crisis, when a crisis does occur the political stakes are higher, decisions carry greater consequences, and the Party-state’s priorities become clearer. Because certain kinds of public opinion crises have the potential to straddle both the domestic and international spheres, a focus on the Party-state’s tactical responses to crises provides useful insight into the relationship between domestic and international propaganda practices under conditions of globalization.

The use of propaganda practices is deeply embedded in the Chinese political system and is a key aspect of how the Party-state exercises power in contemporary domestic politics. In one sense this is visible in the way that the political bodies linked to the central propaganda authorities form a vast network of institutions that operate at all levels of the political system, from the elite central leadership down to the level of village and neighborhood organizations, and control all areas of public discourse. In terms of the practical exercise of power, however, we can also see that propaganda practices have remained an integral component of the Party-state’s day-to-day repertoire of governance techniques, despite changes to the context in which it implements such techniques. As the communicative and technological aspects of globalization have challenged the Party-state’s ability to control public discourse in China, the Party-state has not given up on its use of propaganda practices but has instead adapted them to ensure their continuing utility. Thus far it has been remarkably successful at achieving this objective, although the task is ongoing and requires significant attention and resources.