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in a DUI case in a suburb of Los Angeles, a popular WeChat channel reported that the
motorist was undocumented and had committed the act to extend his stay in the United
States.47 Zhang noted that another cause of concern was the fact that these WeChat
channels helped foster anxiety among first-generation Chinese. As with other Chinese
immigrants who rely on traditional Chinese-language media for information, the anti-
American hothouse created by WeChat’s “news channels” leads to a type of resentful pro-
Chinese nationalism that is ripe for exploitation by the Chinese government.

WeChat may be no more slanted in its treatment of information than American media
that serve domestic political extremes, but there is no precedent for the situation
WeChat has created: A vast and vital community of Americans gets most of its “news”
from, and does most of its communicating via, a platform known to be censored by a
foreign government that opposes free speech and has been named by the US National
Security Strategy as the greatest long-term security challenge the nation faces.

Western Media

The Chinese Communist Party has always recognized the usefulness of the overseas
media (both in local languages and Chinese) as a means to get its message out. Foreign-
and Chinese-language media have always served the cause of China’s revolution. For
example, in the 1930s, foreign journalist Edgar Snow sang the praises of the Chinese
Communist Party and specifically its chairman, Mao Zedong. The Party conducted a
campaign in the United States in the 1940s to turn the American public against the
regime of Chiang Kai-shek and to soften criticism of China’s Communists. Organizations
such as the Institute of Pacific Relations, which provided Americans with in-depth
coverage of Asia, were staffed by Communist agents and played an important role in
fashioning public opinion on America’s relations with China. To be sure, these techniques
were not unique to the Chinese Communist Party. The government of Chiang Kai-shek
and its “China lobby” also used the overseas press to serve its purposes. In the 1950s,
the KMT government conducted a campaign against pro-Communist newspapers in the
United States, convincing the US government to shutter several pro-PRC outlets and expel
pro-PRC journalists.

The events of 1989 sparked a significant change in China’s foreign propaganda campaign.
Following China’s crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing and other
cities, China’s image sank to a low not seen by Chinese officials in decades.48 China
Books and Periodicals, which had been operating in the United States since the 1950s,
closed its offices on Fifth Avenue in New York City. And the Foreign Languages Press

Section 6

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