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Freedom House

• Chinese censors sent out guidelines listing subjects that should not be covered or not covered in a negative way during parliamentary sessions in 2016. Included on the list were the wealth of parliamentary delegates, military budgets, compliance with international human rights conventions, air pollution, church demolitions, and jokes about parliamentarians’ proposals.19

• Censorship officials quashed coverage of the “Panama Papers,” the trove of documents leaked in 2016 that listed the offshore holdings of the global elite, including the relatives of top Chinese officials.20

• China added Time and the Economist to the list of blocked media websites in 2016, apparently in retaliation for articles that were critical of Xi Jinping’s accumulation of power.21

• In February 2016 visits to China Central Television (CCTV), the Xinhua news agency, and the People’s Daily newspaper—the flagships of the party and state media—Xi admonished the assembled journalists to give absolute support to the party leadership and later declared that all media should “have the party as their family name.”22

While critical voices can still be found on the internet, the authorities have been highly successful in suppressing material that might lead to any broad form of online protest or collective action. In addition to intrusive laws and regulations, the regime deploys armies of paid and volunteer commentators to flood social media with progovernment remarks, influence online discussions, report or attack those who make antigovernment comments, or sow confusion about particular incidents that might reflect poorly on the leadership.23

The overall goal of this strategy is to weaken the internet’s potential as a mobilizing force for critics or reformers. Indeed, after years of intense pressure, the medium is drawing closer to Xi Jinping’s ideal of an internet that is “clear and bright.”24

Global reach
Both Russia and China have launched ambitious and expensive projects to expand the reach of propaganda and censorship beyond their borders. Russia’s project is better known due to RT, a global television network that is available to foreign audiences in a number of lan-

guages and through many cable packages. Russia has also launched Sputnik, an international news service, in multiple languages. These outlets tend to be more effective than China’s at imitating the production styles and intentionally contentious formats now employed by many major outlets in democratic countries.

The degree to which RT and other arms of the Russian global media apparatus actually influence the debate about Russia is unclear. RT makes grandiose claims of high viewership, but some analysts believe that its audience in the United States and elsewhere is much lower than asserted, and that its sizeable audience on YouTube may be inflated by enticing video clips with little political relevance.25

When it was launched in 2005, RT’s programming stressed the achievements of Russia and the strong leadership of Vladimir Putin. Subsequently, the focus changed to negative messages about the West, especially the United States. Programs have chronicled American poverty, inequality, political hypocrisy, racial injustice, and other real or perceived flaws. The network often promotes conspiracy theories about everything from the destruction of New York’s World Trade Center in 2001 to America’s alleged role as puppet master behind the Ukrainian protest movement of 2013–14.26

Superficially, China’s overseas propaganda efforts seem less aggressive. While Beijing has greatly expanded the capacity of CCTV’s international broadcasts and opened media offices around the globe, the news content is less polemical and therefore less interesting than that of RT.

But the CCP’s ultimate objectives may actually be far more ambitious. Rather than engaging, like Russia, in what amount to guerrilla-style attacks on mainstream news and information abroad, the Chinese regime is using its superior economic muscle to steadily gain control over how China is depicted in news coverage and popular culture in the rest of the world, and to establish something of a consensus on the idea of a “sovereign internet.”

Its various tactics include state pressure on foreign correspondents tasked with informing the world about developments in China: Those who are too critical or too aggressive in conducting investigations into sensitive matters may find their visas revoked, their outlet’s website blocked, and their employers placed in a sort of political purgatory.27

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