美中全球议题对话项目

这次采访是用英语进行的。

Eleanor M. Albert: Maria Repnikova is an associate professor and the Inaugural William C. Pate Endowed Chair in Strategic Communication at Georgia State. Her research interest centers around media-state relations in China, including political persuasion and critical journalism; Chinese soft power and public diplomacy, especially in the African context; and China-Russia comparisons. Maria, welcome to the show. It's a real treat to have you here today.

Maria Repnikova: Thank you so much, Eleanor. It's wonderful to be here.

Eleanor M. Albert: Before we dive in, I wanted to first ask on the personal note, how you came to study China and China's political communication.

Maria Repnikova: My journey into China's political communication has been long and curvaceous or zigzags more than a linear path. I started out with studying Chinese journalism education when I was a master's student at Oxford and that brought me into contact with a lot of journalists who were training these students at various top institutions in China, and many of them were investigative journalists, so they were quite fascinating characters.

The students talked a lot about their desire for more wholesome and dynamic vision of the media. They were training to potentially become media professionals, but they were given very conflicting signals from their education professionals. It's Chinese media, it's propaganda, but also supposedly professional, in some ways critical, in some ways not. So it's a very amorphous picture, and I thought it was quite fascinating.

From there I went on to do a little bit of journalism in Beijing as an overseas press fellow. I worked for Reuters, which was super interesting time. Alongside with that, I got accepted to the Ph.D. program and I continued to study Chinese media politics.  At this point, the focus was on critical journalists. I ended up zooming in more on their perspectives, their ambitions, their values, their limitations, and then looking at certain case studies to investigate how it works in practice. This came out as my first book, Media Politics in China: Improvising Power under Authoritarianism.

From there, [I] shifted towards a more global domain, in part because I observed so much conversations in Beijing, amongst other places in China, about the importance of image. China really cares about its image, I think more than any country in the world. It's quite phenomenal that it really does value soft power and how it's perceived. Sometimes when I give talks at Western universities, they're like, "Oh, who cares? Soft power, whatever." But it's like, "Well, actually they care.” So by virtue of the fact that they care, it makes it a very interesting topic and puzzle." So I started with an external propaganda research looking at Xinhua News Agency, and then I shifted towards more expansive research, empirical research in China's image building through various mechanisms, including trainings of journalists in Africa.

Eleanor M. Albert: Let's jump right in. Could you unpack for us what role China's international media entities play in China's broader political messaging strategy? You talked a little bit about journalists being in this nexus of propaganda and journalism as professionals. How do these media enterprises fit into the broader political messaging strategies?

Maria Repnikova: These enterprises are quite important as this overall Chinese media expansion overseas. It was probably one of the earliest signs of the party state's concern with image starting in 2009. There was already this going outward policy energy, effort, and huge investments poured into these state media outlets. Essentially, central level media outlets like CGTN—which was previously CCTV—China Radio International, Xinhua News Agency, of course, is its own entity, but also expanding widely across the world. Then it transitioned towards social media platforms and so many other channels. But the efforts to really boost the presence of Chinese state media has been really outstanding. I think it's one of the earliest signs and policies that we witnessed when it comes to concern for image.

Also, the idea of discourse power, which Chinese policymakers talk a lot about, is strengthening China's voice in the international system, is also very much dependent on communicating this voice and communicating it through state media actors. Xi Jinping, when he talks about soft power and image, he often invokes storytelling and telling China's story well, but also the focus on communication. Communication is a huge aspect of this larger endeavor. I think it attracted the most financial resources and the most attention from researchers and observers.

Eleanor M. Albert: Looking at where China's international media lives, who oversees these groups? Who manages them? Where does it fall within the broader party-state apparatus?

Maria Repnikova: The majority of the oversight still falls under the Central Propaganda Department. One of the trends we're seeing since Xi Jinping's ascent to power, which now seems like a very long time ago, is centralization of media managements across the board. It's both domestic media and global media or China's internationally oriented media.

In the past, there was a bit more decentralized, but since 2018 it's become regrouped into the Voice of China. And that Voice of China entity is under [the] Central Propaganda Department. It's directly under the very top entity that manages the media. Of course the propaganda department has been renamed as [the] Publicity Department, so it has a softer name, but in Chinese xuanchuan, it's often interpreted as both. It could be both propaganda, publicity, so it's a dual meaning. But it's managed from the very highest level of the party-state.

Then, Xinhua News Agency is a state ministry, so it has its own delegation or its own status, and it's very high status, so it's higher than the other state media. Xinhua stories tend to be used and reused by a lot of these other outlets. Recently, we also see this interesting development of international communication centers that have been spread all across the country. They're localized, so they're under provincial governments and oftentimes under provincial propaganda departments, but still have the central CPD, central propaganda departments, still oversees the overarching effort. This is a very new development.

There are dozens, if not, some claim, even a hundred of these centers. I haven't looked at them closely, so I wouldn't want to overstate, but it's becoming a big initiative to open up the centers at all kinds of local levels and then diffuse the story of China that's more local-based to impress global audiences with a story about Tianjin or about Sichuan or about another region. It's all supposed to be positive, but it has a local tint to it, which is a very interesting new development.

Eleanor M. Albert: Absolutely. I'm curious the zǒu chūqù, right, the Going Out Policy, and how that was in tandem with a lot of these media enterprises developing and going out globally. What kind of strategies did these media enterprises use to create partnerships with overseas media outlets? How do journalists, who then get sent to foreign positions, undertake their positions? Do they have distinct reporting styles? Is there variation based on the markets and where they're placed?

Maria Repnikova: The groups vary a bit amongst themselves. Journalists going to work for CGTN are different than those working for Xinhua News Agency. They might have different experiences. I would say CGTN is still a bit more open. They have more flexibility when it comes to what they cover and how, whereas Xinhua is much more regimented and it's almost like a diplomatic tool of the state.

They play varied official roles as well. They would send very different people for those posts. They don't always overlap, but sometimes, not that they don't like each other, they might see each other's work as very different. But in terms of what strategies they undertook, I think there's several interesting strategies.

One of them, the big strategy is localization. That's been endorsed across Chinese soft power practices, but especially in the media. This means hiring a lot of local talent. We often think about Chinese media, Chinese state journalists or media practitioners from China, but actually a large proportion now is coming from elsewhere. We can see this in Europe. We can see it in Africa, in places like Kenya. Chinese state media have poached some very talented reporters from other outlets, in part because Western media has shrunk its presence and its financial resources on the ground, in part because local media pays less. It provides a more stable, not necessarily more interesting, but more stable job. But also there's a persuasion line there, hiring these people that they get to tell their own stories about their country and the continent. So that can be quite exciting. That's something that they've been doing for some time, I think, that's going to stay.

But the other part of localization is local partnerships. Local partnerships means signing agreements with local media organizations, and then it can mean different things. It could be co-production, producing documentaries together, different films, content, et cetera. Or it can mean indirect co-production. For example, Xinhua signs an agreement with a local news agency like in Ethiopia where I've done the research. Ethiopian News Agency is a state-owned one, and then this agency has access to content from Xinhua for free. It ends up relying a lot more on Xinhua content for China stories for different reasons. Part of it, because they don't have their own resources [to] report [on] China; it's convenient; it's free; easy to use. It's like a shortcut.

Something I noticed on the ground doing research there, especially in 2023, is that when I would ask in focus groups, young people, about their recognition of Chinese state media, they haven't heard of CGTN, they haven't heard of China Radio International, China Daily, but they heard of Xinhua. I was very surprised. "How did you hear about that?" They said, "That's because it's mentioned in the local media." They'll say, "According to Xinhua or Xinhua source or..." It was popping up all the time in local reports, which to me signifies quite a bit of influence. So that's the kind of local partnerships that are being formed in many, many parts of the world. And then the other part of localization is also bringing journalists from local media over to train or to experience China. It's not quite the same as the zǒu chūqù policy, but it's more persuasion propaganda to bring them over and witness China for themselves.

Eleanor M. Albert: From your research and from your vantage point, how have these strategies paid off? Are they having the impact that A, China hopes or B, certainly they're having some impact? You just mentioned that you had these focus groups with young people saying that they recognize Xinhua. In some ways it makes it sound like it's acting like another wire service that's just not necessarily a Western one… Are there consequences for this that should be alarming? Are they filling a certain void? Of course, if it's under the directives of the central party, there are priorities, but it's certainly not necessarily a malign actor for all intents and purposes, especially with local journalists being the ones reporting their story.

Maria Repnikova: When it comes to red lines, certainly most of the reporting is quite positive when it comes to China. It really is a China promotional reporting style. They might cover some stories about Africa, for instance, in a more balanced or negative manner, or they would expose, not necessarily in an investigative way, but report on some crisis or disastrous issues, problems, et cetera. But when it comes to China, it's very rare that you'll see reports that are negative. If they are, it's more about growth, solutions that goes back to what I studied domestically in China, the solutions-oriented, hopeful style of journalism, constructive reporting. You're not supposed to critique for the sake of critiquing. You're always providing some sort of resolution to your critique. That really resonates and echoes in international reporting as well.

Rarely do we see a big story that tackles China's problems, and especially its problems when it comes to relating with other countries. Typically, those are very, very positive. In some ways, the Chinese media effects, they're quite subtle. One of the effects I've observed is that it homogenizes narratives about China on the ground, especially in countries that are more authoritarian. For instance, Ethiopia is not really democracy—it's still considered to be an autocratic regime and the regime has very tight control over the media. Local journalists have already pressures when it comes to reporting on China. They have a lot of internal and external pressures, but then they have this shortcut of using Xinhua, so it becomes a way out. It's like, "Well, I can't really report back to China anyway," something I talk about my forthcoming book, I have a whole chapter on censorship as part of China's soft power, because I think it does carry some sharper edges.

Like you said, it's not being normative or treating it all as malign, but there's a combination of different things. We have to recognize the full picture. One of it is controlling the narrative. As part of controlling this narrative, there's all kinds of access, control. Who gets to report on China, at what time, what kind of questions get to be asked? Essentially, it's very hard to do anything when it comes to asking sensitive questions of Chinese entities. Then, because it's so hard and there's so few resources, what do you do instead? You still have to cover it. Well, you might as well just use a Xinhua story, a little blurb—they're typically very short—so you can repackage it and send it off. That's becoming a big thing.

So I think that's homogenization of narratives. It's something that's not quite direct control. It's not really threatening. It's often by choice. I talk a lot about complicity in the book as well, and it's not really like somebody's forcing this journalist to adopt Xinhua—in some ways it's just easier. I think that's where a lot of this influence is trickling down, not so much in direct threats. But it’s still, I think, significant, especially since people recognize Xinhua on the ground and know that this is Chinese media, and also that so much storytelling about China is overwhelmingly positive and has this pro-China tint that seems to come from Xinhua News Agency. That's quite something.

As far as influence more broadly, I think that recognition of Chinese media is still not as high as they would like. Talking to young people, for instance in Ethiopia, Chinese state TV, China Daily, there's not much awareness of these companies, not much awareness of this content. And journalists who actually talk more frankly about Chinese state media, they find it not very exciting. They think it's kind of boring. That's been confirmed in surveys that have been done by other scholars like Herman Wasserman in South Africa. They interviewed a lot of journalists, in South Africa, I think Kenya. There was comparative research that also revealed that there's not a lot of admiration or excitement about it. It's fairly positive, so not the most interesting storytelling. The desire for Chinese content through the state media thing is still not quite as high as maybe the government would like.

Eleanor M. Albert: I'm curious about the digital space in terms of perhaps there being a shift if these traditional state media enterprises aren't necessarily having the larger direct narrative impact that perhaps Beijing hoped for. What are people consuming on social media digital platforms? Is it still more tightly controlled, top-down narrative construction? Who are the audiences that they're hoping to target? It's been a long time since China Daily was paying for paid inserts in Western media campaigns that clearly didn't have the effect that China Daily had hoped that it might have. In some respects, it may have even backfired. So has there been a learning curve for these media enterprises?

Maria Repnikova: It's a good question. It's a bit hard to know the motivations because they require talking to these top people, and sometimes it's really hard to decipher. Do they really have a vision for the expansion? Does it seem to prioritize some places over others? It's pretty clear that, with the headquarters of some of this media, Africa is a huge priority because they see Africa as a stepping stone towards influencing [the] Global South, and its appearing as this benevolent, helpful power that replaces, or at least outweighs, some of the influence of the West.

The West sometimes, I think, has been deprioritized because of, like you said, little success on the ground. It's been extremely difficult to get through this Western public opinion space. Overall, in recent years, a lot of talk of Global South in Chinese states narratives about its soft power beyond the media, the global priorities in Global South; it's all about Global South. And BRI [Belt and Road Initiative}, of course, has been declining and shrinking. So Global South has become the term that's often thrown around to talk about where they're prioritizing their influence. It doesn't mean they're giving up on the West, but I think there's a bit more cynicism towards the ability to influence it.

But I do think there's a lot of expansion on social media that I haven't studied empirically, but some scholars are looking at it and they're finding the scale of Chinese state media presence on Western social platforms is huge. There's a lot of content and there's more engagement than maybe we would've assumed there would be. There's a lot more, at least, clicking and likes. And of course, again, social media engagement can be very superficial as we all are aware of. But still, some engagement is still something, people are somehow responding, maybe not commenting as much, but maybe they're clicking on it. So that's something that's considered to be some success when it comes to metrics.

I think it's also worth noting that [the] metrics of success for Chinese state media and soft power at large are very ambiguous. And sometimes they're very scale-based. How many events? How many clicks? How many bureaus? How many journalists are hired? It's about visibility and highlighting that there's something happening versus the quality of engagement. Are people actually liking China more as a result of engaging with this media? Do they respect or admire it more thoroughly, or do they critique it as a result? The more serious public opinion studies, I think is too sensitive to engage with because if the results are negative, it doesn't look good for these entities. It is a very tricky business to understand how they see themselves, because success metrics are almost very surface.

Eleanor M. Albert: Their metrics are performative in some respects.

Maria Repnikova: Yeah, they're very performative. So then, if it's all about performance, then I guess they can count many things as very successful. A big summit is a success as we've seen, and recently in Shanghai and the big World War II parades, lots of leaders showed up, although mostly from other countries, but still it was very widely publicized and watched so I guess that's a success.

It depends on what we think about as success. I think when we think about success from the perspective of maybe the West or the U.S. perspective, it's about engagement and admiration, creating these kinds of warm sentiments, and it's also very hard to measure. But when it comes to China, I think it's a bit more performative, more amorphous, and more focused also on respect and recognition. As long as China is recognized, that's already successful, it's something. I don't think that's seen as a failure.

Eleanor M. Albert: Fantastic. I want to leave the floor open in case there's anything we haven't touched upon that you wanted to bring up as it comes to China's international media. I think one area that's really interesting, and probably still a little underappreciated, is the fact that China does engage in trainings for a lot of journalists. I'm curious if those come across as your run-of-the-mill trainings or whether they are “trainings with Chinese characteristics.” What does journalistic training from the Beijing perspective look like compared to what might just be professional training?

Maria Repnikova: The trainings that I've analyzed, they're not quite so rigorous. They're really more about showing off China than training and specific skills. Sometimes they're even very comical. The journalists I spoke to complained a little bit that they were taught skills that they already knew, or even very good at like Photoshop, some very basic digital skills. They were a little bit surprised and not embarrassed, but it just felt like this was a bit of a undignified as almost like…

Eleanor M. Albert: Underwhelmed.

Maria Repnikova: Yeah, like, "Why are we being taught this? Why don't they think we know this? Where do they think we're coming from?" There was that sense, but a lot of it is showing off the trends in Chinese media, like how successful it is in digitalizing its content, how successful it is in commercially, in earning commercial revenue. All kinds of success stories that are being communicated in a very dense, overwhelming way. There's tons of statistics and graphs and figures, and it's pretty intense as an experience, but also doesn't quite stick with people.

So they go and then they don't remember a whole lot from the trainings. Oftentimes when I would ask, and I've done many, many interviews with participants that would say, "Yeah, I don't really remember very much. But I remember that the Chinese state media has very advanced technology; the newsrooms are impressive. There's a lot of wonderful technology that appears to be very new and modern and futuristic.” And then China itself is being regarded as again, futuristic and very developed, more developed than anticipated, and more welcoming than anticipated.

They have some softening of perceptions towards China as a whole, which that's a success for China. But when it comes to media specifically, it's a very ambiguous experience for them. They go, and some of the people I spoke to called it a picnic. It's a fun thing to experience as a free trip, but not so much as a training experience. Many of them aspire to have trainings elsewhere. Their first choice is typically not China; it's usually the West, the U.S., the U.K. I think those come up as the very top and some parts of Asia as well. Maybe Korea [Republic of Korea], but not really China.

Eleanor M. Albert: Interesting. It ends up not being necessarily a media professional development exercise, nor does it sound like it's a really effective Chinese storytelling experience either.

Maria Repnikova: It's mixed. And it's also back to localization, on the Chinese side, domestically, there's a lot of localization. Who gets to perform these functions? Who runs them? It's so many different people. It just depends a lot on who runs the program on the experience you get. It's not systematic at all. Some of the ones that I studied, they came from Hunan Province. Hunan specifically initiated a lot of contact with Ethiopia, for instance, because Hunan has a lot of economic interest in Ethiopia.

They decided that they were going to host all these journalists, and when they go there, they go to local regional media, local media, and they see the province. But they're not really trained. Those people who are training them are not really trained to give those sorts of presentations. So a lot of it is just an amalgam of different facts. I call it “patchy soft power”—a bunch of different things pulled together and presented.

Many of these lectures, especially from universities and party state institutions, they have very limited time. They're generally overworked. They're not paid a lot to give those lectures. They're called upon. It's almost like a campaign style. Like, "Oh, hey, we have a delegation. You’ve got to give a lecture to them." They don't have hours to prep this. So they put together whatever they've got and try to be friendly and give a talk, and that's it. They don't have a lot of information about the visitors. They don't have time for learning. Who are the Ethiopian journalists? Who are these Nigerian journalists? Who are these Argentinian journalists? They have no idea. So in some ways, it's also the problem of the system because they're trying to do so much at such a large scale. A lot of different groups volunteer for different reasons, but they're not necessarily equipped to carry them out very well.

The views and opinions expressed are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the position of Georgetown University.

Outro

The U.S.-China Nexus is created, produced, and edited by me, Eleanor M. Albert. Our music is from Universal Production Music. Special thanks to Shimeng Tong, Tuoya Wulan, and Amy Vander Vliet. For more initiative programming, videos, and links to events, visit our website at uschinadialogue.georgetown.edu. And don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform.