How China Shapes Our Media

Over the last decade, the CCP has embarked on a global campaign to influence international media through censorship, propaganda, and discretely inserted paid content. Media in the United States have been particularly targeted. According to Sarah Cook, China Research Director at Freedom House, the campaign has three primary objectives: (1) to promote a positive image of the CCP’s regime; (2) to encourage investment in China; (3) to demonize and suppress anti-CCP voices.

Over the last decade, the CCP has embarked on a global campaign to influence international media through censorship, propaganda, and discretely inserted paid content. Media in the United States have been particularly targeted. According to Sarah Cook, China Research Director at Freedom House, the campaign has three primary objectives: (1) to promote a positive image of the CCP’s regime; (2) to encourage investment in China; (3) to demonize and suppress anti-CCP voices. 

Here are just a few of the ways the CCP distributes content: Radio stations carry CCP programs; the CCP’s China Daily newspaper boxes appear on the streets of major cities; the CCP’s China Global Television Network America is also broadcast in most major cities, and “China Watch” paid content inserts have been carried in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, and other major newspapers. The CCP also uses access to the China market as a way of enforcing U.S. media to self-censors; those who don’t play along often find their websites blocked in China. Significant financial ties between the CCP and many U.S. media outlets also present a serious conflict of interest when reporting on China. Majority owners of the following media outlets have multi-million dollar (or in some cases, billion dollar) financial interests with the CCP: New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC/NBC, ABC, and Bloomberg. 

What misleads many people is the subtle nature of the CCP’s infiltration. On top of that, it is usually portrayed as something with utopian goals. However, it never turns out that way.

It has now gotten to the point where there are noticeable parallels between the U.S. mainstream media and the media in China. The U.S. mainstream media is now trying to make people feel guilt-ridden about America’s dignity and their success rather than embracing it and emphasizing the idea that America is in a downward spiral. This is the same kind of propaganda that both the Soviet Union and the CCP has promoted.

The political correctness enforced by the mainstream media nowadays as well as the one sided political reporting and censorship of those whose opinions are not deemed worthy are all key ingredients of the type of press that occurs in communist countries.