“Telling the China story well” to the world has been a main task for the CCP’s propaganda ministry since Xi Jinping declared it a national priority at the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The ruling regime said that it is constantly trialing “new concepts, new scopes, and new narratives“ to influence global opinion, and that foreign faces and the voices of so-called “internet celebrities” have provided some utility as part of the CCP’s latest public relations weapons.
The CCP, as early as 1944, employed foreign faces to do the work of its propaganda ministry, having British national Michael Lindsay become one of the “founders” of the English-language broadcasting department of the CCP’s Xinhua News Agency in Yan’an—the CCP’s base before it took power, which is considered its “Revolutionary Holy Land” after it beat the Kuomintang and established the People’s Republic of China.
