The South China Morning Post
One of Hong Kong’s oldest newspapers, the South China Morning Post was founded in 1903 and for years was considered by many to be the city’s “newspaper of record.” Since its founding, the newspaper has changed ownership several times, with media tycoon Rupert Murdock owning it from 1986 to 1993.The newspaper conveyed a practical and independent editorial line for decades until Alibaba Group’s Jack Ma acquired it in 2016. Mr. Ma nudged the paper in the direction of becoming a promoter of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) soft power abroad, as noted by The New York Times in 2018. That effort has become even more pronounced recently. For his efforts, Mr. Ma was “disappeared” for several months in 2021—probably for “ideological impurity” reasons or the CCP’s desire to “share in his wealth”—and has since seen his commercial empire reorganized out from under him.
Other phrases for “promoting soft power” that perhaps better convey its true meaning include “propagandizing” and “information warfare.”
Tell China’s Story Well
The SCMP article cited above explains that communist leader Xi Jinping initiated China’s mass propaganda effort to “tell China’s story well” soon after he assumed power in 2012. Directives to government-run and CCP-influenced media included convincing managers and editors “to have confidence in their own culture, history, ideology and political system so that an international audience can be told that China’s approach is better than the West’s on many issues.” This is another tall order, given the CCP’s sordid past of persecution, genocide, starvation, and death as a result of failed policies since 1949.Another excuse offered by the SCMP is that “even if Chinese officials or state media are telling the truth, they are often perceived by outsiders as whitewashing.” Why might that be? Perhaps because history has taught that the infrequency of real truth from communist mouthpieces engenders automatic skepticism of any pro-China propaganda.
Concluding Thoughts
Civilized countries don’t have to resort to government propaganda to “tell their stories.” When was the last time the UK, France, Germany, or Norway (or any other Western country) conducted a similar government-funded (or coerced) long-term information operation? Could it be that those countries actually have generally free and open media that can deviate from the narratives of their respective governments? Could it be that the basic individual freedoms available to citizens and visitors alike remove the need for external-facing information operations because people can form their own judgments without government propaganda?Thanks to the CCP, Chinese media are constrained to ignore and/or blatantly spin issues that ultimately undermine their own credibility, including the ongoing cultural genocide against Tibetans and Uyghurs, the hiding of medical information about COVID-19 and its origins while making money off selling medical supplies and gratitude for giving supplies and vaccines to third world countries, the aforementioned intimidation of other countries in disputed near-abroad waters and lands, the explanations of Belt and Road Initiative debt traps, and the generally uncivilized behavior evinced by the coercion of overseas Chinese by the United Front Work Department and Chinese police bureaus abroad.
“Telling China’s story,” according to Xi Jinping’s wishes, may be an impossible task for the likes of the South China Morning Post. The history and behavior of the Chinese Communist Party and Xi’s own public pronouncements make it so.
