A media war has recently broken out between the feuding UK and China. Ofcom revoked China Global Television Network’s (CGTN) license to broadcast in the UK earlier this month, and the Chinese government immediately retaliated by banning the BBC from broadcasting in China. Germany also halted CGTN’s broadcasts in Germany. A back-and-forth match led to the hidden mirror behind CGTN.
CGTN was established on December 31, 2016, under CCTV, under the leadership of the Ministry of Propaganda, and is the main force behind the CCP’s grand foreign propaganda strategy. The Great Foreign Propaganda Strategy took shape during the Hu Wen era. In order to expand China’s soft power and increase its voice in the international arena, the government at the Time invested heavily in developing the news market in North America and Europe, with the intention of establishing a global news television network comparable to CNN and surpassing it. In the heyday of big foreign propaganda, Xinhua, the front man of the big foreign propaganda strategy, monopolized the advertising high ground in Times Square in Manhattan, New York, overlooking the global top 500. It was a strange IMAGE: a government mouthpiece spent tens of millions of dollars of huge government money to buy several years of Times Square high point advertising, compared to the world’s mega private companies, and didn’t feel a bit out of place itself. It’s a bit ridiculous.
But it must be admitted that the Communist Party’s big foreign propaganda effort did make a splash overseas in the last few years, with CGTN stations in North America, Europe and Africa, distributing programs produced and edited in Beijing to the rest of the world through CGTN. When Xi Jinping came to power, he saw a great opportunity to promote his China Dream China model. For this reason, Xi Jinping sent a congratulatory letter to CGTN on the occasion of its launch, asking CGTN to firmly assert its cultural confidence, tell the Chinese story with a distinct Chinese perspective, spread the Chinese voice, and let the world know a three-dimensional and colorful China, and so on. Xi Jinping’s congratulatory letter shows the importance that the Beijing government attaches to CGTN.
Xi Jinping certainly did not shy away from saying that CGTN is a 100% government mouthpiece, just like the Party media, China News Agency and CCTV. The “China perspective” he speaks of is the Chinese government’s perspective, the “China story” is a story approved by the Chinese government, and the “China voice” is the voice the Chinese government allows to be heard. This has become the norm in China, and even though the mainland public resents it, there is nothing they can do about it. But in the West, which advocates freedom of the press, this is a major taboo. First of all, the United States is no longer willing to tolerate the traitors on its own doorstep and let the Communist Party media run amok. When the U.S. asked Xinhua and CGTN to register as foreign agents under their status two years ago, CGTN argued that it did not conduct political activities in the U.S., but dutifully registered anyway.
Now it’s Britain and Germany’s turn to lash out. The Beijing government had high hopes for London, believing that if it could win Britain, it could win Europe, so CGTN set up its headquarters in London, hoping to spread its Chinese story and voice across Europe, with London as its center. In the first two years, the British and Chinese media were controversial, but by and large the relationship was maintained. But in fact, there were signs that Britain was going to flip-flop with China long ago. Ofcom did several investigations into CGTN’s news coverage and found that CGTN’s licensees had no control over its services and editorial policies, and that its news programs were not impartial or neutral and only reflected the Chinese government’s position. The anti-revision coverage in Hong Kong is one such example: CGTN only reported the Beijing government’s position without mentioning why the protesters were demonstrating. With this flip-flop, the UK has directly singled out CGTN as being controlled by the Chinese Communist Party and in violation of UK broadcasting regulations.
Germany suspended CGTN for the same reason. With the revocation of CGTN by Ofcom in the UK, the legal basis for CGTN to broadcast in Germany ceased to exist. German law requires foreign news organizations to comply with a rule of distance from their government in order to obtain broadcasting rights in Germany. Moreover, according to Deutsche Welle, CGTN, as a national media organization, has little hope of getting a re-airing license in Germany.
In short, the reason why the CCP’s big foreign propaganda was once a fish out of water overseas was that the Chinese government behind it provided it with ample financial resources and the CCP provided ideological guidance and censorship; at the time, the Western world was uncomfortable with this but didn’t care much. Now it’s different. The CCP’s big foreign propaganda today is kicking the can down the road in the U.S., Britain and Germany, also because of the outrageous role of the man behind the hidden mirror, who both provides government funding and acts as the CCP’s ideological mentor and censor. The West has finally woken up to the outrageous practices of the Chinese Communist Party.
It is really its success and its failure.
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