Since 2009, a group with a Chinese Communist Party background has arranged for more than 120 journalists from nearly 50 U.S. media outlets to travel to China as part of a series of efforts to deepen the Communist Party’s influence in the United States.
The group is the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF), a Hong Kong-based nonprofit organization led by billionaire Tung Chee-hwa, a Communist government official. Tung was formerly the Chief Executive of Hong Kong and is currently the vice chairman of the Chinese Communist Party’s political advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. The China-United States Exchange Foundation is registered as a “foreign agent” under the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
FARA’s U.S. registration documents show how the organization attempts to sway U.S. media coverage and shape U.S. public opinion.
In addition to providing free trips to China for U.S. journalists, the organization arranges trips to China for current and former members of Congress, panders to media executives of mainstream (U.S.) publications through private dinners, and aims to cultivate a cadre of independent “third-party supporters” in the United States to publish pro-CCP articles in the Western media.
These activities provide a glimpse of how the CCP is working to influence public opinion and sway elite opinion in Western democracies, with the goal of persuading governments to agree with CCP policies. In a speech last October, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the goal of the series of propaganda campaigns, which the Communist Party calls a “united front effort,” is to “get Americans to accept the Communist Party’s form of authoritarian rule. “.
By targeting foreign news outlets, the ruling group hopes to limit the U.S. media’s negative coverage of the Communist Party while enhancing coverage favorable to itself, Grant Newsham, a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy, a Washington-based think tank, said in an email.
Newsham said propaganda coverage of the Chinese Communist Party, such as “how many shiny skyscrapers there are in Shanghai and Shenzhen, how successfully China has fought the Communist virus (Wuhan virus, New Crown virus) under Communist rule, and how well China’s economy is recovering,” influences U.S. public and official perceptions and ultimately shapes U.S. official, business and financial policy toward China.
Intervention in the U.S. Media
In its 2011 Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) registration filing, BLJ Global, a public relations firm hired by the China-United States Exchange Foundation, publicized a multi-pronged plan to portray and promote the U.S.-China relationship in a positive way, centered on the idea that “China is an indispensable partner for the United States.
BLJ Global describes its work for the China-U.S. Exchange Foundation as focused on “developing and cultivating a community of ‘like-minded’ experts on U.S.-China relations”; “building relationships with influential media building relationships with influential media personalities who can provide a ‘positive and active’ voice in the discussion of U.S.-China relations”; “writing a positive and compelling message about U.S.-China exchanges and communicating it through Chairman Tung to those who are independent ‘third-party supporters’ and organizations as well as the media.”
The firm’s goal for 2010 is to place an average of three favorable CCP articles per week in various publications. The filing shows that in 2009, the PR firm “directly or indirectly influenced” 26 opinion pieces and 103 articles in various media outlets that cited scripture.
Some of the “positive” opinion pieces were to be written by independent “third-party” supporters, a team of experts, former politicians and influencers that BLJ sought to expand given their key role in “effectively communicating positive messages to the media, influential people and commentary experts, and the public.
Journalists’ Trip to China
Since 2009, BLJ has arranged free trips to China for 128 journalists from 48 U.S. media outlets, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Vox, NPR and NBC, according to documents submitted for review by the China-United States Exchange Foundation.
The trips to China, called “familiarization trips,” were designed to recruit “top U.S. journalists to travel to China, selected based on the effectiveness of their reporting and whether they were favorable to China (the Communist Party),” according to documents provided by the company in 2011.
“The purpose of these journalists’ visits to China is to provide a fresh, positive perspective on the achievements of the CCP and to emphasize the importance of direct U.S. engagement with the CCP,” the document said. The filing said.
The filing said that two trips to China in 2009, attended by journalists from seven publications, brought 28 (pro-CCP) articles.
Newsham said the China trips were similar to the Communist government’s ongoing policy of “visiting diplomacy” and “hospitality,” which has been “very applicable and effective” for government officials and businessmen in many countries. “. He added that this approach “is more effective for those who are inexperienced with the CCP.
Newsham said journalists may think they are immune to the influence exerted by the Communist regime. “But that’s hard to believe.”
Shifting perceptions
The Communist government views trips to China for foreign journalists, like those funded by the China-US Exchange Foundation, as important United Front programs through which Western journalists can learn about the “real China.
“The Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs, a Communist government-affiliated organization that regularly funds visits to China by foreign officials, also plays host to U.S. journalists sponsored by the China-United States Exchange Foundation.
The Institute’s then-president, Yang Wenchang, called the U.S. media visits a “very good attempt” at an internal meeting in 2009, noting that such work needs to be done over the long term and emphasizing the need to build a “unique brand.
In 2020, current president Wang Chao said in their internal publication that they had increased their efforts to invite foreign media to visit China so that these journalists could “experience China’s progress firsthand and use these media as a window for more foreigners to see a ‘real China.
The All-China Journalists Associatio, a Communist government-affiliated journalist exchange program that has been in place since 2010, boasted in a 2016 article published in the party press that the association’s organization of foreign media visits to China has played a key role in expanding China’s influence and friendship in the international community. The article said that such visits have allowed “the Chinese media to expand their influence in the international community and to promote friendship.
Such visits, the article said, allow “journalists who have never been to China and are deeply affected by biased U.S. reporting on China to engage in in-depth exchanges with Chinese [Communist Party] officials, experts and media counterparts about China’s development, which helps dispel many misconceptions or concerns.
The article also quotes a senior editor at the Huffington Post who said the association’s visit made him “realize how ignorant the U.S. media community is about China.
After a nine-day visit to China, a Pulitzer Prize-winning financial columnist for the Los Angeles Times said he found that the U.S. media’s understanding of China “never caught up with the pace of China’s development,” the newspaper said.
A Reuters reporter named “Patrick” said the visit changed his perception of the role of the Chinese (Communist Party) media.
Patrick said, according to Chinese (Communist) media reports, “Before I visited China, I thought the Chinese media served the goals of the class struggle, but after I came here, I found it a bit ridiculous to think that it was still stuck in the Cultural Revolution.” He called the media exchange “quite valuable.
In a 2011 article published by Xinhua News Agency, the Communist Party’s official media outlet, the China-US Exchange Foundation was the first to denounce “fabricated news” after two major protests against Communist rule in Tibet and Xinjiang in 2008 and 2009, respectively, which the Communist Party labeled as riots. condemned the Western media for “fabricating news”. It also arranged for those it recruited to “quickly arrange for live media coverage on …… to chill the human rights persecution and create public opinion in favor of the Chinese Communist Party.
Reuters declined to comment. Neither the Huffington Post nor the Los Angeles Times immediately responded to requests for comment.
Private Dinners
From 2009 to 2017, the China-US Exchange Foundation hosted a series of dinners and meetings with representatives from 35 media outlets, including Time magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The New York Times, the Associated Press and Reuters.
Dong frequently hosts dinners in Washington, D.C., and New York with executives and editors from top U.S. publications, and BLJ PR described these private dinners in a 2011 FARA filing as “an effective and invaluable channel for attracting support from journalism industry leaders.”
“While it is impossible to quantify, Mr. Tung’s influence in shaping and influencing the views of senior U.S. media executives has been significant, playing a role in being able to sway news coverage in major media outlets and influence the elite.” BLJ went on to add.
As vice chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), Dong presides over a key unit in the Communist Party’s united front system. The advisory body describes itself as a “patriotic united front” organization that “promotes socialist democracy.
Called a “magic bullet” by Communist Party leaders, the united front work involves thousands of groups inside and outside China that carry out political influence, pressure dissidents, gather intelligence, and facilitate technology transfers to China.
Tung, a Shanghai-born Hong Kong businessman who was the first chief executive of the Hong Kong SAR after the city was transferred from British to Chinese administration in 1997, resigned in 2005 before his second term expired. During his tenure, he oversaw the drafting of the controversial anti-subversion bill known as “Article 23,” which sparked the largest protests in Hong Kong until the massive pro-democracy protests in 2019.
He has consistently expressed loyalty to the Communist Party’s central government, most recently in December, when he expressed support for the National Security Law that Beijing imposed on Hong Kong last year. He also claimed that Beijing had not violated its commitments under the “one country, two systems” formula – a legal regulation that requires Hong Kong to retain the rights to autonomy and freedom that mainland China does not have – and that “in the past 22 years the Chinese Communist Party has not intervened in the affairs of Hong Kong.”
In a 2017 meeting with Communist Party leader Xi Jinping, Tung was praised by Xi for his “selfless dedication of time, energy, wisdom and resources to the country” and for “setting an example for future generations.”
The China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF) and BLJ Public Relations did not respond to requests for comment, and in a 2017 statement to Foreign Policy Publications, CUSEF denied any ties to the Communist regime. A spokesperson said at the time, “We do not aim to promote or support any one government.”
The lure of profit
Newsham noted that in addition to cultivating influence through personal connections, the CCP also exerts direct threats and influence over Western media outlets by controlling the scope of their operations in China and the amount of access they have to Chinese citizens.
“If you write something that’s too critical of the CCP …… you could be kicked out of China.” Newsham said, “So this has led to a degree of self-censorship – which inevitably ‘weakens’ the strength of reporting on China because it presents an inaccurate and untrue report. “
Foreign journalists in China have accused the Chinese government of “weaponizing” their visas to coerce foreign media into changing their reporting. Last February, the Chinese Communist Party revoked the visas of three Wall Street Journal reporters after the paper published an opinion piece headlined “China (CCP) Is Asia’s Real Sick Man” and refused to apologize for the article.
In 2013, Bloomberg pulled an investigative story about the relationship between Wang Jianlin, then China’s richest man, and top Communist Party leaders for fear of retaliation from Beijing, NPR reported last year. “It would certainly, you know, mess with the Chinese Communist Party would completely shut us down and kick us out of the country.” They could shut us down,” Matthew Winkler, Bloomberg’s editor-in-chief at the time, said in an October 2013 conference call.
This was revealed in a recording of the meeting obtained by the NPR news organization.
Unifying the U.S. Media
Newsham said Beijing has been “quite successful” in swaying U.S. media coverage.
“Let’s look back and see how long we had to wait to see a decent story on a sensitive issue for the Communist Party? Like a news report on the CCP’s centralized genocide in Xinjiang, or any report on the CCP’s harvesting of organs from Chinese people, usually persecuted Falun Gong practitioners?” He said he was referring to a spiritual group that has been severely persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party since 1999.
In addition to underreporting Beijing’s human rights abuses, the U.S. media often ignores the destructive role the CCP regime has played in domestic crises in the United States.
For example, in its coverage of the Communist virus pandemic, “the mainstream media refused to even consider the possibility that the virus had leaked from a Chinese laboratory. And they attacked the claim as ‘fake news,'” Newsham said.
He noted that the inference has only recently appeared to gain more acceptance in media reports. “But the media has wasted at least a year allowing the Chinese Communist Party to cover up this truth.”
News reports of the fentanyl crisis, which kills tens of thousands of Americans each year, also often fail to mention that the synthetic drugs come from China, Newsham noted. At the same time, he added, reports on China’s economy “rarely” mention that official Chinese (Communist Party) economic and financial statistics are highly unreliable or that China has no rule of law at all.
Newsham suggested that the issue of media interaction with the Communist government “ultimately boils down to a matter of principle. “Would these journalists and media executives have done something similar to the ‘apartheid-era’ government of South Africa? Probably not.”
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