China's International “50 Cents Army” - An Elaborate Operation to Spread Propaganda Worldwide
Hello, everyone, welcome to “Inconvenient Truths”. I am your host Jennifer Zeng.
Maybe you’ve heard about the word “Wumao '', or 50 cent army. It refers to people who are hired by the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP, to post online comments to manipulate public opinion and disseminate disinformation for the CCP. In the early days, they got paid 50 cents for each post. That’s why they are called Wumao, or 50 cent army. But you may not know that now there are quite a lot foreign Wumao, professional ones, who are willingly helping the CCP to brainwash people in a more advanced and sophisticated way. Who are they, what do they do, and why do they matter? Today I’d like to talk about this.
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Now, let’s move to our topic today.
Use Foreign Mouths to “Tell the China Story Well”
First of all, we need to understand that since the CCP’s 18th National Congress in 2012-that was the year when Xi Jinping became the head of the CCP-so since that time, “telling the China story well” to the international world has been a main task for the CCP’s propaganda ministry. "New concepts, new scope, and new narratives" have been constantly tried out; and foreign faces, foreign mouths of “internet celebrities” are the latest weapons.
As early as seventy-seven years ago, in1944, Michael Lindsay, a British national, became one of the “founders” of the English-language broadcasting department of the CCP's Xinhua News Agency in Yan’an. Yan’an was the CCP’s base before it took power, and the “Revolutionary Holy Land” of the CCP after it defeated the Kuomintang and established the People’s Republic of China.
On June 19, Xinhua featured Lindsay in an article titled “Foreign friends reflect on CCP's success over the past century”, and quoted his son Jim Lindsay as saying “China plays an important role in world affairs. Other big countries must cooperate with China to solve global problems such as climate change, biodiversity conservation and pandemics. ”
Following Michael Lindsay’s footprints, there are more British nationals singing the praises of the CCP through Chinese video sharing sites, as well as YouTube, regardless of the fact that YouTube is blocked in China.
For example, Barrie Jones, an English teacher in China, runs a YouTube channel and a website, both are called “Best China Info”. At the “about us ”page of his website, the top message is “Is China safe? Yes! China is not your enemy!"
This message was posted on March 11 last year, when China was hit very hard by the CCP virus pandemic, and when almost the entire nation was still under lockdown. It was also the day when the World Health Organization finally admitted that the CCP virus was a pandemic.
In a video titled “How China ISN'T crushing Uyghurs in Xinjiang”, Jones defended the CCP and said there is no proof that over 1 million people in Xinjiang have been put into the camps.
Underneath this video there are a lot of comments in Chinese language, thanking him for telling the “truth” about Xinjiang.
This video is so far the most watched one on his channel.
Jones claimed in a video that he "worked for a newspaper in England… Britain's largest daily circulation newspaper for six years”, but BBC said it found no evidence to support this claim.
Despite this, Jones was referred to as a “former British journalist” by some of the CCP’s media publications. And his video was played at the CCP’s foreign ministry’s daily briefing as evidence to refute the BBC’s report about Xinjiang’s human rights abuses, and to support the CCP’s claim that “BBC is not trusted even in the UK”.
In addition to his own videos, Jones also posts videos from CCP’s mouthpiece CGTN ( China Global Television Network)’s to his channel , such as his interview with CGTN’s host Liu Xin, who became very famous when she had a debate with FOX Business’ host Trish Regan on trade and intellectual property in May 2019, during the peak of the trade war between the US and China.
Jones also reposted a number of videos from the CCP backed DotDotNews in his “featured video” section, such as this one titled "YouTube Influencers: US sets up million-dollar fund for anti-China propaganda".
Although this video received only 108 views since its release more than 46 days ago, on June 3, Jones and other three foreigners were referred to as “YouTube Influencers” when they talked about how “US sets up million-dollar fund for anti-China propaganda”.
Another British “influencer” is Shaun Gibson, who went to China in 2017 to study, and is a contracted singer with Beijing Yi Qing Music & Culture Co. He is currently involved in CGTN's Music Voyage video series, which is aimed at whitewashing China through the participation of foreign musicians, especially active vlogging musicians.
Before the Times published a report “China state TV channel CGTN enlists UK student influencers”, it contacted Gibson for comment, suggesting that Gibson was involved in a major CCP outreach effort. (P16) Gibson posted a video on his Chinese social media platform Weibo account , as well as his YouTube account, and argued that he just liked music. He also talked about how he had responded to The Times.
Although his video on Weibo only received about 3800 views and 125 likes, and about 530 views on YouTube in one month, CGTN has done a program entitled “Why Does the British Media Target the Media Warriors?” and included Gibson’s video in that program as “evidence” to refute the Times.
That video has received more than 41K views in 21 days.
It is possible that Gibson indeed does like Chinese culture and Chinese music, but the videos he has been involved in are not just about that.
For example, the video “Song of Maonan”, which he uploaded to Weibo and his another video sharing site Bilibili, praises the CCP’s achievement of “poverty lifting” in the Maonan region in Guangxi province in China.
“Poverty lifting” has always been one of the main political achievements of the CCP.
When the song was officially launched on March 27, the CCP’s important mouthpiece China Daily published a special report, which announced in a very excited tone: “The International Propaganda Documentary ‘Song of Maonan’ Starts Today on CGTN. See You there, Rain or Shine!”
The report says, Song of Maonan is "an experiential foreign propaganda documentary" that "speaks through the mouth [of a foreigner]" and “uses the role of ‘a foreign new media blogger in China’ to spread at home and abroad the message of the new era of China in the eyes of a foreigner. ”
The CCP Enlists Foreign Influencers to Create International Propaganda Content
Apart from these vloggers, the CCP also includes foreign influencers in their own international propaganda programs.
For example, “A Date with China" is a program organized by China Daily. It invites a large number of foreign internet celebrities and vloggers to create content that can "tell the China story well", as requested by Xi Jinping.
One of the themes of the event was "On Road to Prosperity”. Again, this is to boast about the CCP’s achievement in leading people to “prosperity.”
“A Date with China” has made a lot of videos about different parts of China so far, including two episodes of foreigners sharing impressions of Xinjiang.
In the first episode, Ian Goodrum , a member of the Communist Party of the US, says to the audience that people in Xinjiang are “taking their destiny in their own hands”, and the reports of Xinjiang’s genocide are “nonsense”.
Also in this video, Smirnova Anzelika from Latvia is referred to as an “internet celebrity”. However, in an article by the CCP's Ministry of Commerce last August, she was referred to as CCTV (China Central Television)’s special host.
The article says, on August 19, 2020, “Shen Xiaokai, Economic and Commercial Counsellor of the Embassy in Latvia, together with Smirnova Anzelika, a special presenter of CCTV, went to Riga paint and coating factory to shoot a feature film.”
The article also says that “Counsellor Shen Xiaokai said that Latvian enterprises are welcome to actively participate in the ‘Belt and Road’ initiative, to ride on the fast train of China's economic development, and to achieve mutual benefit and win-win with Chinese partners.”
So you see, the CCP is shamelessly lying again, packaging its own employee as an “internet celebrity”.
Who Is Paying the Bills?
A question to ask is: who is paying the bills for making such videos?
In a video, British YouTuber Oli Barrett says that organizations such as China Radio International pay for airfare, lodging and meals to use his videos for commentary in the relevant media, but there is no contractual relationship.
In the current Chinese way of thinking, the subtext of this is: the CCP provides food, accommodation and transportation for Barrett to travel for free, expecting that his video content will meet the requirements of the CCP.
British man Jason Lightfoot is also a global stringer enlisted by the CGTN.
He did a 6 minute video for CGTN to refute western media’s report as “bullshit stories”.
He recently appeared in a CGTN video “Foreign vloggers explore in Hainan”, and is "grateful to CGTN” for giving him the experience to explore Hainan". Another American Vlogger Matthew Galat said that CGTN staff and expat vloggers "enjoyed working together, producing livestreams and videos as a team".
On June 25, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) released a report “The China Story: Reshaping the World's Media”.
The report says one of the ways the CCP influences foreign journalists is by inviting them to travel to China.
Similar propaganda videos are also being produced by local CCP governments. For example, the Shanghai Municipal Government Press Office and the Xinmin Evening News interviewed 100 foreigners living in Shanghai and filmed the video series "Shanghai Through Our Eyes" as a tribute to the 100th anniversary of the CCP.
Also as a tribute to the CCP, the International Department of Xinhua News Agency invited foreigners to participate in the documentary "My Friend is a Party Member" to praise the CCP through the mouths of foreigners.
Why Foreigners?
Maybe you will say, who cares about what these foreign Wumaos say? Who can they brainwash and who would listen?
Well, Associate Professor Wu Changchang from the School of Communication of East China Normal University said, these videos make Chinese viewers feel that Chinese culture is increasingly accepted and recognized by ordinary foreigners, and this psychology creates an effect that strengthens the Chinese viewers’ patriotism and nationalism.
Professor You Jie of China Media University said, the biggest advantage of having foreigners tell China stories is “there are no language or facial barriers” for foreigners. Just as the Chinese are more receptive to the Western world as described by the Chinese, foreigners telling Chinese stories are also more acceptable to foreign audiences, as the audiences will not feel that it is just some Chinese people trying to sing the praises of China.
Well, so these foreign Wumaos do matter, right? Inside China, they can very effectively help the CCP to brainwash the Chinese people, as many Chinese people, may I say, do have the mentality that the Western societies are better. They have more advanced science, technology, social systems and culture, etc. So if foreigners say something about China, that is not only something interesting, but also worth listening to.
As they cannot differentiate China from the CCP, when they hear foreigners praising China, they will subconsciously think that this means that the CCP has done a good job, otherwise these foreigners wouldn’t have thought so highly of China, etc.
So, these foreign Wumao can give the CCP what it lacks most: the legitimacy to rule the country.
Then how about outside China? Will people in the West really believe these Western Wumao?
This I don’t know, your guys have to tell me.
But let me tell you this, in the past 40 years, the mainstream view in the West about the CCP, or China, has been, if we help China to become rich first, and to develop a middle class inside China, after China becomes rich, these middle class people will automatically demand for freedom and democracy, and then a color revolution will happen inside China, and China will adopt democracy like us peacefully, without us doing anything, etc.
This is what the politicians, think tanks and China experts have been saying all these years, right? Where did this saying come from in the first place? Let me tell you, it came from the CCP. After the CCP successfully instilled this view into the brains of so many westerners, they must have been very, very happy.
So, don’t think people in the West won’t be brainwashed by the CCP. They already did it so successfully in the past 100 years. Otherwise, the CCP would have been gone a long time ago.
OK, that's all I’d like to say for today. Before I respond to comments and questions, please make sure you subscribe to and share my channel.
7/19/2021*
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