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The campaign involves not just promoting pro-Beijing information, but discouraging negative reports. Censorship extends into social media, and is strengthened by Chinese platforms' suppression of content that authorities deem negative. For example, some U.S. citizens have recently had messages or entire accounts censored on the popular Chinese messaging app WeChat, owned by the firm Tencent.
"It's quite shocking to me that China's Great Firewall is coming to the U.S. in digital form," says George Shen, a technology consultant from Newton, Mass., who had his WeChat accounts banned last month. "It's a very stealthy, sophisticated censorship. ... They are filtering out your messages without even telling you," he says.
Bankrolled with billions of dollars of government funds, the strategy goes beyond establishing Chinese media entities abroad, to leasing or purchasing foreign news outlets and hiring foreign reporters. This tactic, known as "borrowing a boat to go out on the ocean" – or buying a boat, as the case may be – is aimed at offering a cloak of credibility.
Even as China expands its channels to American audiences, it is increasing restrictions on U.S. media in China. Last month, Chinese authorities blocked several more U.S. media outlets from the internet in China, including the websites of The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, and NBC News.
(Score: 5, Touché) by looorg on Monday July 08 2019, @06:51PM (2 children)
Isn't this what all the cool countries do? They try to make their own news outfits go global. They don't do it cause they believe you are missing out on the news, they do it to try and sell their point of view and preferences. Russia has several (RT.com is probably the most common), every European nation worth their salt has at least one big one that they translate into a bunch of languages beyond just letting google translate do it for them, American channels are all over the place, Al Jazeera and Al Al Arabiya are not there just cause they like to waste their oil money on something fun.
With that in mind one can wonder what took the Chinese so long.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Rupert Pupnick on Monday July 08 2019, @07:04PM (1 child)
Right, Voice of America has been around for as long as I can remember.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ikanreed on Monday July 08 2019, @07:43PM
And that's just the propaganda we publicly admit to. Back in 2006 the DOD released the "Information Operations Roadmap" which basically suggested the US was doing every single thing we accused Putin of doing vis-a-vis fake news sites in basically every country of strategic interest.