I’ve written all of this because friends urged me to offer some reflections on the year gone by and jot down a few thoughts for the upcoming year. But I didn’t want to waste my time looking up data points. Anyway, I don’t see that there was all...
For the past few years, Uyghur and other young members of ethnic minority groups from Xinjiang have been creating videos like Anniguli’s in which they appear to display details of their personal lives while simultaneously evincing support for the...
In the run-up to the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic on October 1, China’s television regulator has mandated that all television channels only air patriotic shows. The ban might be short-lived, but it has kept the news in the headlines...
Mainland Chinese flood the Internet with messages calling protesters in Hong Kong “useless youth.” They send obscene messages and death threats to supporters of the Hong Kong demonstrations. But reports on episodes like this, while important, are...
China’s Communist Party made moves last month to solidify and formalize its (already substantial) control over the country’s media. China’s main state-run broadcasters are to be consolidated into a massive new “Voice of China” under the...
China has approved the creation of one of the world’s largest propaganda machines as it looks to improve its global image, according to a person familiar with the matter.
There’s been no joking as the apologies to China have come thick and fast in recent weeks, issued not by teenage singers but by some of the largest and richest multinational corporations in the world—the German luxury car manufacturer Daimler,...
China is distributing 300,000 television sets to some of its poorest regions as Beijing seeks to spread its propaganda into some of the country's most hard to reach households.
The state will boost the box office of these propaganda movies with group sales, discounted tickets and other financial backing.
In January of last year, around the time of the presidential inauguration, as jitters about the relationship between Donald Trump and China mounted, I regularly joined the mob of reporters at the Chinese foreign ministry’s daily briefings in...
His frazzled face, rosy cheeks and icy hair lit up the internet. Now Wang Fuman, the 8-year-old Chinese student known as Frost Boy, is taking on a new role: propaganda star.
China’s former top internet regulator and censor is being investigated by the ruling Communist Party’s anti-corruption arm, the agency said Tuesday.
A report to the U.S. Congress released on Wednesday accused Chinese state media entities of involvement in spying and propaganda and said their staff in the United States should be required to register as foreign agents.
7 Sins of India
The success of the two-hour film, Wolf Warrior 2, featuring a red-tinged Rambo named Leng Feng, is being seen in China as a pointer to the national mood after almost five years under Xi Jinping, the president. Mr. Xi has promoted a spirit of...
Commissioned by the government to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Liberation Army, China’s latest propaganda film was meant to be a patriotic tale about the young soldiers who served their country in its earliest...
A patriotic Chinese action film whose tagline is “whoever offends China will be hunted down wherever they are” is poised to become the country’s highest grossing film to date.
It took the StarTimes satellite TV salesman about 30 minutes to install a pipeline for Chinese propaganda into Francis Gitonga’s squat, cinder-block home here in southern Kenya, near Africa’s Great Rift Valley.
A Communist Party mouthpiece is crowing that malfunctioning U.S. leadership is making China “great again” on the eve of highly anticipated bilateral trade talks between the two countries.
Like a high-flying space robot shot out of the sky, the Transformers film franchise has crash-landed in China—singeing a promising Hollywood business model in the process.
Chinese cinemas have been ordered to play one of four government-issued videos before every movie screening.
It’ll be free. It’ll be uniquely Chinese. It’ll be an online encyclopedia to rival Wikipedia — but without the participation of the public. And don’t expect entries on “Tiananmen Square 1989” or “Falun Gong spiritual group” to come up in your...
Xi is set to start his second five-year term with the party congress meeting this fall. In the past few months, China’s propaganda machines have been busy churning out videos crafting his personal image.
There are more such tactics being adopted this year.
With The Great Wall, a classic army vs. monsters tale, director Zhang Yimou has brought America the most expensive Chinese film ever created. The movie may be backed by a Hollywood studio and it may star no less an American icon than...
As larger numbers of Chinese students study abroad, greater efforts are being made to ensure they do not return with new-found opposition to the Communist Party
The Chinese media presence across Africa has expanded dramatically over the past ten years, as Beijing has...
Recent court rulings rapping people questioning the party-state’s tales about war heroes reflect leaders’ insecurity over their rule
Like many of Beijing’s edicts, it is being criticized as a blatant piece of propaganda
It has been a difficult year for many Western democracies — and China is rubbing it in.
This type of propaganda gives license to ordinary people to indulge their most primitive prejudices.
Every evening, as regular and obstreperous as a rooster, the People’s Liberation Army (P.L.A.) soldiers sing from the barracks outside my Beijing home, a chorus of teenage troops reminding the neighborhood when it’s dinner time:...
The video will play from July 23rd to August 3rd.
China has taken its fight with the Philippines over who owns territory in the South China Sea to a whole new arena: Times Square. The state-run Xinhua announced Tuesday that a 3 minute long publicity video premiered on the Square’s “China Screen...
It says China has “terrible problems” but is peace-loving and affluent.
Brexit is concrete evidence that democratic decision-making can lead to catastrophic results.
They quickly attracted considerable mockery such as "go home State Council Information Office, you're drunk."
Entitled "Marx is a post-90"—China's version of a millennial—the song extols the communist godfather's supposed coolness.
Internet mercenaries are paid by the government to spread propaganda messages online.
They are the most hated group in Chinese cyberspace. They are, to hear their ideological opponents tell it, “fiercely ignorant,” keen to “insert themselves in everything,” and preen as if they were “spokesmen for the country.”...
Music from the turbulent period of the Cultural Revolution was featured prominently at event at the Great Hall of the People.
Propaganda officials warn state media off using moniker after push to portray leader as man of the people appears to backfire.
China is marking National Security Education Day with a poster warning young female government workers about dating handsome foreigners.
People's Liberation Army newspaper put forth Zootopia’s swapping of the roles of predator and prey as proof of its agitprop.
How foreign journalists report on the China-Africa story is often determined by the national origin of their news organization. While there are no doubt exceptions, the U.S. news media frequently frame China as the neo-colonial...
It’s still questionable, however, how much of their political message actually gets through.
What's the world's largest propaganda organ to do when it can't get young Chinese to pay attention to the latest Communist Party slogans?
By some accounts, Chinese Presdient Xi Jinping is the most powerful leader the country has had since Mao Zedong. One arrow in his quiver that echoes Mao’s armory is Xi’s embrace of popular song, listened to these days not on the radio or over a...
Cringeworthy poems, viral videos and animated raps—some of the tools President Xi uses in guiding media coverage.
Trumpets sound and trombones blare as a warhead launches. Intercontinental ballistic missiles mounted on trucks parade down the center of a boulevard crowded with bystanders. “We are the glorious Rocket Force,” a mixed choir sings...
The directive calls for “patriotic education” to suffuse each stage and aspect of schooling.
On December 6, the Islamic State released a slick...
“It was like watching propaganda.”
Chinese bloggers label 45-part drama called Liangjiahe as latest homage to omnipotent ‘Big Daddy Xi’.
An Australian journalist was misquoted as saying the people of Tibet had a “wonderful life.”
The Chinese hostility to America is first and foremost the result of government propaganda.
Xi’s reversal of guiding principles guiding Chinese politics post-Mao signals “the closing of the Chinese mind.”
