China’s shrinking Radio Landscape
There are facts about China’s international broadcasting, and there are various options to interpret the changes it is undergoing. The China Media Project (CMP), once based in Hong Kong, now in Taiwan, sees a trend in China to "streamline" domestic media, namely radio and television channels, on classic terrestial or satellite frequencies.
While covering the trend, CMP also link to an earlier report funded by the Swedish Psychological Defence Agency.
The latter report focuses on the transformation of Chinese "external propaganda" from the past century into that of this early century, something that may be called "telling China’s story well" or (the same thing under a different name) an international "public opinion struggle". Either way, it comes as regionally decentralized, but politically as centrally controlled as ever.
Some trends in international and domestic mediawork are universal: a shift from linear broadcasting, classically on terrestrial frequencies, to media work that integrates broadcasting (frequently online), podcasting, use of video platforms, plus social media such as X, Bluesky, Tiktok, or Wechat.
Even though this kind of media integration is a familiar trend in Western countries, too,
[m]uch of the West’s understanding of China’s external propaganda apparatus remains anchored to an outdated model from the era of what scholars and ers of PRC communication and disinformation have termed “mega external propaganda” (大外宣), or da waixuan — essentially the structure of central staterun media such as Xinhua News Agency, China Daily, and CGTN that was bolstered from the late 2000s under Hu Jintao, and which has been amplified with mixed success through global social media platforms.
In fact, it would seem that Chinese external propaganda has been turned into sort of a rabbithole, both locally "decentralized" and in terms of platform variety, where Peking’s "struggle" may remain unnoticed by media watchers (except for the actual target groups). Can BBC Monitoring keep pace?
My first impression after the end of China Radio International (as we know it) was that Chinese external propaganda had abandoned the West as a bunch of lost souls. That was probably a too radiocentric view. The CMP reports draw up a different picture – after all, the decline of traditional radio broadcasting isn’t limited to China’s external propaganda, but includes domestic media, too.
Radio workers in Europe, possibly the Americas and parts of Oceania, and obviously in China, see the same trend at work. Wide ranges of the audience everyhwere, especially the younger, adopt new "media consumption" habits from the start.
All the same, China’s efforts – this is my impression, and not a statistic! – do seem to shift, to some extent, from Western audiences to South East Asian, East Asian, Central Asian and African ones.
Western countries remain target areas for China’s opinion struggle, but developing countries may provide audiences with better returns, i. e. appreciation rates. From China’s perspective, mediaworking on Africa’s public opinion looks more rewarding than mediaworking on car-making countries like Germany.
After all, the common trend in China and the West is no coincidence. It reflects converging technological levels and levels of consumption. These economies aren’t as complementary as they used to be, and sharper economic competition may have led to less openness for China’s propaganda in places like Europe.
#broadcasting #China #ChinaRadioInternational #domesticRadio #Europe #foreignRadio #propaganda #softPower
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