Source: China Media Project (7/24/24)
Xi’s Ten-Year Bid to Remake China’s Media
Outside China, the idea of “media convergence,” the joining together of communication technologies on handheld devices, is now so much a way of life that few even talk about it. But for China’s leadership it is a concept with era-defining significance — having far-reaching consequences for the current and future exercise of power.
By David Bandurski

Xi Jinping opens the Chengdu Universiade in 2023. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

In recent years, the buzzword “media convergence,” or meiti ronghe (媒体融合), has abounded in official documents about public opinion and ideology in China. What does this term mean? And why is it important in a Chinese political context? The quick answer — it is about remaking information controls for the 21st century, and building a media system that is innovative, influential and serves the needs of the ruling party.

The idea of “media convergence” took off in official circles in China almost exactly 10 years ago as Xi Jinping sought to recast “mainstream media” (主流媒体) — referring narrowly in China’s political context to large CCP-controlled media groups, such as central and provincial daily newspapers and broadcasters — into modern communication behemoths for rapidly changing global media landscape. More insistently even than his predecessors, Xi believed it was crucial for the Party to maintain social and political control by seizing and shaping public opinion. To accomplish this in the face of 21st century communication technologies, built on 4G and eventually 5G mobile networks, the Party’s trusted “mainstream” media had to reinvent themselves while remaining loyal servants of the CCP agenda. Continue reading Xi’s ten-year bid to remake China’s media →

Good observations in this article. But somebody should write about the obvious, glaring parallels with Nazi tourism.

Just like China, the Nazis also organized foreigners to come and “see with their own eyes” to counter the accusations that the Nazis were doing anything wrong.

And huge numbers of foreign tourists did go to Goebbels Germany, which was similarly full of sightseeing spots, rich in cultural history, and helpful Nazis.

I wasn’t aware of just how striking these parallels are, but there are some outstanding books on this, such as Seeing Hitler’s Germany: Tourism in the Third Reich, by Kristin Semmens (2005), and Travelers in the Third Reich: The Rise of Fascism 1919-1945, by Julia Boyd (2018) which lay out in great detail how the Nazis purposefully organized the tourism, to cover up their crimes by luring in foreigners to play the fool, just like in China now — where we now see lots of Americans marveling about how great is the food, and the bridges and the Autobahns, etcetera.

On X/Twitter, all the usual Chinese “diplomats” as well as the armies of propaganda officers under cover have all be directed to talk about tourists and vloggers almost more than they mention the Olympics.

Magnus Fiskesjö <nf42@cornell.edu>

Source: NYT (7/31/24)
Why Chinese Propaganda Loves Foreign Travel Bloggers
Videos by influencers documenting their trips have been widely promoted on Chinese media — if they tell a certain story.
By Vivian Wang, Reporting from Beijing

Spend some time browsing YouTube or Instagram and you might come across a growing new genre: China travel vlogs.

There’s the American who made a four-hour “vlogumentary” about eating dumplings in Shanghai. There’s the German traveler marveling at how quickly China’s bullet trains accelerate. There’s a British couple admiring colorful traditional clothing in the far western region of Xinjiang. All have hundreds of thousands of views.

The videos are even more popular on Chinese social media. YouTube and Instagram are banned in China, but Chinese users have found ways to reshare them to Chinese sites, to avid followings. The bloggers have been interviewed by Chinese state media and their experiences promoted with trending hashtags such as “Foreign tourists have become our internet spokespeople.”

The emergence of these videos reflects the return of foreign travelers to China after the country isolated itself for three years during the Covid pandemic. The government has introduced a slew of visa-free policies to attract more tourists. Travel bloggers have leaped at the chance to see a country to which they previously had limited access.

But for China, the videos do more than help stimulate its economy. They are a chance for Beijing to hit back at what it calls an anti-China narrative in the West. China in recent years has encouraged locals to treat foreigners as potential spies; expanded its surveillance state; and expelled or arrested journalists at Chinese and foreign media outlets. But it points to the carefree travel videos as proof — from Westerners — that criticisms about those issues are manufactured. Continue reading Why Chinese propaganda loves foreign travel bloggers →