Faithfully Implementing Propaganda: Chinese State Media Inserts in Overseas Media
A UHRP Insights column by Dr. Henryk Szadziewski, Director of Research; Peter Irwin, Associate Director for Research and Advocacy; and Ben Carrdus, Senior Researcher at the Uyghur Human Rights Project
Eight years after his visit to China’s Xinjiang region in 2014, Chinese President Xi Jinping made a second trip to the northwest region and stressed efforts to fully and faithfully implement the policies of the Communist Party of China (CPC) for the governance of Xinjiang in the new era, highlighting social stability and lasting security as the overarching goal and the region’s significant role in building the Belt and Road Initiative.
Reading the previous paragraph, you’d be right to think it came from the webpages of the Global Times, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) controlled and nationalistic tabloid. Yet this slice of Chinese state propaganda also appears on the webpages of Las Vegas CBS affiliate KLAS-TV. It’s not only KLAS-TV that hosts Global Times content, but also broadcast affiliates in Washington, DC, Sacramento, CA, Columbus, OH, Austin, TX, and elsewhere in the US.
And it’s not only broadcast media sharing Chinese state narratives. US print and digital media continue to include content from China Daily, an English language newspaper owned by the CCP’s Publicity Department. Although the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and the Telegraph discontinued their relationships with China Daily in recent years, many prominent publications continue to carry its content in the form of “China Watch” inserts, including the LA Times, Financial Times, and Time Magazine.
Whether CBS, Fox, or NBC, Nexstar Media Group owns the above broadcast affiliates carrying Global Times content. Nexstar owns 200 TV stations “reaching 116 markets or more than 70% of all U.S. television households.” In sum, it is the largest owner of TV stations in the US. Nexstar TV stations source articles through an agreement with PR Newswire, which distributes content for a fee for outlets such as the Global Times. PR Newswire, headquartered in Chicago, is owned by Cision, a public relations and earned media company with several other services. On its website, PR Newswire offers “Guaranteed Paid Placement of Sponsored Content.” China Daily pays hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to insert their content into major print media, according to its own Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) disclosures.
The problem with this placement of Chinese state propaganda in the US media, particularly those stories focused on East Turkistan, is that there is an ongoing genocide in the region. In the midst of reports on imprisonment, forced labor, and cultural destruction, China is attempting to shift the narrative on its policies targeting East Turkistan. Under the pretext of counterterrorism, the Chinese state interned at least a million Uyghurs for reeducation in facilities where torture, rape, and deaths occurred. Given this record, it’s no surprise that China is ready to tell the world a different story.
The “new Xinjiang” is a place now open for investment, trade, and travel in a demonstration that China’s regional policies have “worked” to quell “extremism.” And what better way than to get others to amplify your message when your own credibility is compromised? Media placements are just one way in which China’s state propaganda on East Turkistan hides in plain sight: tourism, media summits, choreographed tours for journalists and diplomats, as well as turning to obedient vloggers and influencers are other means for distributing a message that all is thriving. When the overseas media starts to scratch the surface of the propaganda, the government simply limits access or harasses journalists. In its 2023 annual report, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China noted “85% of journalists who tried to report from Xinjiang experienced problems.”
The issue extends beyond PR Newswire placements and China Watch inserts. Other earned media companies, such as Business Wire, Globe Newswire, and Newsfile Corp., are engaged in sharing content about East Turkistan, indicating further opportunities for disinformation about the crisis into the discursive environment. The core of the matter is not that we completely believe what the Chinese state has to say about the Uyghurs, but that these stories put on the record a “counter narrative” to carefully documented crimes against humanity. In none of the placements is there balanced reporting, which would be expected in the journalism published in the US mainstream media.
Further, timing is everything. As experienced professionals with a long history of documenting the Uyghur condition, we have noticed a drop off in overseas coverage of the genocide. We understand that on the ground access to East Turkistan is challenging, and even that there might be fatigue concerning the issue; however, this doesn’t mean that the ongoing suffering of the Uyghur people should not merit reportage. In this lull, it is a judicious time for the Chinese state to spread disinformation about the situation of Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples.
The upswing of Chinese state propaganda on our screens should be our concern. Some prominent media outlets agree. The Telegraph, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times have ended the practice of including China Watch inserts into their publications. In October 2024, UHRP’s Peter Irwin, co-author of this article, wrote a letter to the Independent objecting to an inserted China Watch story, which the UK newspaper hosted on its website. The Independent published the letter, and we suggest that when you come across similar propaganda, you write your own letter of concern.
A further means in countering Chinese state propaganda is to hold companies to their corporate social responsibility standards. For example, Nexstar has the commitment to “seek the truth and strive to act independently, transparently, and to be free from bias.” Could anyone reasonably accept that publishing Chinese state media content directly on your news website—with no mention of its source—meets these standards?
Articles from Chinese state media outlets should be marked as such, offering the public the ability to discern the origin of what it is they’re reading. This is a basic responsibility and one that earned media companies do not currently uphold. Even better, media outlets, such as the Financial Times, USA Today, and the LA Times, should stop publishing China Watch inserts.
In a time when China is imprisoning Uyghur journalists and harassing foreign correspondents, overseas media organizations shouldn’t be distributing Chinese state propaganda about Uyghurs.