July 9, 2019//-In a report titled “China’s Pursuit of a New World Media Order”, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has put out China’s covert and overt strategy to control information both within and outside its borders.
The Reporters Without Boarders promotes and defends the freedom to receive and impart information worldwide. Based in Paris, France, it has fourteen international bureau and more than 150 correspondence in all five continents.
According to the report China is expanding its hold beyond its borders to impose its “ideologically correct” vocabulary, to deter any criticism of itself and to cover up the darker chapters in its history.
Less well known than the Belt and Road Initiative, but just as ambitious, this project poses a threat to press freedom throughout the world.
The RSF highlights the strategy deployed by the Chinese to achieve its goals that include: modernising its international TV broadcasting; buying extensive amounts of advertising in international media; and, infiltrating foreign media by employing blackmail, intimidation and harassment on a massive scale.
“In the spirit of the Beijing regime, journalists are not intended to be a counter-power but rather to serve the propaganda of states,” says Christophe Deloire, Secretary General of RSF. “If democracies do not resist, Beijing will impose its view and its propaganda, which is a threat for journalism and democracy”.
The report reveals that, “Beijing calls for intimidation and violence to silence dissidents, even in democratic nations. From freelance reporters to major media outlets, from publishing houses to social media platforms, no link in the news production chain is immune to the “invisible hand” of Beijing.
Even Chinese ambassadors no longer hesitate to openly denigrate press articles that question the official narrative of China, and often in rather undiplomatic ways. Democracies are struggling to react in the face of these threats.”
It states that, “Beijing spares no effort to please journalists from emerging countries in order to be understood and, if possible, liked by these influencers from all over the world.
The visits by foreign journalists also benefit Beijing in another way: how the journalists describe their visits confers credibility on the Chinese state media and gives the ordinary citizen the impression that the entire world approves of Communist Party policies.”.
It points out that by inviting journalists on lavish, all-expense-paid trips to attend seminars in China, Beijing wins many of them over and secures favourable coverage.
For instance, on their return from a visit to China in December 2018, a group of Zambian journalists left their impressions on the Zambian Daily Mail blog. In all, 22 journalists from Zambia were invited to Beijing for a specially-designed event called the 2018 Zambia Media Think Tank Seminar.
Their visit was managed by a department within the National Radio and Television Administration that, until March 2018, was a separate entity known as the Research and Training Institute of the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT). In the last few years, it has provided training in China for at least 3,400 journalists from 146 countries throughout the world.
Billed as an in-depth discussion of the “challenges posed by new technology and economic development”, the event provided the Chinese with a golden opportunity to make contacts and promote both their technology and their regulation methods. The programme included a recreational visit to the southwestern city of Chongqing, which has hot springs and other tourist attractions.
To counter the Chinese onslaught on free media worldwide the RSF recommends among others that media practitioners: as far as possible, avoid using technological resources that entail a risk of censorship or surveillance by the Chinese authorities, either because they were developed or are operated by a company subject to Chinese regulation (such as WeChat and Baidu), or because user data is stored in servers accessible to the Chinese authorities (such as iCloud China); if using these resources is absolutely necessary, connect from a dedicated computer or Smartphone that is separate from your usual work environment.
Do not store, even temporarily, passwords or information that could endanger you or your sources. Do not trust claims by operators that data passing through their servers in China is encrypted or immediately deleted; and, in the country where you live, pay attention to the presence and development of media of Chinese origin, in particular, their publishing and investment activities.
By Oppong Baah, African Eye Report