Chinese broadcaster CCTV says it ‘dares to fight Western media monopoly on public opinion’

Article in party journal sets out how the broadcaster has used ‘offence as a means of defence’ with its coverage of events like the US Capitol riot
Beijing has been locked in a narrative war with the West and President Xi Jinping has stressed the need to improve global communication

China’s 20th Party Congress

Xinlu Liangin Beijing

Published: 8:00pm, 2 Aug 2022

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China’s main state-run television group CCTV says it has used “offence as a means of defence” against Western media with its coverage of events like the US Capitol riot and that it will continue to push back in the narrative battle.

“[CCTV] dares to fight, excels in speaking out, and uses offence as a means of defence to break through the long-term monopoly of Western media on public opinion,” according to a piece in the Communist Party theoretical journal Quishi on Monday.

“In recent years, the international communication power of the television station has significantly increased, and the overseas delivery capacity has greatly improved,” said the article, published under a collective byline of the CCTV party committee.

The television group also said it aimed to become world-class in new mainstream media with strong leadership, communication power and influence, and that it would take practical action to achieve these goals ahead of the party congress.

The twice-a-decade congress is likely to take place in autumn and will see a major leadership reshuffle, though President Xi Jinping is expected to secure an unprecedented third term in power.

China has been locked in a narrative war with the West in recent years, with Xi repeatedly stressing the need to improve the country’s global communication – a task embraced by state media outlets like CCTV.

Last year Xi told a Politburo meeting that a “true, multidimensional and panoramic view of China” needed to be presented. He called for more to be done to develop its own discourse and narrative, introduce Chinese culture abroad and create an image of a reliable, admirable and respectable China, according to official news agency Xinhua.

In the journal article, CCTV listed the ways it claimed to have debunked the Western narrative and asserted China’s version of the truth. It started with a prime-time television debate on the US-China trade war in 2019 – a time when nationalistic rhetoric was being ramped up in China – between Liu Xin, a host on CGTN, and Trish Regan from Fox Business. CGTN is the foreign-language network of CCTV that was relaunched in 2016 as part of Beijing’s push to expand its messaging overseas.

It also listed CGTN’s coverage of the Capitol riot in Washington and on-the-ground reporting at the White House that it said offered “China’s voice” on the situation.

And it included efforts to promote Beijing’s own coronavirus lab leak theory to counter the hypothesis raised outside China that the virus could have escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan. Chinese diplomats and state media targeted the Fort Detrick US military base – including a CGTN documentary on the subject, “Finding true America: the veiled Fort Detrick lab” – calling for it to be investigated.

The article also pointed to CGTN’s two-episode show “US democracy: a reality check” and two documentaries released in 2019 on Xinjiang that sought to justify Beijing’s crackdown in the far western region where a million Uygurs and other Muslim minorities have reportedly been detained. The documentaries included graphic images of attacks in Xinjiang and sought to reinforce Beijing’s line that these were no different from terrorism in the West, including the September 11 attacks in the US in 2001. The documentaries aired soon after the US House of Representatives backed a call for sanctions on officials accused of human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

According to the article: “[CCTV has] effectively engaged in international public opinion struggles, continued to enhance overseas delivery capabilities, strived to break the hegemony of Western discourse, and focused on building a fair, objective, positive and healthy global public opinion ecosystem.”

The broadcaster also claimed success over its reports about Xi that were quoted or used by international media outlets. It said CGTN’s show “Must-know classic quotes by Xi Jinping” had reached an audience of 4.8 billion worldwide. The series uses speeches made by Xi to explain Chinese affairs on everything from the environment and innovation to the pandemic, corruption, education and poverty alleviation.