China’s presence has grown steadily across Latin America since the turn of the century, as it has brought the promise of investment and economic opportunity. Latin American countries have diverse and well-established media ecosystems, but as China’s importance grows, how prepared are they to provide their audiences with reliable information about the deepening relationship — and to resist the narratives of the Chinese state?

Examples of China’s media push in Latin America are evident everywhere, from influencers for CGTN, the state-run international broadcaster, who reach millions of followers in Portuguese and Spanish, to major regional media that have sold their entire China section to state propaganda outlets like the People’s Daily. To learn more about the Chinese-related challenges facing Latin American media, we sat down with Igor Patrick, whose new book Hearts and Minds, Votes and Contracts digs into what exactly China’s official media have been up to. 

Alex Colville: Your book dives deep into the issues of China’s media and information presence in Latin America. Could you run us through the most important takeaways of your research? How is China getting its message across in the region? 

Igor Patrick: China has been able to leverage content-sharing agreements to spread their preferred narratives on a number of topics through very well-established local media outlets. In general, there is not much transparency in these outlets about the fact that the content they are publishing comes from Chinese state media. So many people all over the region will attribute credibility to this content thinking they come from the newsroom, the producers of the stories they read or watch every day. 

In some cases, Chinese media also have ways to make the content look like the original content from that newspaper or that TV station. 

AC: Could you provide any concrete examples of how this works? 

IP: In Mexico, for example, I interviewed the international desk editor of Reforma, one of the country’s main newspapers, and she told me that [the content-sharing agreement] was signed between the marketing department of the newspaper and the People’s Daily, and she has no control over that content whatsoever — and is not told in advance when such content will be published. 

She has the impression that they designed the page to make it look like the other pages of the newspapers so that we wouldn’t be able to distinguish the difference. This content usually praises the Chinese model and has antagonizing narratives about the West, but is hard to spot for regular people. 

The impact these agreements have on coverage varies a lot. My home country is Brazil, which has a long tradition of independent media. Content-sharing agreements don’t necessarily translate to less critical content about China in these media outlets. I think the outlier is Grupo Band [NOTE: This is a large media conglomerate in Brazil that owns nine TV channels and three radio networks]. 

Research by Professor Pablo Morales of LSE and Paulo Menechelli, a researcher from the University of Brazil, compared the content on China from Band’s networks from 2019 to 2021 together with other competitors and found there was a 15.2 percent reduction in negative reports after the launch of this partnership with the Chinese, while 57.1 percent was positive coverage.   

AC: Aside from traditional outlets and this “borrowed boat” model of distribution, you must also be seeing a lot of activity online. Is that right? 

IP: Yes, they really understand how to use social media. What media like CGTN are doing in a number of countries is to leverage how they have so many bilingual reporters, and to establish them as recognized local influencers. They start mixing very innocent, naive content about food and culture with very divisive topics like Xinjiang, Tibet, and so on. 

We see this in a number of countries in Latin America, like the journalist Luana Xing who focuses on Brazil. She’s been able to get 1.8 million followers on Facebook alone. I couldn’t verify how many of these followers are real [and not from paid promotion] because Meta doesn’t allow independent researchers to do data searches. But even if 10 percent of this is real, that’s already a huge number of people being reached by this content every day. She complained when Facebook labeled her page as Chinese state media. She recorded a video saying her page is not necessarily linked to her job, and maybe there’s some prejudice because she was Chinese. But her page is managed by Chinese state media — you can see that through the Facebook ads library, they check who’s paying for ads. 

These influencers are engaging. People are not following them because they crave Chinese news, but because they like them. They become recognized voices in social media within this community, just like any other local influencer. Then if they want to learn something about China, or hear a Chinese perspective on something, they will seek them out. It’s an excellent strategy. 

But I think we also need to be careful in this case — because the Chinese have the right to have their own voice. One of the cases that I analyze is a reporter called Olivia Yang [NOTE: Yang is a CGTN journalist with 257,000 followers on Facebook, who selects topics based on viewer requests and makes it clear when her views align with the Chinese government]. Just by analyzing how her page was growing, it was very organic, and when I interviewed her she made the point that just by looking at her and by the fact that she is Chinese people assume that she’s just a CCP mouthpiece.

AC: What do you see as the main risks for these Latin American outlets when they enter into content-sharing agreements with state media? 

IP: The main problem of content-sharing that I see is not about China distorting the narrative on human rights violations or political systems. I think it harms the capacity of local media outlets in Latin America to assess how Chinese money has been impacting their own lives.  

Newspapers or TV stations with these agreements are going to feel less inclined to report on China negatively — say, if there are structural problems with a BRI project — because they rely on the money they are receiving from Chinese institutions. Reforma charges about 20,000 Mexican dollars (US$1,227) per page. This is a huge sum of money, and apparently, it’s used to fund the salaries of many reporters in the newsroom. 

In Argentina, you have several cases of strategic issues in their relationship with China — credit swap agreements, a nuclear power plant, and a PLA-operated space facility in the south — that the Argentinian government is contractually not allowed to investigate.

There used to be newspapers in Argentina that were very critical about China, but after papers on both sides of the political divide signed agreements they are not critical anymore because they receive a lot of money through advertorials. 

So the media might not investigate these strategic issues because if they do this is going to anger the Chinese and therefore they’re going to lose that money. There are even some cases in Argentina where newspapers have completely sold their China section to a state media outlet. 

AC: We’ve often highlighted in our research how clumsy and one-dimensional Chinese external propaganda can be. Do you have a sense of how audiences actually respond to the content in cases like the ones you just described? 

IP: Readers and viewers are not stupid, and if you portray a certain topic only through a positive lens people are going to notice. I think if they knew the content is coming from China it would severely decrease the credibility readers and viewers attribute to a specific story, and I can say this by looking at the comments on some of these stories. People are surprised that China is sponsoring content. 

The main newspaper in Brazil, Folha de S.Paulo, for example, just last month published a big two-page editorial right after the first page on how Xi Jinping is amazing. The reaction online was, “Why are you publishing this?” It was paid content [from Chinese media] but looked like the outlet’s regular content.

But there is demand for news on China in Latin America, especially after the pandemic. I believe the need for independent content about China will increase in Latin America, and media will eventually have to choose whether it is still beneficial to have these agreements with the Chinese. But if they don’t have them, they need to work out how they are going to fill this demand if they don’t have the resources to do so.

AC: Could you take the temperature of China’s quest to win hearts and minds in Latin America? Is it on the up, or still just finding its feet?

IP: I think they’re still seeing what works and what doesn’t work. First, they made the same mistake America made in the 1990s, which is considering Latin America as a bloc. Every country has its own culture and accent — in the case of Brazil, it’s not even the same language. Putting everything under the same umbrella makes it impossible for any media outlet to prosper. 

CNN tried for many years to make CNN Spanish popular in Brazil, to the point that in 1997 they even stopped broadcasting CNN in English. But Brazilians would prefer to watch it in English than Spanish — so they were only able to establish operations in Brazil after they signed a partnership with local media and created CNN Brazil. Chinese outlets have been doing the same thing. 

Professor Pablo Morales of LSE has done focus groups with young people in Mexico and Argentina, showing them footage from multiple Spanish-language news sources. When showing content produced by CGTN in Spanish, he noticed that many didn’t buy the narrative because of the accent of the reporters. They were using the so-called “neutral accent” that many US TV stations broadcasting in Spanish use, and link this content to colonialism. So if you don’t understand the small nuances it’s very difficult to prosper and I think the advantage of the Chinese is that they change course when something isn’t going right, and experiment with new forms.

I also believe that contrary to what happens in Europe, the US, Australia, Canada, and even to some extent Southeast Asia, China doesn’t necessarily represent a threat to Latin America. Chinese are more willing than the West to invest in big infrastructure projects that make lives better. In these countries, not many people would perceive China as a problem, so it makes it slightly easier for them to put content out there.

AC: Beyond the narratives that China places in these papers, what other lines of information do people from different countries within Latin America have on China? 

IP: I don’t think there is much out there. In general, most people in Latin America don’t think about China. Because of culture and geographical connections, they’re more worried about the media of neighbors in Latin America, the US, or Europe. They know that China is important and whatever it does is going to influence them, but it’s not something they actively follow. Perhaps [there is some content on] social media and YouTube, but in general I would say most of the news content about China comes from traditional media, not from other sources.

AC: How do you assess the general level of knowledge about China in Latin American countries, and also in newsrooms there?

IP: Not many people in these countries have the expertise to understand Chinese topics. This is a problem we’ve seen in newsrooms as well. 

I spoke with many editors who said they wish they had the money to send a correspondent to China and produce original content. They wish they had a reporter who could speak Chinese or had an understanding about how China works. But that’s not necessarily how the market operates here. That’s of course an opportunity for Chinese media and China’s propaganda to fill this void with content they selected. 

AC: Do they also have issues getting journalist visas to work in China? 

IP: Yeah, it’s increasingly difficult. My understanding is that Marcelo Ninio from O Globo and Nelson de Sá from Folha de S.Paulo, both from Brazil, are the only officially registered correspondents working in China for mainstream South American media right now. It’s mostly a matter of costs trying to navigate the bureaucracy to get a journalist in. China requires a physical bureau for a media outlet to operate in the country. Many outlets in Latin American countries cannot afford to have a physical bureau, and it’s a really chaotic process to set one up. 

But registering your own home is sketchy. Sometimes they authorize it. Sometimes they don’t. But if something happens regarding this paper, your house will be raided, not your newsroom. Something that I experienced as a journalist in China is that, even though my Chinese is not horrible, if I go somewhere more regional I have to have someone with me who can understand the local dialect. But the legislation doesn’t allow for [the hiring of local] freelancers. If I’m going to Yunnan, for example, I cannot hire someone from Yunnan for just one trip. I have to have them as my news assistant all this time. And that increases the financial burden on these newspapers. So for countries in the Global North, limits on journalism visas are mostly about politics. But for countries in the Global South, it’s about financial constraints preventing them from hiring someone and going through this chaotic process. 

AC: As you’ve said, this can encourage dependency on China’s official information and narratives. So what recommendations would you give outlets in the region to remain independent?

IP: It’s impossible to increase independent content on China if you don’t invest in training reporters to do it. So many countries know China better than we do, and have been dealing with China for longer than we have. It would be very beneficial if these countries could establish exchange programs for generalists interested in Chinese affairs to understand how to do China-related journalism. 

China has been offering training programs for journalists to go to China and learn about it, but of course, they receive a filtered version of what is going on. In Mexico, there was a very small local TV station, and one of their journalists went to China for a training program. She came back and suddenly this TV station became big, and she became very vocal in defending the Chinese, repeating the favorite narratives of Chinese diplomacy. The owner of that TV station went to China and he was able to secure a deal worth millions of dollars to expand the operation. This is very common I would say. 

The same thing happened with the marketing coordinator from Radio Cooperativa, one of the main radio stations in Chile. When he came back from a seminar in Beijing, suddenly the radio station was broadcasting programs made in partnership with the Confucius Institute. Now he’s not only signing agreements with national media outlets like China Media Group, but also local state media like the Xiamen Media Group as well.