Nestled in the south of the diamond-shaped Ningxia region, the city of Guyuan radiates the sort of charm for which China’s ancient northwest has become known. Once a stopover on the northern Silk Road, the city is home to the towering Xumishan grottoes, a collection of Buddhist cave temples dating back to the fifth century A.D. Now, with the help of a state-run media giant, the local government hopes to translate its cultural capital into global impact. 

In a ceremony last week, local propaganda officials in Guyuan signed an agreement for framework cooperation with China Daily, the government-run multiple-language outlet that serves as one of the country’s primary communication vehicles. The agreement corresponded with the official launch of the local “Guyuan International Communication Center” (固原国际传播中心), a rebranded entity under the local propaganda office that will leverage local media content production — and the China Daily relationship — to promote Guyuan to the world. 

The local initiative is yet another point of implementation of Xi Jinping’s national strategy since 2018 to strengthen China’s global discourse power (话语权) through a campaign of grassroots storytelling — empowering local governments and media groups to add their voices to China’s collective voice. To date, the China Media Project has documented the launch of 28 provincial-level international communication centers (国际传播中心), or ICCs, and at least 50 at the city and district level — most of these established only since 2023.   

Guyuan officials said their new international communication center marked “a new page in our city’s overseas communication work,” adding that they aimed to showcase the city’s “beautiful natural scenery, profound cultural heritage, simple and hardworking customs, and specialty agricultural products” to international audiences.

Going Vertical

The framework agreement with China Daily points to another important aspect of Xi’s national push: The vertical integration of provincial, city and district-level ICCs with more influential and resource-rich central media groups, which can help to push local stories globally.

While presented as revolutionary approaches to enhance China’s global voice, these vertical integration efforts often amount to little more than performative compliance with central directives. The local implementations often lack substance beyond recycled rhetoric about “turning new chapters,” focusing more on communicating upward to leadership than outward to international audiences. It remains to be seen whether the local ICC push championed under Xi Jinping will result in meaningful global engagement.

Coverage of the ICC launch by the official Guyuan Daily, published by the city’s CCP Committee, referred to the tie-up with China Daily as a “central-local CP” (央地CP) partnership — “CP” being shorthand in this case for “coupling,” or peidui (配对). Similar terms have frequently been used in other cases over the past three years to refer to vertical integration in the context of global propaganda efforts, suggesting such arrangements are on the rise. 

In an article on ICC development published in December last year, the official communications magazine Media (传媒) wrote that, “The collaborative model between central media and local media is becoming increasingly important in advancing the construction of local international communication centers.” It cited the example of China Daily’s cooperation agreement with Nantong Radio and Television Media Group in Jiangsu, which resulted in the formation of Nantong International Communication Center (南通国际传播中心), the province’s first city-level international communication center.” In February 2024, the city of Cangzhou in eastern Hebei province formed its international communication center (沧州市国际传播中心) through a partnership with Xinhua News Agency.

The Tuscan textile city of Prato, home to thousands of fashion shops and warehouses and one of the most concentrated Chinese populations in Europe, can now boast formal links to China’s growing national network of local centers that are meant to revolutionize its state-led global communication.

In a ceremony held this week, Prato’s “Green Dragon Club” (青龙俱乐部), a local Chinese community center and dragon boat club, was presented with a pair of plaques designating it as both the “overseas communication base” and the “liaison office” of the Wenzhou International Communication Center (温州国际传播中心).

This international communication center, or ICC, is one of a growing number of local hubs in provinces and cities across China meant to harness the strength of local media groups — in coordination with local propaganda offices — to supercharge the efforts of the Chinese Communist Party to “tell China’s story well,” and strengthen its “discourse power” globally. As CMP has previously reported, Zhejiang province has led the charge in forming local ICCs. By our latest count, it now hosts 16 local centers — five times the national average.

The ceremony at the “Green Dragon Club” was attended by a top Wenzhou media official, Liu Shenyang (柳深扬), identified in a report by the weekly Europe Chinese News (欧洲华人报) as the editor-in-chief of the Wenzhou News Media Center (温州市新闻传媒中心), a local government-run media office founded in 2023 — and identified at the time as a “new milestone in the development of [the city’s propaganda work.” Liu was previously the top official at the city’s state-run television and radio broadcaster.

It is unclear how the new “overseas communication base” of the Wenzhou ICC will operate in practice, and how it means to drive China’s agenda in Italy or Europe beyond. But it was an opportunity, at the very least, for Wenzhou officials to claim a small victory in their effort to heed Xi Jinping's call to "restructure the pattern of [China's] international communication."

“This recognition brings our cooperation to a new level," Liu said as he unveiled the pair of plaques in Prato and, according to the Europe Chinese News report, "made commemorative gifts to major Chinese community organizations."

Perhaps you have never heard of cultural specialties like “Tea Opera” or the “Four Famous Dishes.” But if local government hype can be believed, these and other special attributes of Linchuan (临川), one of two districts in the coastal city of Fuzhou, could be coming to a social media account near you. This week, the district became the latest local administration in China to establish its own “international communication center” (国际传播中心), adding to a growing network of local-level propaganda hubs aimed at amplifying China’s voice on the global stage — often through accounts on major international social media platforms.

Attended by Fuzhou’s top Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official, Wu Yiwen (吴宜文), and its chief of propaganda, Liao Xiaoyong (廖晓勇), the center’s inauguration was billed in official media coverage as a significant shift in the area’s external propaganda strategy. Referencing the central leadership’s move over the past three years to strengthen global communication through local government and media participation, Wu Yiwen told those gathered at the launch event that the Linchuan ICC was “an important measure in thoroughly implementing General Secretary Xi Jinping’s key discourse on strengthening international communication capabilities.”

The Linchuan initiative mirrors similar moves across China, where local authorities have established dedicated international communication centers equipped with social media teams and foreign language expertise. The Linchuan center, said Wu, would have three key priorities: promoting local achievements in economic development, expanding overseas exchanges, and “accelerating our district’s external propaganda and promotion.”

The aim of this nationwide push is to leverage local resources and storytelling in the hope that this might present a more colorful and appealing picture of China to international audiences, moving beyond the one-dimensional messaging of central state media — for years the primary vehicle of efforts to raise China’s “discourse power,” which leaders say is critical in bolstering the country’s comprehensive national power (CNP).

But Linchuan’s reports of its redoubled efforts to seek global influence may just be more hype about hype. While the ICC launch trumpeted the district’s efforts in recent years to build what it called “a social media platform account matrix” (社交平台账号矩阵), our search turned up no related accounts on foreign social media channels.

In fact, Linchuan’s new ICC joins a growing list of local centers that speak more to domestic political priorities than international engagement. The brass plaque unveiled in official photographs may be the center’s most potent statement — a signal to Party superiors that local leaders have heeded Xi Jinping’s call.

Standing in the background as officials unveiled the glistening sign was the center’s motto: “Using Linchuan as ink to paint a world painting scroll.” Awkward in its phrasing, and indistinct in its meaning, the slogan reads like a cautionary note about the central-level policy by which Xi Jinping has hoped to sharpen the focus of external propaganda. In some cases, certainly, the leadership’s strategic push to leverage local resources for global influence might leave a lasting impression. In many more cases at the local level, however, it results only in ink blotches of bureaucratic self-congratulation.

China has unveiled new regulations governing the release of military-related information on the internet, marking a formal legalization, and possible tightening, of control over military-themed content in cyberspace. Military and defense-related content enjoys significant popularity among Chinese internet users, but the leadership is clearly keen to ensure that sensitive information — a concept broadly applied in China — and speculation do not undermine the official narrative around the country’s military development and capabilities.

The regulations were issued over the weekend by ten government departments including the Cyberspace Administration of China, the country’s top internet control body, and the Central Military Commission — the country’s highest military body, chaired since 2012 by Xi Jinping. They cover a broad spectrum of channels, including dedicated military affairs websites, military-themed columns, and social media accounts focused on the military. The rules are due to take effect on March 1.

Measures for the Management of Military Information Dissemination on the Internet (Chinese) consists of 30 articles in all, setting down strict guidelines for managing military affairs content online. Addressing everything from the establishment of military-themed websites to the operation of social media accounts focusing on related matters, the rules apply to anyone “taking part in online communication activities involving military information” (从事互联网军事信息传播活动) within China’s borders.

Political language related to information controls is clear and prominent in the document. Article 3 explicitly demands that all related channels maintain the correct "political orientation" (正确的政治方向) and "public opinion guidance" (舆论导向), the latter term referring to the prerogative of media control in order to maintain social and political stability. The rules generally mandate that online military information must "maintain a favorable image of the military" (维护人民军队良好形象) while serving the interests of national defense.

Under the framework initiated by the new rules, detailed in Article 8, content providers must go through a strict verification process. Military-themed account operators will need to be verified through identity authentication, and their accounts must display special identification markers (专门标识). The regulations particularly focus on the display of military-related terms and symbols, and prohibit unauthorized use in account names or branding of phrases like "People's Liberation Army" (解放军), "armed forces" (武装力量), or "military industry" (军工).

The regulations echo criticism from state media last year of the misuse of state media brands, including the CCP’s official People’s Daily. Cases of alleged misuse of state media brands have been rampant, not least because these offer a degree of safety and credibility in the minds of some online publishers — an issue CMP covered back in October. The new rules from the CAC suggest that perhaps similar confusion has reigned in the hugely popular field of military affairs content.

These days, the death of a newspaper is hardly, well, news. In China, as in much of the rest of the world, information consumers long ago turned toward fresh digital alternatives, including social media and news apps. The country’s latest report on internet use last year showed that it had more than one billion internet users, of which nearly 98 percent used online video services — now one of the most popular sources of content.

Mostly outside the headlines last month, the disappearance of print offerings in China’s media continued. Among the publications ceasing operations entirely was the Daily News (每日新报), a commercial newspaper launched a quarter century ago under the umbrella of Tianjin Daily (天津日报), the official mouthpiece of the Tianjin city leadership. The paper’s claim to fame back in December 2004, during the heyday of the metro newspaper in China, was to publish a single daily edition with 516 pages — a record at the time.

Joining the ranks of those that ceased publication (停刊) was Xijiang Metropolitan Daily (西江都市报), a paper based in the city of Wuzhou, in Guangxi, that was also launched in 2000. Like most commercial print publications in China, the paper was a spin-off of the local CCP-run outlet, in this case Wuzhou Daily (梧州日报). In many cases back in the halcyon days, as the advertising market soared on the back of breakneck economic growth, these “child papers” (子报) could provide the revenue stream to support their CCP parent publications. The bottom fell out of that market in the mid 2010s, with the emergence of powerful digital competitors like WeChat.

Also on the list of quiet exits was the Yunnan Economic Daily (云南经济日报), a general business newspaper under the official mouthpiece of the southwestern province of Yunnan, and Hohhot Evening News (呼和浩特晚报) in Inner Mongolia.

Another “child paper,” Tibet Business News (西藏商报), a subsidiary of the official Tibet Daily (西藏日报), announced that it would restructure and “enhance its digital presence” — code for shutting down its print operation and going fully digital.

In what might be a harbinger of harder times ahead, Beijing Youth Daily (北京青年报), published by the Beijing chapter of the Chinese Communist Youth League consistently since 1981 — having weathered three closures in a history stretching back to March 1949 — announced that it would dispense with its weekend editions, publishing only on weekdays. The same decision was announced by Liaoshen Evening News (辽沈晚报) in the city of Liaoning, a commercial spin-off published since 1993 under the local CCP-led newspaper group.

Shanghai Literature News (文学报), a literary publication launched at the outset of the reform and opening period in April 1981, with support voiced by a number of literary figures, including the writer Bing Xin (冰心), told readers that it would now merge with Shanghai’s Wen Huibao (文汇报), continuing only as a weekly supplement.

Newspaper and magazine closures like these have become an annual ritual over the past decade, a sign of the changing commercial environment for print publications generally. In most cases, however, closures are confined to the metropolitan dailies that distinguished China’s press environment from the early 1990s through to the 2010s.

By contrast, the country’s “parent papers” — the newspapers on which the CCP at every level relies to define and confine the “mainstream” — have remained immune from these changes. Their identity, after all, is political, not commercial.

As a January 19 deadline looms to ban or sell TikTok, and as a key decision awaits from the US Supreme Court on the constitutionality of the related July 2024 act on “foreign adversary controlled applications,” many users of the popular video-sharing platform are already rendering judgment with their feet, seeking refuge in the most unlikely of places — the international version of a popular Chinese app that has a long track record of censorship and surveillance.

This week, more than 700,000 self-styled “TikTok refugees” have flocked to China’s RedNote platform, known at home as Xiaohongshu (小红书) — literally “little red book” — an Instagram-like platform that has long been a go-to space for posts on shopping, makeup, fashion and travel. The app currently has 300 million monthly active users, nearly 80 percent women.

The mass migration, announced with the hashtag #TikTokrefugees, has made the Chinese lifestyle-sharing app an odd escape route for American users of TikTok, some of whom have posted videos criticizing the actions of US lawmakers, and declaring provocatively that they are prepared to volunteer their personal data to the Chinese government. As of yesterday the hashtag had received more than 250 million views and was closing in on six million comments.

Some media, including CNN, have noted that the influx of users to China’s hugely popular RedNote, which to date has had few foreign users and little experience moderating content outside the Chinese language, has resulted in an unprecedented interaction of users across cultures and control regimes. TikTok, the American-based cousin of China’s domestic Douyin service, has never been an option for Chinese — resulting in alternative social universes spawned by the same algorithm. In its headline on the story, Semafor emphasized that the RedNote crossing was “an unlikely ‘cyberspace bridge’” between the two countries.

Hong Kong’s HK01, an online news outlet, quoted one Chinese translator from Hangzhou, Jacob Hui, sharing his reaction to his first interactions with American users of the platform. “I visited a livestream hosted by Chinese and American influencers on Xiaohongshu, and chatted with them, asking them things like what video games are popular in America.”

If the TikTok exodus surprised RedNote, it has delighted commentators in China, who have cast the event as an affirmation of China’s openness to cultural exchange, and further evidence of the hypocrisy of American values like freedom of speech — which state media have routinely panned over the decades as “so-called freedom of speech” (所谓的新闻自由).

Asked at a regular press conference yesterday whether China would step up controls on RedNote following the bump in foreign users, Guo Jiakun (郭嘉坤), a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), lost no time in spinning the trend, saying coolly that social media use was “a matter of personal choice” and affirming China’s support for “strengthening cultural exchanges and promoting mutual understanding among peoples of all countries.”

On the question of risk, Hu Xijin (胡锡进), the often outspoken former editor-in-chief of China’s Global Times newspaper, tied to the Chinese Communist Party’s flagship Peoples’ Daily, called the American influx to RedNote “an opportunity rather than a risk.” Writing on the Shanghai-based Observer (观察网) platform, Hu added that this marked “a rebalancing of online power relations between the US and China.”

“If RedNote succeeds, China will have a new lever to promote common human values with the outside world,” said Hu.

China Central Television (CCTV), the country’s state-run broadcaster, declared that TikTok users had found a “new home.”

Short-Lived Positives

While US TikTok refugees from what some, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have criticized as unconstitutional overreach may have found a temporary harbor and scored a Pyrrhic victory, their enthusiasm could prove short-lived as they grapple with the real conditions on the opposite side of the bridge — the world’s most active and comprehensive system for real-time content moderation and political censorship.

There have already been indications from sources inside RedNote, as reported by Reuters, who have said the platform is already working on its internal content review capacity to deal with the influx of English-language influencers. These developments, demanded by cyberspace authorities for all services operating in the country, can be expected to roll out along with the extra services RedNote has feted — such as an English-to-Chinese translation function, now in the works, and an “English Corner” that connects language partners.

On Tuesday, as TikTok refugee flows were arriving on the shores of RedNote, the platform announced that it was implementing new measures to ensure content was “upward and virtuous” (向上向善) — not exactly an ethos associated with the TikTok homeland, which has thrived on threading together the inventive and unpredictable. This idea of the upward was also coded in the RedNote announcement for what the CCP terms “positive energy” (正能量), which refers to the need for uplifting messages as opposed to critical or negative ones — and particularly the need for content that puts the Party and government in a positive light. The platform talked about “increasing guidance and support for positive content” (加大对正向内容的引导与扶持).

Just days into the exodus, there is already clear evidence that censorship mandates are being applied to RedNote’s new foreign users. One substantive result of this international cultural exchange, it seems, is that hundreds of thousands of American users of RedNote will soon have direct and intimate experience of what it means, and how it feels, to live under a system of all-embracing, granular, and unpredictable censorship. “Got a violation for my cooking video,” one American user posted, “so I shortened it and posted again, no violation.”

“Am I not allowed to show knives?”

As Shanghai’s annual political session began this week, a new proposal from one delegate called for more robust controls on social media platforms by using artificial intelligence. While the delegate, Chen Le (陈乐), chairman of a local business management and information systems firm​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​, said the technology could address growing government concerns about misinformation and privacy violations, the moralistic and political overtones were unmistakable. Chen suggested that AI could help monitor “information leaks” (爆料) through public accounts (公号) and ensure a “healthy ecology” online. 

The supervisor (监事) and top shareholder of Wanrui Puying Group (万瑞普盈集团), Chen is a member of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the country’s top political advisory body that brings together representatives from various political parties, organizations, and ethnic groups. 

In his proposal, “Suggestions on Introducing AI Technology to Strengthen Self-Media Content Review,” Chen outlines four main recommendations to regulate China’s self-media platforms (自媒体平台), which over the past decade have become crucial channels for information sharing and the expression of opinion in China.

First, he calls for AI technology implementation for automated identification and review of content posts and reposts. This system, the proposal said, would use natural language processing and image recognition to conduct real-time monitoring of “information exposures” (爆料) and other sensitive content. 

Second, the proposal recommends a classification and tracking system for published videos. This system would employ AI to tag content as “genuine exposure” (真实爆料), meaning that the content was credible, “false information” (虚假信息), or “privacy violation” (隐私泄露). According to Chen, this would enable better management and accountability. The system would embed mechanisms to trace content back to the original publishers and combat rumors and misinformation. 

Chen Le’s third recommendation focuses on leveraging existing automated review capabilities from established news media platforms. This would involve cooperation between state media organizations, industry associations, and universities to share technical resources and expertise — ultimately reducing manual review costs while improving accuracy.

The final recommendation in Chen’s proposal is where the less techy aspects finally come in. Mirroring frequent calls from internet control authorities, he suggests a renewed emphasis on industry self-regulation and strengthening legal frameworks. This would also involve stronger penalties for violations and enhancing public education about responsible social media use.

Along with 32 other delegates in Shanghai this year, Chen also joined a proposal that critiques Shanghai’s Lunar New Year cultural offerings as lacking distinctiveness compared to celebrations in other cities. AI also figures in that proposal, which argues that it could be used to “incorporate intangible cultural heritage.”