In the official Party-state media in China, design is driven by politics — and it is a crucial aspect of the political discourse. Want to see this principle in action? Today’s edition of the People’s Daily, the flagship newspaper of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) offers a prime example.

The oddest and most prominent feature of the front page of the People’s Daily today is the large vertical headline running down the left-hand side. The headline, which announces that top leader Xi Jinping met with international leaders attending the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, ties the rest of the headlines on the page together. All are announcements of separate meetings, each with a different foreign leader.

As has been the case all week in the official state media in China, the top story is the Belt and Road. Coverage has touted its great benefits for participating countries, and for the entire world — emphasizing the growing economic and political centrality of China and its top leader.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the global infrastructure development and trade promotion program, which has been a pillar of China’s foreign policy, and the forum this week is the year’s most prominent opportunity for state-run media to roll out related domestic and international propaganda.

They have not missed the chance. Coverage of the Belt and Road Forum has eclipsed all other stories, including one of the world’s most pressing concerns, the unfolding conflict in Gaza and its potentially disastrous implications for security in the Middle East.

For related coverage of how China has sidelined news of Israel and Gaza this week, see our analysis in the latest Lingua Sinica newsletter on Substack.

The rest of the coverage on the People’s Daily front page today — from the “newspaper eye” (报眼) to the right of the masthead all the way down — are separate reports on Xi’s meetings with foreign leaders visiting Beijing. The result of this approach is that China’s top leader is placed at the front of every headline on the page, ten in all, leading to an odd and unmistakable repetition.

Here is the page again, this time with all instances of “Xi Jinping” outlined in red to make this absurd effect clear.

Why would the People’s Daily treat stories this way? Do the editors and designers completely lack creativity?

The fact is that creativity is not an option. It is not the way that the visual vocabulary of the CCP’s official political discourse works. The People’s Daily applies this odd approach on the front page because this is the most valuable piece of political real estate in the entire Chinese media. The space must be used to achieve one goal: signaling the power of the CCP Central Committee and its top leader.

Unlike most professional media globally, the focus cannot be on news readers as we generally understand them, as an audience of citizens who demand that their time is rewarded with relevant and informative news content. Consider, by way of contrast, how the Financial Times reported this week on US President Joe Biden’s visit to Israel. The focus in that case was on Biden’s message of caution to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Imagine that the Belt and Road Forum were to be reported strictly as news in the People’s Daily. It would not be necessary to treat each meeting with a foreign leader separately. Instead, the story would focus on the key points of relevance — the who, what, when, where and WHY. And in this case, a background paragraph would be sufficient to report attendance by leaders from Egypt, Cambodia, Thailand, Congo, and so on.

Why are all of these meetings published as separate but virtually identical stories with the same Xi Jinping headline?

Once again, the key reason is power signaling — the most crucial role of political discourse in China. Separate stories are an opportunity to stress and re-stress the centrality of Xi himself. Think of them as drumrolls or trumpet calls. The key audience is not the Chinese public, but rather the CCP bureaucracy.

A secondary reason is to stress bilateral relations, and make political nods to foreign leaders, as though to say: “We prioritize you.” This is done with the same hierarchical approach that applies to top CCP leaders, with Xi always mentioned first (and repeatedly) and other members of the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) mentioned only after and with far less prominence.

No other members of the PSC or other senior leaders are mentioned on either the front page or page two of the People’s Daily today. It is only on page three that we finally see mention of Wang Yi (王毅), Director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, and Vice-Premier He Lifeng (何立峰). Both are in tiny headlines down toward the bottom right-hand side of page three.

When visits are reported between China’s top leader and multiple foreign leaders in a single edition of the People’s Daily, the visual treatment of these visits can often reveal the CCP’s prioritization of various bilateral relationships. Putin may have top billing, for example, as was the case in yesterday’s edition of the newspaper — a reflection of the closeness of the relationship in recent years.

On today’s front page, pride of position is given to Mongolia’s leader, with coverage in the space to the right of the masthead, including a photo of Ukhnaagiin Khürelsükh shaking hands with Xi Jinping. This layout choice is likely a reflection of the priority China has lately given to its relations with countries in Central Asia.

For perhaps the same reason, the report directly under the masthead is about Xi’s exchange with Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, who stepped down as president of Turkmenistan last year.

Of course, reading the People’s Daily is also about closely analyzing the text. This does not mean translating the content from Chinese to another language, a common misapplied approach. If your question is simply, “What is the report about?” — you will be missing the most crucial aspects of the discourse and merely flitting across the surface. Or worse, what you present to others as analysis might simply amplify the talking points of the Chinese leadership without promoting a deeper understanding of its agenda.

To understand how this deeper analysis is done, we can look more closely at the Berdymukhamedov report. What can you notice about how he is introduced?

He is referred to in the headline, as well as in the body of the report, as the “nation’s leader of Turkmenistan” (土库曼斯坦民族领袖). This phrase, mínzú lǐngxiù, is an unusual honorific, suggesting charismatic power. It is rarely used, so it is something important to pick up on. Both Mao Zedong and Sun Yat-sen, for example, have been called “leader of the Chinese nation” (中华民族领袖), but over the past year in the People’s Daily the phrase has generally not been used.

Details like this can be important clues for the analyst of CCP discourse. As you “read” the People’s Daily and other official CCP media, it is crucial to zero in on specialized terminologies, or tífǎ (提法), and then work to understand their deeper meanings and histories. You can think of them as stacking blocks that are being constantly stacked and unstacked by those in power to achieve their political objectives, to signal power and to focus the Party around different policy objectives.

One recent example of language to be unstacked is the new grand buzzword “Xi Jinping Thought on Culture” (習近平文化思想). To better understand what this phrase means, and why it is important, read our analysis last week, in which we pulled the phrase apart to get at its core meanings.

With all the talk in recent months in China of “new civilizational splendor” (文明新辉煌) in everything from sports to Marxism, heritage protection to village life, it is impossible not to sit up and take notice of the country’s fulsome messaging on culture. Surely, something must be happening. No? As officials emerged last weekend from the latest Chinese Communist Party work conference, the language mounted further. They unveiled yet another eponymous phrase for the country’s top leader: Xi Jinping Thought on Culture (习近平文化思想).

In the Party’s flagship People’s Daily newspaper, a front-page tribute on Wednesday deemed the phrase a “significant milestone” (里程碑意义), suggesting excitedly that the general secretary had “accurately grasped the trend of mutual ideological and cultural agitation worldwide.” What does all of this nonsense mean? Why is China building the rhetoric over culture and civilization to such dizzying heights?

If we avoid becoming distracted by the monumentality of the cathedral of language before us, and gaze past its gothic flourishes, the answer is deceptively simple. Xi Jinping’s obsession with culture is about the need to disguise basic questions of power and legitimacy behind the elaborate stonework of political discourse.

Grab your chisels. Let’s break this down.

The Nine Adheres

According to explications of “Xi Jinping Thought on Culture” provided this week by the People’s Daily and other official media, Xi’s brand-new cultural concept is actually the culmination of a “series of important speeches” he delivered around two previous meetings on propaganda and ideology.

During these meetings, which have traditionally been called National Propaganda and Ideology Work Conferences (the word “culture” was tellingly added for this latest one), Xi outlined the nature of the CCP’s work on several facets of what can be included under the broader umbrella of culture: “work on literature and the arts” (文艺工作); “the Party’s work on news and public opinion” (党的新闻舆论工作); “cybersecurity and informatization work” (网络安全和信息化工作); “philosophy and social science work” (哲学社会科学工作), and “cultural heritage development” (文化传承发展).

These conferences, in other words, laid the foundation for the “significant milestone” the leadership claims to have reached just six days ago.

To better understand the foundations of “Xi Jinping Thought on Culture,” we can unpack the first of these conferences, held in August 2018, during which Xi Jinping laid out what he called the “Nine Adheres” (九个坚持).

Not surprisingly, given that they are important components of the “Xi Jinping Thought on Culture,” the “Nine Adheres” have been dragged out again this week by Party-run media, and even graphically represented. They are drawn from various speeches Xi has made during his time as the Party’s top leader, including during his first meeting on ideology in August 2013.

Read through the “Nine Adheres” and you will be hard-pressed to find anything whatsoever related to culture or civilization outside the guardrails of political power. There is nothing to do with the arts or artists, with cinema or filmmakers, with publishing or writers, with choreography or dancers. There is nothing to do with music or melodies — save for references to the “main melody” (主旋律), a phrase about the imperative of ensuring the CCP’s voice is dominant.

This point, that the CCP’s driving motivation is the control of culture, may seem painfully obvious. But it is crucial, nevertheless, to clearly acknowledge the foundations. The danger, otherwise, is that we read too much into the elaborate discourse of civilization, and imagine China under the CCP is tipping toward a cultural renaissance, or trying to empower one, rather than cynically leveraging culture to legitimize a one-party authoritarian dictatorship under an emerging cult of personality.

In this vein, one cautionary tale comes from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who after a visit to China in 2009 in which he was inundated with the latest CCP-speak on “cultural sector reforms” claimed in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal that the country was in the constructive throes of a “New Cultural Revolution.”

So let’s look at the “Nine Adheres,” which the People’s Daily tells us is foundational to “Xi Jinping Thought on Culture.” I include the full list below, with remarks.

_______________________

While official Party media claim this week that Xi Jinping has “put forward a series of new ideas, new perspectives, and new assertions” that have culminated in the concept of “Xi Jinping Thought on Culture,” the hard stone of the “Nine Adheres” reminds us that the foundational assertions are about CCP power and the necessity of cultural control in defense of that power.

Of course, even if Xi was a culturally accomplished president — a Havel, Disraeli, or Franco — the suggestion that he has grasped a “cultural agitation worldwide” would be preposterous. The point, however, is that “Xi Jinping Thought on Culture” has nothing whatsoever to do with culture, though we will surely hear in the months to come about Xi’s designs for a cultural refulgence.

To understand this latest new catchphrase, just imagine a soaring cathedral of lavish discourse. The monument, which is named “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for the New Era,” embraces the empty core of CCP power, giving it a seeming solidity. For some time now, there have been five chapels along each side, each a place to worship the god-like achievements of the top leader. There are chapels to foreign policy (习近平外交思想), rule of law (习近平法治思想), the economy (习近平经济思想), environmental policy (习近平生态文明思想), and national defense (习近平强军思想).

Now, in Xi Jinping’s unprecedented third term, the monuments must be all the grander to disguise the hollowness at the core and to expand the space for the necessary rituals of power. A new chapel, the sixth, is erected, giving new symmetry to the structure.

Now unveiled, the chapel of “Xi Jinping Thought on Culture” can be visited, worshipped, and talked about. A grand distraction for China’s grandest leader in generations.

During a dialogue with African leaders and ministers on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Johannesburg on Thursday last week, Xi Jinping pledged to support local industrialization in developing nations in Africa. As this news was reported in party-state media back home, the stress was on the Chinese leader’s language about China’s “developing nation” status. “China has always shared the fate of developing nations,” said Xi. “It has been, is now, and will forever be a member of the developing world!”

Forever is a very long time. And for critics internationally who contend that China is an economic giant receiving undue preferential treatment — including billions in World Bank loans — by virtue of its designation by the United Nations as a “developing nation,” forever will certainly raise questions.

What exactly does Xi Jinping mean?

The Foreverness Wave

Xi Jinping’s address during the Thursday dialogue was front-page news across China the next day. The CCP’s flagship People’s Daily newspaper highlighted the key points, including the language about China’s “developing nation” status, in bright red bullets on the right-hand side of the masthead. Treatments in all other central and provincial-level outlets were virtually identical, with even local Party news shoved to the background.

But as the wave of BRICS coverage was focused through the lens of online and digital outlets, separating the essentials from the verbiage about “win-win cooperation” and a “community of shared destiny,” a single line came through: “China will forever be a member of the developing nations.”

On the news app of The Paper (澎湃), a digital outlet launched in 2014 under the state-run Shanghai United Media Group, this line was the headline and the news brief: “At morning local time on August 24, President Xi Jinping said that China will forever breathe together with the developing nations, share their fate, and that [China] has been, is now, and will forever be a member of the developing world!”

This coverage was echoed in media outlets across the country. In Liaoning province’s official North Country (北国网) portal, run by the Liaoning Daily, on the official Douyin account of The Beijing News, and way down south in Yunnan’s Kaiping News (开屏新闻网). The same was true at Haiwai Online (海外网), a website affiliated with the overseas edition of the official People’s Daily, and on official portal sites in cities across the country, like Changsha.

Forever Since When?

In fact, Xi’s language about the foreverness of China’s developing nation status dates back to at least early April this year, shortly after the United States House of Representatives passed a bill that supported the removal of China’s “developing nation” label at international organizations.

On April 12, a piece in the People’s Daily written by Shi Qing (史青), a pseudonym likely for an official writing group at the newspaper reflecting the central leadership’s view, argued for China’s current status as a developing nation on the basis of various economic measures, before stating in no uncertain terms that the country will forever be “developing” in a political sense. “For China, developing country status has a special political nature,” the commentary said. 

A few days after the People’s Daily commentary, Chinese blogger Lao Ding (老丁) broke the Shi Qing argument down further, pointing out its curious inconsistency with China’s clearly stated ambition to achieve strong and continued development.

“So does ‘forever a member of the family of developing nations’ mean that China intends to ‘lie flat’ and continue to be a developing country?” Lao Ding asked, referencing a recent popular online meme that rejects the call to strive forward, preferring instead a life of sufficiency and balance. “Well, if that’s the case, what is the reason in our current economic efforts? Doesn’t the political report to the 20th National Congress say that by 2035 one of the goals of our country’s development is to reach the level of a mid-range developed nation?”

Lao Ding was not wrong. Xi Jinping’s political report to the 20th National Congress of the CCP had said exactly that, in a section on the Party’s “Missions and Tasks.” By 2035, China was to become a “mid-range developed nation” (中等发达国家).

“I understand it when it comes to love,” wrote Lao Ding. “But what does forever mean?”

He found his answer in the People’s Daily passage about the “political nature” (政治属性) of the “developing nation” label, which included this bit of history:

In 1964, the first United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD I) identified the vast number of countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America that had achieved national liberation after the Second World War and had taken the path of autonomous development as ‘developing countries’ as opposed to developed countries.

The “political nature” of the developing nation, in other words, is about the history and ongoing identity of liberation. Like so much in the Xi era, this political identification is to a great extent a repackaging of longstanding CCP concepts. The notion that China is essential to liberation from colonialism, imperialism and hegemonism has been a centerpiece of China’s foreign policy ever since Mao Zedong sought to unite the “Third World” — now an offensive term, mind you — against the United States and the Soviet Union, and to rally the people of Africa, Asia and Latin America to form a new international order.

Understanding this political definition, it becomes clear why Xi Jinping and the CCP are embracing the “developing nation” label so steadfastly. The label is essential to China’s vision of itself as the central protagonist in the creation of another “new international order” (国际新秩序) that according to Party-state media is more equitable and reasonable, what China and Russia outlined in a joint statement just 20 days before the latter invaded Ukraine.

So, you see, China likely is not now, or at least very soon will not be, a developing nation in an economic sense. Even so, China’s core international identity as a defender against imperialism and hegemonism means for the CCP that it will always have “developing” status politically — regardless of economic development or the improvement of its international status.

One might rightly protest that liberation forever means liberation never. That, however, would prioritize logic over political necessity. For the CCP, there is a distinct political advantage to a global crown of thorns that never slips, no matter how high they tower over their developing cousins.

In a months-long investigation published earlier this month, The New York Times explored the links between a “lavishly funded influence campaign” pushing Chinese state propaganda narratives and American millionaire Neville Roy Singham, long a champion of far-left causes. The report touched on the increasing involvement in China-related work of the anti-war activist organization Code Pink — whose co-founder, the American political activist Jodie Evans, married Singham in 2017.

As the Times report and other sources have noted, Code Pink was openly critical of China’s human rights record prior to 2017. The organization has since moderated that critical stance and the China page of its website focuses on a campaign called “China Is Not Our Enemy,” also the title of a regular webinar series hosted by Evans since 2021, and a dedicated Twitter (X) account.

The campaign’s object is simple enough: taking action to advocate for peace with China in the face of bilateral relations that have grown dangerously strident, and calling for greater dialogue to reduce the risk of conflict. The premise of the campaign is more problematic. Relations have worsened, Code Pink claims, because politicians and media in the United States have stoked confrontation. The group never seriously addresses the legitimate concerns many Americans have about China, including its worsening one-party authoritarian politics, its illiberal approach to human rights, and its broad repression of civil society.

Instead, as Evans explained in a March interview with the often saber-rattling Global Times, a paper published directly under the Chinese Communist Party’s flagship People’s Daily (which is by its own admission an organ of propaganda), Americans “have been watching US propaganda, which drives hatred and fear around China.”

The “China Is Not Our Enemy” campaign drew wider attention back in February this year as a pair of Code Pink demonstrators charged into a House Select Committee hearing on strategic competition with China bearing protest signs with the slogan.

For state-run outlets like the China Daily, published by the government’s Information Office (functionally the same office as the Central Propaganda Department), this and other “China Is Not Our Enemy” protests have shown that there is growing popular resistance to anti-China policies in the US. This was also, wittingly or unwittingly, the reporting frame used by Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, which cited the Select Committee hearing protest as evidence that “frustration with [the] status quo and recognition of [the] high cost of conflict extends beyond seasoned China watchers.”

This might have been wishful thinking. Or it might have been an effort to shift the narrative. In any case, there is no popular revolt over China policy in the US, and current polling shows that a large majority of Americans are concerned about China’s role in the world.

How, then, should we understand the China-related peace activism of Code Pink? What are its real objectives, affinities, and vulnerabilities?

The growing body of reporting on Singham’s network and its amplification of what are clearly Chinese state propaganda talking points should already encourage skepticism about the integrity of Code Pink’s peace-focused China mission. That skepticism only deepens upon closer scrutiny of the goals and language of the organization’s “China Is Not Our Enemy” campaign.

Curious Companions

On the question of Code Pink’s associations with the Singham network, the New York Times reports that based on non-profit records close to a quarter of the organization’s donations since 2017, totaling more than 1.4 million dollars, have come from linked groups. As the Times and others have documented — the 2022 story at New Lines magazine being a must-read — Singham’s network has supported not just progressive causes but has consciously and conscientiously echoed the talking points of the Chinese party-state, including its brutal treatment of ethnic Uyghurs in the far western Xinjiang region.

Even without secondary reporting, however, many of Singham’s associations with the CCP’s external propaganda mechanism, and its movers and shakers, are simple enough to track down. A quick search in Chinese turns up his attendance last month of a forum in Shanghai focusing on “innovating the international image of the Chinese Communist Party,” and “breaking through the Western monopoly on culture and discourse.”

This forum is the “Communist Party workshop” referenced by the Times in its story.

The host of the event was Fudan University’s China Institute, whose director, Zhang Weiwei (张维为), is one of the key architects of Xi Jinping’s external propaganda strategy, and was the keynote speaker at the May 2021 collective study session of China’s Politburo that dealt with the topic of external communication.

For years, Singham has pushed pro-CCP messaging far beyond such private strategy sessions. The Times report tracks funds from non-profits backed by Singham to media around the world that have disseminated what looks and feels like Chinese state propaganda. Examples include Brasil de Fato, a Brazilian online newspaper and video channel that centers on social movements in the country but has regularly published content that praises the Chinese leadership — even running a promo for Xi Jinping’s books on governance.

A quick jump down the rabbit hole of “Tings Marco,” the video series on China run by Brasil de Fato, turns up an “international online forum” held in May 2021 with participation from the Shanghai-based outlet Guancha.cn (观察者网), founded by the Chinese venture capitalist Eric X. Li, which is known for its penchant for state-aligned nationalism (and hosts a regular column by the above-mentioned Zhang Weiwei). The forum, which dealt broadly with the China-Brazil relationship in the context of China-US tensions, was organized by No Cold War and Tricontinental, both Singham-backed groups.

Among the online forum participants was Wang Wen (王文), a professor at Renmin University of China’s Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, a “new type of think tank with Chinese characteristics” founded in 2013. Wang has been a strong proponent for innovative forms of state communication, and in 2018 spoke about a more prominent role for Chinese think-tanks like his within the CCP’s external propaganda. Also attending were the hosts of the “Tings Marco” program at Brasil de Fato, Marco Fernandes and Tings Chak (翟庭君), listed as researchers for Singham’s Tricontinental.

Chak identifies herself on her Twitter (X) account as a Tricontinental researcher, and also a member of “Dongsheng News,” an outlet that the Times story reported was edited by a team in China, under Tricontinental, but had an address linked to the People’s Forum, a New York event space funded by Singham. Chak, who is named by Shanghai’s The Paper as a “joint founder” of Dongsheng News, is also a columnist for Guancha.cn.

Chak, like Singham, has associated closely with CCP entities working directly on external propaganda. In July 2021, she attended an online forum called “Guaranteeing Labor Rights and Good Living for All Ethnic Groups in Xinjiang,” where she spoke on the need to “tell China’s story well” to the Global South. The forum was hosted by the China Foundation for Human Rights Development (中国人权发展基金会), a group overseen, as its 1994 charter makes clear, by the CCP’s Central Propaganda Department.

The threads in Singham’s global network can at times seem complex, but they are the weft and warp of a single fabric. When China’s deputy consul general of Sao Paulo, Tian Yuzhen (田玉震), met with “the Brazilian media Dongsheng News” in December 2022, the representative there to take the meeting was Marco Fernandes, the Tricontinental researcher and co-host of “Tings Marco.”

Another thread in the fabric is Code Pink’s “China Is Not The Enemy” campaign.

In one of her many “China Is Not Our Enemy” webinars, Jodie Evans hosted Tings Chak and Marco Fernandes, presenting the pair as authoritative sources on “what is true about China.” The chat was co-branded with the People’s Forum, Singham’s New York event space, and also Qiao Collective, an avowedly Leftist online outlet associated with Singham that idealizes China as a communist country and uncritically accepts the frames of its state media.

“We are showered with lies and distortion,” Evans said at the start of the April 2021 webinar. She then yielded the stage to Chak and Ferdandes, who offered glowing assessments of China’s enlightened governance through its policy of “targeted poverty alleviation,” a high-profile political campaign formally announced by Xi Jinping in July 2015, with the goal of lifting 70 million Chinese out of extreme poverty by 2020, within six years. Among other measures, the campaign called for the creation of anti-poverty leading groups at all levels of the national bureaucracy, with officials responsible for meeting quotas.

Swallowing the Hook on the Party Line

The achievements of China’s anti-poverty campaign have been closely intertwined with Code Pink’s China-related advocacy since the launch of the “China Is Not Our Enemy” in 2020. The organization has lionized the country’s anti-poverty efforts, accepting uncritically the facts and talking points of the party-state — as in this TikTok video, which argues that while the US is focused only on individual prosperity, “China is focusing on people and collective prosperity.”

While there have no doubt been measured positive developments as a result of China’s poverty alleviation campaign, the full story is much more complicated. The campaign, which has required Xi Jinping’s consolidation of control over society, is typical of movements pursued in China’s past through “campaign-style governance,” a symptom of poor institutionalization in communist regimes. In such cases, the powerful leader commands action from the top, and the effects ripple down as cadres rush to demonstrate their loyalty and obedience.

One scholar studying China’s poverty alleviation policy in 2019 wrote that “the political assignment is so tough that local governments have had to mobilize almost their entire workforce of cadres and all their resources to carry it out.” This can have unfortunate consequences as political priorities and resources shift myopically to the problem at hand. In June 2019, for example, the Hong Kong-based China Labour Bulletin learned from local trade union officials in Sichuan province that they were unaware of a serious ongoing case of unpaid wages for construction workers, and had taken no action, because the demands of poverty alleviation had become all-consuming:

I think your suggestions [about collective bargaining] are very good, yet we have a heavy burden with poverty alleviation right now. All officials in the western rural areas have to participate in it, not just trade union officials, but all government officials now.

This is one of many cases of this kind that the group has documented through direct contact with officials in the national union bureaucracy — with an impact on the livelihoods of workers that should be obvious.

Another serious drawback of “campaign-style governance” is that it necessitates society-wide propaganda to sustain the movement, manufacture and amplify successes, and disguise failures. What Chinese leaders have termed a “comprehensive victory in the battle over poverty” is a tale not just of political will but of determined and pre-planned propaganda.

This too can be documented. In January 2021, shortly after Xi Jinping formally declared victory in his push to eradicate poverty, CMP tracked the making of local myths from the mid-2010s like that of Dong Heqin (董贺勤), a once impoverished farmer from Anhui province who had managed to dramatically turn his fortunes around with the help from local anti-poverty officials. In fact, from 2017 onward, China’s government made an active push to foster the creation of “poverty alleviation and prosperity leaders” (脱贫致富带头人) in poor areas across the country, seen as critical to the overall poverty alleviation strategy, which itself included a section on “adhering to propaganda models.”

But for Code Pink, drinking liberally from the fountain of the Singham network, the tales, however tall, are demonstrably true. “China’s successful efforts to lift millions of people out of poverty” are the real story, and any reporting or context that suggests otherwise is evidence of a broader conspiracy of US censorship and bias — also a strikingly familiar theme for those who specialize in China’s official discourse.

In November 2020, not long after the launch of the “China Is Not Our Enemy” Twitter account, the Los Angeles Times ran an in-depth news feature with factual news reporting that complicated the CCP’s triumphal narrative about its poverty eradication victories.

Sharing a post from the Singham associated Qiao Collective, Code Pink responded hotly that the US media were “threatened by an alternative to capitalist, imperialist hegemony.” Soon after, Code Pink shared another post from Qiao Collective that unquestioningly passed along a press release from the Information Office of the State Council. It referred readers to a list of additional state media sources, including CGTN, the international broadcasting arm of the CCP’s official China Central Television — which is directly under the China Media Group (CMG) and Central Propaganda Department — and the CCP-run journal Seeking Truth (求是), which since 2018 has topped each of its issues with a speech from Xi Jinping.

Also among the Qiao Collective recommendations shared by Code Pink was the documentary Voices from the Frontline: China’s War on Poverty, which would quickly become a key advocacy point for the organization’s China work.

The hourlong documentary, which purports to tell “the inside story of China’s race to eradicate all extreme poverty by the end of the year 2020,” is directed by Emmy Award-winning director Peter Getzels, and co-produced by the Los Angeles-based foundation of international corporate strategist Robert Lawrence Kuhn and the local affiliate of the publicly-funded Public Broadcasting Service, PBS SoCal.

PBS SoCal aired the documentary on May 11-12, 2020, but by month’s end had launched an internal review of the film after PBS said it failed to meet its editorial standard of objectivity. The fundamental issue was the involvement in the film project of CGTN. As the public editor at PBS, Ricardo Sandoval-Palos, explained in a response following hundreds of furious letters on both sides of the issue, the Kuhn-hosted film had gone “a step too far” by giving “the co-production role to China Global Television Network, the nation’s principal and government-run broadcaster.” It appeared to Sandoval-Palos, moreover, that “the filmmaker downplayed CGTN’s co-producer role with an unobtrusive mention near the end of the credit roll.”

We Are Appalled, PBS

Alleging that the film had been “censored in the US,” Code Pink responded with a petition campaign asking supporters to write PBS with their objections. The form letter from Code Pink, still one of the organization’s top China campaigns, asked how PBS can “censor a documentary by a widely respected public intellectual,” which moreover has “done us a service by laying out the techniques and the 5 levels of government that coordinated to bring 800 million people out of extreme poverty.” Further, the letter expressed shock that PBS would give credence to allegations from “the conservative publication The Daily Caller,” which had called the film “pro-China.”

On the first issue raised by Code Pink, the question of Kuhn as “an expert on China,” many long-time China observers would twist uncomfortably. Kuhn seems most in his element when parroting the language of his official contacts and state media handlers, and his sycophancy toward the Chinese leadership can be nauseating. For an unctuous case in point, look no further than his article this month in the People’s Daily, in which he praises Xi Jinping a grand total of 14 times as he urges the need for “people-to-people” exchanges to improve US-China relations.

But what matters more than the question of Kuhn’s expertise is the plain fact of his long-standing association with the state-run CGTN, where he is a regular columnist and program host. That fact goes to the heart of the issue Sandoval-Palos raised about the objectivity and goals of the film.

If, as the public editor at PBS suggested, Voices from the Frontline was indeed co-produced by CGTN rather than independently by Kuhn and his director, Peter Getzels, then concerns about the program’s objectivity owing to the direct involvement of a Chinese state-run media outlet under the guidance of the CCP’s Central Propaganda Department would have to be taken seriously. The question of whether the film has “done us a service” also hangs on this crucial point.

So what do we know about the production of Voices from the Frontline? As it happens, we do not require the conservative grumblings of The Daily Caller to tell us the film is “pro-China.” China spells it out for us in Chinese, even if the issue is not so readily communicated in English.

In an article on external propaganda in late 2020, Li Bo (李波) of Fudan University’s China Institute — which readers may recall hosted the event Singham attended last month — wrote that the core of telling China’s story was telling the CCP’s story. Kuhn’s documentary, he suggested, was a fine example: “With the support of the Organization Department of the Chinese Communist Party, the film’s host and contributor, Robert Lawrence Kuhn, accompanied the US filming crew in visiting impoverished families in Guizhou, Gansu, Shanxi, Sichuan, Hainan, and Xinjiang, and interviewed leading Party members and cadres at all levels, from the central government to townships, to tell truly touching stories.”

At roughly the same time, China Report, a magazine published by the state-run China International Communications Group, interviewed Kuhn, who told much the same story about the film: “Our international crew, led by award-winning US director Peter Getzels, worked with the Organization Department of the CCP’s Central Committee, the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development, and our production partner, CGTN, to travel across China in an unprecedented way and delve deeper into large-scale poverty alleviation projects.”

This high-level CCP involvement in the production of the film is clear enough from the jacket of the video as it was released in China in April 2019, more than a year ahead of its PBS SoCal airing. It lists as producers the State Council Leading Group along with the China Media Group (CMG), the CCP media conglomerate that encompasses CCTV and its international arm, CGTN. Kuhn is identified only as a host and writer.

If there is any suggestion that these entities simply assisted in the production of what was an otherwise independent project by providing access to villages in China, this is called into question by a description of current work on the website of director Peter Getzels’ production company, updated sometime between March and September 2017, according to Wayback Machine. There Getzels mentions that he is “currently in production on a third series of CHINA’S CHALLENGES, as well as a one-off documentary about poverty for China Global Network Television (the English-speaking branch of CCTV).”

Getzels’ language makes clear that this was a CGTN project from the get-go, and we know from the Organization Department involvement that the priority was high and senior. The timing is also significant. It places the start of the Voices from the Frontline project in the months leading up to the 19th National Congress of the CCP in October 2017, at exactly the time when promotion efforts for the poverty-alleviation campaign were heating up as a key component of Xi Jinping’s bid for continued power consolidation. In China, the trumpet blows before the victory.

None of these facts, in all likelihood, could put a kink in the Code Pink narrative. The tall tale came again last month as Jodie Evans was interviewed for a podcast program called The Bridge:

A United States capitalist went to China to understand how China took everyone out of poverty. He hired an award-winning filmmaker. He took him to China. They took a lot of footage. They came back and edited it in the United States, got PBS (which is funded by US taxpayer money) to produce the video — and they showed it one time, and have now censored it. Because, Oh my God, it makes Beijing look too good.

Too good, indeed.

Podcast listeners who are interested can tune in to the rest of Evans’ interview on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. They might wish to know, however, in the interest of transparency, informed choice, and integrity, who is really behind the program. No, not Singham. But close. The Bridge is funded by CGTN.