Social media influencers are a product of our times. Many of them fit into a niche like lifestyle, tech, fitness, fashion, beauty, or travel subjects. Often, they use their channels to push a product/service or a cause.
Given their growing prominence with audiences, there are some social media influencers — in this case, foreigners — being used by China’s despotic communist regime, as outlined in the report “Singing from the CCP’s Songsheet” by the independent think tank Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) released on November 24, 2023.
“China’s influencer market is booming & foreigners are getting in on the action,” said Fergus Ryan, one of the report’s authors via X, formerly Twitter.
“While many avoid politics, a growing cadre, tempted by traffic, profits & plaudits are aligning their content to CCP-approved narratives,” he said, using the acronym for the Chinese Communist Party.
“The PRC’s censorship regime cloisters its ppl in an info environment that’s cut off from the rest of the world & primed with a nationalistic ideology,” he said. “Nationalism sells, & foreigners know it. It’s a shortcut to viral fame.”
As pointed out in his report, some of the influencers have tens of millions of followers in China and millions more on overseas platforms, particularly on TikTok, YouTube, and X.
Social media warfare
Ryan with Matt Knight and Daria Impiombato wrote in their report that while the CCP is wary of foreigners “infiltrating China’s information space,” they are actively cultivating “a rising group of foreign influencers with millions of fans, which endorses pro-CCP narratives on Chinese and global social-media platforms.”
The report outlines how the regime uses media in all its formats to eliminate rival narratives while promoting the CCP’s “main melody” a Party term for themes or narratives that promote its values, policies, and ideology.
“Foreign influencers who are amenable to being ‘guided’ towards voicing that main melody are increasingly considered to be valuable assets,” the report said.
“They’re seen as building the CCP’s legitimacy for audiences at home, as well as supporting propaganda efforts abroad.”
As part of that, these influencers promote or defend the CCP’s position on sensitive political issues, such as territorial disputes or human rights concerns, i.e. what is occurring in Xinjiang.
Given that social media is a relatively new and ever-growing space, the report points out that these foreign influencers are involved in a wave of the CCP’s experimentation and innovation in domestic and external propaganda efforts, which includes how the regime tried to control global narratives about COVID-19 in China.
Influencing the influencers
The report also said that the CCP has effectively co-opted an extensive network of international students at Chinese universities, cultivating them as a talent pool of young, multilingual, social-media-friendly influencers.
“Foreign influencers are guided via rules, regulations and laws, as well as via platforms that direct traffic towards user-generated propaganda,” the report said.
“Video competitions organised by propaganda organs and the amplification of party-state media and government spokespeople further encourage this trend. The resulting party-aligned content foreign influencers produce, coupled with that of party-state media workers masquerading as influencers and state-approved ethnic-minority influencers are part of a coordinated tactic referred to as ‘polyphonous communication.’”
Foreign voices, Chinese scripts
Through its coordination efforts, the CCP seeks to use foreign influencers and other communicators to create a “unified choir of voices capable of promoting party narratives” that is more effective than the regime’s typical official media.
“The ultimate goal is to shield CCP-controlled culture, discourse, and ideology from the dangers of foreign and free political speech, thereby safeguarding the party’s legitimacy,” the report says.
It’s another strategy, it says, that shows the regime’s determination to defend itself against foreign influence and shape global narratives in its favor, including through covert means.
“As one party-state media worker put it, the aim is to ‘help cultivate a group of “foreign mouths”, “foreign pens”, and “foreign brains” who can stand up and speak for China at critical moments’,” the report says.
Beijing is launching multilingual influencer studios to develop both domestic and foreign influencers in order to reach younger media consumers globally, the report points out.
“CCP-aligned influencer content has helped boost the prevalence of party-approved narratives on YouTube, outperforming more credible sources on issues such as Xinjiang due to search-engine algorithms that prioritise fresh content and regular posting,” it said.
The report suggests the regime’s use of foreign influencers has been successful in that it can confuse the outside world.
“The CCP’s growing use of foreign influencers reinforces China’s internal and external narratives in ways that make it increasingly difficult for social-media platforms, foreign governments, and individuals to distinguish between genuine and/or factual content and propaganda. It further complicates efforts to counter disinformation and protect the integrity of public discourse and blurs the line between independent voices and those influenced by the party’s narratives.”
The report pointed out that the CCP is using foreign influencers to enable its propaganda to stealthily infiltrate mainstream overseas media, including major U.S. cable TV outlets.
Global deception
The CCP’s use of foreign influencers is part of its massive propaganda machine that has gone global, something we’ve covered before on multiple occasions. A recent article featured a U.S. State Department report that said Beijing spends billions of dollars annually to manipulate global information and promote its version of digital authoritarianism.
“Beijing’s information manipulation spans propaganda, disinformation, and censorship. Unchecked, the PRC’s efforts will reshape the global information landscape, creating biases and gaps that could even lead nations to make decisions that subordinate their economic and security interests to Beijing’s,” said the report released on September 28, 2023.
