Behind the Propaganda Wars / China wages ¥880 billion global media campaign
The Yomiuri Shimbun
The Yomiuri ShimbunThis is the fourth installment of a series on China and South Korea’s propaganda wars against Japan.
On April 25, China Central Television’s English-language news program “CCTV News” reported on U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to Japan from April 23 to 25.
In flawless English, the anchor told viewers of lingering uncertainty in the Japan-U.S. relationship over Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s views on history and the stalemated negotiations over the Trans-Pacific Partnership regional free trade pact.
Yet the report hardly mentioned that during the visit Obama had made clear for the first time that the Senkaku Islands fall under Article 5 of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty.
Nor did it inform viewers that a Japan-U.S. joint statement had declared the two nations “have identified a path forward on important bilateral TPP issues.”
On the other hand, Obama’s statement at a press conference earlier in the day in South Korea, the next stop on Obama’s Asia tour after Japan, that the treatment of so-called comfort women during World War II was “a terrible, egregious violation of human rights” was covered by CCTV News in detail.
CCTV’s English-language news program is currently broadcast in about 100 countries, reaching a potential 85 million viewers.
It has hired Phillip Yin, a former anchor at Bloomberg Television in the United States, and Mike Walter, an Emmy award winner who has anchored the morning news for CBS, as part of a crew covering a wide range of topics, from world affairs to economics and culture.
In addition to English, CCTV also broadcasts in French, Spanish, Russian and Arabic, which, along with Chinese, are the six official languages of the United Nations.
CCTV also broadcasts online in 12 languages. In 2012, it opened production centers in the United States and Kenya as part of an effort to create programs catering to regional tastes.
This bold overseas push by the Chinese media comes with major financial backing from the Chinese government.
The Chinese government in 2009 and 2010 alone invested $8.7 billion (about ¥880 billion) in CCTV, China Radio International, Xinhua News Agency, and The China Daily, an English newspaper, according to reports in the May/June 2012 issue of the Columbia Journalism Review, a U.S. media journal.
This dwarfs the yearly operating expenses of NHK World TV, which are about ¥15 billion.
CCTV News’ focus on the “uncertain elements” in Japan-U.S. relations hint strongly at the influence of government policy on news produced by the Chinese media.
But according to Yasuhiro Matsuda, a professor at the University of Tokyo and member of the Japanese government’s advisory panel on communications concerning territorial integrity, the positions put forth by Chinese state-run media outlets “cannot be said to have had much impact among Western intellectuals and policymakers.”
Comcast Corp., the largest U.S. cable TV provider, dropped CCTV in 2007 because of low ratings.
However, China’s well-funded offensive has had a certain influence on European and U.S. society among the general populace.
According to the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry, 20 percent of people surveyed in Washington were aware of CCTV, while only 13 percent knew of NHK World TV. In Europe, there was a similarly large gap with 22 percent recognizing CCTV and 10 percent NHK World TV.
But the situation is not merely a war of resources. The Chinese government is seeking to increase the power of its international reporting brand.
In October 2009, China hosted a global media summit in Beijing, at which former President Hu Jintao addressed top executives of the world’s leading media firms, including the Associated Press, Reuters and the BBC.
The Chinese Communist Party in October 2011 declared its intention to become a “culturally powerful nation” with a world-class media.
Worried about being left behind, the Japanese government began around 2008 to reform its international television broadcasts aimed at foreigners, such as by supporting a transition to English at NHK World TV.
Kumi Yokoe, a former senior visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation who has studied CCTV’s expansion into the United States, said: “[Japan] cannot go about things in the same way as China. Japan needs to think seriously about its strategy for what it wants to convey and what it wants to gain.”
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