Cadres learn to become spin doctors to handle foreign media in Tibet

Fifty cadres from ethnic Tibetan areas are being trained as foreign propaganda specialists in an unprecedented three-month programme that is part of China's international public relations campaign.

Commissioned by the Communist Party Central Committee's International Communication Office, it is being held in Beijing, at the Communication University of China. The 50 officials taking part handle the foreign press relations in Tibet and areas with large Tibetan populations in Sichuan, Yunnan, Gansu and Qinghai .

The Southern Metropolis News said: 'Tibet-related news coverage has for a long time been a bottleneck in China's management of the region. This bottleneck has also affected China's overall image in the world.'

At a high-level work conference on Tibet in January last year, Beijing also said it planned to train its own teams of scholars in Tibetan studies and living Buddhas, to help spread information about Tibet and to 'dissipate misunderstandings and biases'.

'Tibetan splittists' used propaganda to smear China and 'China's traditional way of propaganda' was not effective, The Southern Metropolis News said.

The students would be taught to pay more attention to providing details and anecdotes when answering questions instead of giving figures and concepts, it said.