Hong Kong protests put Chinese state media’s drive to win over an international audience to the test
- Official news organisations have been turning up the volume on the city’s pro-democracy demonstrations, but it remains to be seen how many people will listen
- State media has spent billions of dollars trying to build its audience ‘for moments like these’ when it wants to counter the prevailing Western narrative
China’s international media outlets have intensified their drive to promote the official line on the Hong Kong protests with increasingly vocal condemnations of the demonstrations in recent weeks.
Some of the coverage by the international arms of Chinese state media – promoted largely through videos posted on major social media platforms – marks a significant shift in tone and content as they seek to push the message that foreign influences are at work and play up violent incidents.
Over the past decade the central government has spent an estimated US$6.6 billion expanding its international media presence as part of its efforts to make its voice heard abroad.
“The Chinese government has invested so much, and it’s just for these kinds of moments,” said Clayton Dube, director of the University of Southern California US-China Institute.
“They don’t want the situation in Hong Kong to be defined exclusively by [Western] news organisations.
“They want their voice to be in that mix, but they realise that these trusted news organisations didn’t just pop up, [their reputation] is something that developed over an extended period of time and an extended number of issues.”