Foreign filmmakers offer advice on making China’s message more appealing to rest of world

The organiser, an affiliate of the Communist Party’s publicity department, says it wants to address the problem of ‘cliched and ineffective’ messaging

Event comes at a time of rising tensions and increasingly negative views of China abroad, especially in the West

Reading Time:3 minutes

The organisers said messaging that worked for a domestic audience would not convince foreigners. Photo: AP

Published: 11:30pm, 22 Jun 2023Updated: 1:13am, 23 Jun 2023

Foreign filmmakers and producers took part in an online event in Beijing designed to teach more than 10,000 government officials, academics, journalists and diplomats how to make their message more appealing to foreign audiences.

The full-day webinar on Tuesday was organised by the China Centre for International Communication Development (CCICD), an affiliate of the Communist Party’s central publicity department. It is part of a project launched last year to sponsor documentaries about China and to foster collaboration between Chinese and foreign producers.

The speakers included three foreign documentary directors based in China, including Oscar-winner Malcolm Clarke, four Chinese documentary producers and an executive from the Discovery Channel.

A summary of the event on the CCICD’s social media accounts said the webinar aimed to address the ineffectiveness of messages targeting international audiences because it adopts the same tone as those aimed at domestic audiences, which foreigners do not find convincing.

“There is no distinction between external and internal propaganda, and external propaganda has become like internal propaganda. It is a challenge and a pain for the current international communication work,” it said.

“China is never short of good stories. But why do so many narratives that tell a good China story end up being cliched or fail to deliver the message?”