Today as I write this review, toggling between Word and social media on my laptop, China Daily used Twitter (blocked in China) to recast an image of people protesting the anti-extradition bill in Hong Kong as a demonstration of their support for stability and the Hong Kong Police; Xinhua asked about “foreign interference” in Hong Kong at an extra-ordinary press conference of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office dealing with the protests (the State Council banned all mainland Chinese media from carrying the press conference); China Global Television Network published a piece lauding Carrie Lam's “support for Hong Kong youth” through a military summer camp with the PLA Hong Kong Garrison; Wen Wei Po [mis-]identified New York Times journalists covering the protests as “foreign protest commanders”; and the reliably intemperate Global Times framed protesters as “traitors.” Even in this era of “fake news” and “alternative facts” Chinese state media is keeping up a torrid pace (and these examples are merely a selection from their outward-facing operations).
The publication of a study on the organization, strategy and mechanics of Chinese propaganda by an author with 20 years’ experience working as a journalist and news executive in Hong Kong could hardly be timelier. Luwei Rose Luqiu has seen how censorship works in practice and has experienced what it means for news professionals to navigate the shifting censorship regime, circumvent restrictions and counter “alternative narratives” of the type noted above. Within this book the author investigates: the relationship between nationalism and government propaganda, with cases studies on media framing of movements in Tibet, Xinjiang, Taiwan and Hong Kong; the effects of nationalist propaganda on people's attitudes towards issues like Tibetan independence and Hong Kong's democracy movement; and responses by locally owned Hong Kong media and social-movement organizations to counter PRC state propaganda.
There are many interesting findings derived from a series of well-designed empirical mini-studies. The author details the repertoire of controlling methods employed by the Chinese state to “harmonize” (my word) Hong Kong's media sphere: direct investment, co-optation, personal threats, cutting advertising revenue and launching digital attacks (p. 79). Although outside the scope of this book, these interventions have recently been unleashed in Taiwan's media, where Chinese influence is an increasing concern. The author finds that the “hostile media effect” works in the PRC but backfires in Hong Kong, part of the broader conclusion that Chinese propaganda works efficiently on the PRC mainland, but with less success outside. The author presents evidence to show how Chinese people modify their behaviour to accommodate cues from state propaganda, not because they believe them, and not because they are under any illusion that they represent the truth, but simply to avoid drawing attention to themselves by appearing to defy authority (p. 119). This finding dovetails with recent research on the difficulty of conducting survey work in China, where respondents defensively over-report levels of support, confidence and trust in government.
One argument that is not fully developed is that “the ultimate goal of CCP propaganda is to strengthen the regime's capacity to resist foreign influence” (p. 84). That argument resonates with the state's apparent pre-occupation with “black hands” purportedly operating in Hong Kong, but doesn't quite capture the full motivation for China's authoritarian information regime. For that, the go-to studies are Anne-Marie Brady's Marketing Dictatorship: Propaganda and Thought Work in Contemporary China (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008) and Maria Repnikova's Media Politics in China: Improvising Power under Authoritarianism (Cambridge University Press, 2017). There is little cause for optimism in this book, although the author does find examples of resistance amid “the onslaught” of propaganda and censorship, and claims (intriguingly) that “more people are involved and they are more powerful than we have been led to believe” (p. 79).
There are some issues with this book. A slim 120 pages, the first part is definition-heavy with clunky passages (“the term propaganda dates to 1622 when the Roman Catholic Church…” p. 1) and sluggish presentation of methods. It reads like a cautiously constructed PhD thesis, indeed in regrettable oversight the author refers to “this dissertation” in the introduction and conclusion. There are avoidable errors in language (even in chapter headings, such as “Measure nationalist propaganda strategy in close society”) that hinder the fluency. It contains speculative statements such as predicting that Xi Jinping “will likely be in power for the rest of his life” (p. 121). And it misses some key literature; neither of the two go-to books referenced above is cited, while Molly Robert's instant classic, Censored: Distraction and Diversion inside China's Great Firewall (Princeton, 2018), probably came out too late to be consulted.
Chinese state propaganda within and without the boundaries of mainland China is a pressing issue of our time, and this book is an encouraging sign that researchers have the conceptual and methodological tools to help us make sense of how it works, to what effect and how to counter it.
