Cai Qi, a high-ranking Communist Party official, has called on China’s propaganda workers to “cultivate mainstream public opinion” in a way that rallies the people to “work together in unity,” particularly when it comes to positive economic news.
Cai, a member of the all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee under General Secretary Xi Jinping, wants the party to “forge souls” by “upholding the correct orientation of public opinion and strengthening economic propaganda.”
Speaking at the National Propaganda Ministers' Conference on Jan. 4, Cai also called for “a more effective international communication system” to spread Beijing’s ideas to the rest of the world.
A senior journalist who gave only the surname Gao for fear of reprisals said the conference was largely concerned with whitewashing the “hellscape” that is the current economic situation.
“That includes the economic downturn, the fact that they spent so much trying to prop up the stock market, only to have it fall again, and also the continual occurrence of social revenge incidents and car attacks,” Gao told RFA Mandarin in a recent interview.
They believe they can achieve this by manipulating public opinion, he said.
What is public opinion management?
The idea that the Communist Party should ensure that all media are on message when covering breaking news and major events can be traced back to documents in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre, criticizing ousted Premier Zhao Ziyang for telling the media it can “open up a little bit.”
This openness was blamed for allowing all manner of public criticism of the government to emerge in state media, and blamed for enabling the protests that were quashed in a bloody crackdown by the People’s Liberation Army on the night of June 3, 1989.
The idea has become a dominant one under Xi, who ordered the media to align themselves completely with the ruling party in a speech made on a landmark visit to several state media outlets.
According to Xi, the party’s news and public opinion mission is to provide guidance, to serve the “overall situation” -- the party’s grip on power -- and to unite and influence the people. It should also communicate with the rest of the world.
“All news reports must adhere to the correct orientation,” he said in his 2016 speech. “Any news report has an orientation. What to report, what not to report, and how to report it all involve positions, views, and attitudes.”
“When a piece of news appears in the newspaper, how much attention will the masses pay? What kind of impact will it have on the people? Will it have a negative impact on social stability and development? These should be the primary considerations,” he said.
Xi is adamant that only views and information that serve the party’s interests should appear in state media outlets, but he has also expanded that policy since taking power in 2012 to cover anything that is posted online, including private posts and comments.
How does the party manage public opinion?
The Central Propaganda Department has long managed state media content with behind-the-scenes phone calls and other directives to editorial staff.
Since the advent of the internet and social media, the government has invested massively in monitoring and policing everything that is posted online, in addition to the Great Firewall of blocks and filters that prevents unauthorized overseas content from being viewed by China’s 900 million internet users.
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China to Train ’50-Cent Army' in Online Propaganda
In 2014, Xinhua announced a certified training course for the “50-cent army” of online propagandists who are paid to manipulate public opinion by posting and retweeting comments favorable to the government.
The exact numbers of people grouped under the “50-cent army” is unknown, and many are employed by separate organizations under different job titles.
But they share the same role: to try to swing the opinions of China’s increasingly frustrated citizens in Beijing’s favor, posting pro-government opinions and trying to deflect criticism and dissent.
Provincial governments have followed suit, with Guangdong rolling out a program to train 10,000 “opinion-makers” in 2012 following mass protests in the rebel village of Wukan.
And it’s not just official bodies that do this. A 2022 directive from the Cyberspace Administration made commercial service providers responsible for monitoring and deleting comments on their platforms, as well as requiring them to hold personal details about users and to take action against anyone causing trouble.
The government is also extending its “patriotic education” program in schools and universities to ensure that the nation’s young people are fully versed in politically “correct” views from kindergarten upwards.
Is everything on the Chinese internet written by the government?
No, and the authorities have been cracking down in recent weeks on “trolls” who post clickbait, false advertising and controversial content to drive traffic to a site for financial gain.
Such “trolls” have been engaging in “homogenous copywriting,” manipulation of comments, hyping up search terms and giving a fake sense of popularity for online stores and celebrities, according to the Cyberspace Administration.
Many pro-government commentators -- known as “little pinks” -- aren’t paid at all, but are expressing a nationalistic fervor they learned from an early age.
While their strident online activity demonstrates to the world that their Communist Party credentials are in the right place, their more extreme comments are sometimes frowned upon by officials if they get in the way of policy priorities.
The authorities are also concerned that Chinese internet users continue look for information on social media that goes beyond what the official media are permitted to report -- people also use circumvention software to get around blocked overseas sites like X and Facebook, where China-related news is more freely available.
The party propaganda machine regards any information it didn’t approve as a “rumor,” and goes to considerable lengths to stop anyone taking on the role of citizen journalist, most notably during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan, when police detained and later jailed several bloggers for reporting from the front line.
The Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission is currently setting up a unified “rumor-refuting mechanism” to “proactively respond to social concerns and authoritatively refute rumors,” which it described at a meeting in December 2024 as “an important measure to maintain online political and ideological security.”
Translated with additional reporting by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.