China increases spending 500% to influence America | Hacker News Reader

China increases spending 500% to influence America

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126 pointsthrowkeep125 comments

Chinese propaganda is just so... Tone deaf. Give me a couple million dollars and a couple interns and I'm pretty sure I could do better than any of its existing organs. This isn't a particularly high bar: you could probably do better just by doing nothing.

Indian propaganda is similar (I'm more familiar with it, being Indian).

You can see the parallels in how both talk about their hated minorities (Uyghurs and Kashmiris/Muslims)

My favorite was a recent Twitter account with a teenage profile picture, she/they pronouns, BLM, proud feminist, and TRUMP2020 all in the bio, and all it did was claim that Uyghurs are really being educated and that the decline in birth rates among Uyghurs by ~50% in one year, according to Chinese gov't statistics is just because they are being liberated, and basically all sorts of other genocide denial.

Do you happen to remember a Twitter handle? I bet one could use a single one of them to discover a whole network of these.

I don't, but they're easy to spot because they look really leftist and they often post about the left-wing news of the moment while at the same time downplaying Uighur atrocities. They often mostly retweet and are poor in communication when they comment. Here's one example:

https://twitter.com/Weed1_ch (mostly retweets, tweets are usually quote tweets with one word like "Xinjiang?" attached)

When this account actually comments, it barely makes sense:

https://twitter.com/Weed1_ch/status/1393091998589071360

And this strange Palestinian liberation + Uyghur genocide denial is hallmark of China (who has to straddle both positions due to the geopolitics of opposing the US).

Did you just compared treatment of Uyghurs in China with Kashmiri/Muslims in India ?

Last I checked Indian govt is not holding minority in reeducation camps or removing every trace of cultural heritage.

One can note certain rhetorical similarities without holding that in every aspect China and India are doing the same thing.

What is India doing ?

What do you think are examples of Chinese propaganda? If it was good, I don't think we'd be able to tell.

I agree that good propaganda wouldn't be easily discernable as propaganda.

I'm skeptical that the same organizations that run the shitty Twitter fake accounts can simultaneously run actually effective programs. It'd be like Apple simultaneously being Apple and also running a shitty Etsy storefront that sells amateurish coffee cozies.

I don't see why we couldn't have both good and bad propaganda. It would be a good way to throw people off, like you in this case. Regardless, there are probably many somewhat independent groups participating, of various ability. I doubt this is being done by just one micromanaged group.

I suspect that HN-oriented propaganda will look more like academic publications, VC investors and job offers.

https://www.youtube.com/c/%E5%A4%A7%E6%A0%91%E5%90%9BTreeMan...

https://www.youtube.com/c/%E6%BB%87%E8%A5%BF%E5%B0%8F%E5%93%...

Here's a medium post describing how they've been recruiting Western YouTubers: https://medium.com/swlh/how-china-is-influencing-youtubers-i...

Tourism has always been a way of propaganda.

Look into what are sold as the most attractive places to visit in a country. See that those places always sell a narrative as to why they're important for the country and unique in the world.

The US tourism industry basically sells NYC, Disney, Las Vegas and LA. NYC's best-known landmark? The Statue of Liberty, selling a narrative of a country of industrious immigrants. Disney? It's basically 50% of children's cultural consumption all around the world. Las Vegas, LA? Consumption and media.

For the record, the CIA used to sponsor a lot of artists and musicians around the world in the 70s as a way of promoting art the idea of the US a place of cultural and technological refinement, much in the same way that the soviets pretty much gave away math and engineering university books of the highest caliber.

What does the Chinese cultural industry sell? The Wall of China, properties associated with imperial dynasties, and more recently industry fairs.

The US has few historical monuments.

But it has national parks. There’s also only one Grand Canyon and only so many Death Valleys.

I'd argue there are many centuries-old historical monuments in the US, they're just primarily in one region, The Atlantic coast.

China allows tourism, but I don’t think its present leadership considers it among the major ways to win hearts and minds. Restrictions on where foreigners are allowed to sleep at night remain in place, tourists are subject to the Great Firewall during their time in the country unless they know how to get around that, and some parts of the country that were quite open in the late 20th century and early millennium (Xinjiang, Tibet) are now much harder to access. Most of the post-Soviet countries hungry for tourism income and extension of soft power eventually lifted those kinds of hassles on visitors.

>> What do you think are examples of Chinese propaganda?

How about cancel culture? It may have started in the US, but I'm sure they're happy to stoke the flames. Or what about the phenomenon a teenagers thinking they're transgender? Sure some people are, but among teenagers today it's becoming sort of a fad (cult even) and it's heavily promoted on TikTok and other social media. Anything to create sharp divides of is something they might promote even if they didn't start it, it doesn't have to be pro-China propaganda.

This is my favorite example:

https://twitter.com/chenweihua/status/1334561058799964164

Promotion of the world covid lockdowns. If you read the literature from the attorneys that have analyzed the timeline (Michael P Senger, Reiner Fuellmich et al), the idea of the lockdown came directly from western academics directly influenced by China.

lockdowns in responses to pandemics have been around since medieval times. The quarantine is probably the oldest social measure against disease (in fact the word derives from the Italian phrase for '40 days' because that's how long Venician ships needed to stay isolated at ports). You think the fact that people in different places came up with the idea of "people spread diseases, so people need to stay in their homes" at the same time is some sort of 21st century academic influence campaign?

There's a difference between quarantining the sick and a lockdown of the general public. There has not been any serious peer-reviewed literature on locking down a population in modern history. I do not think jumping straight to a global lockdown on a whim because "China did it" is responsible and justified? If you do the research, you'll see that all the health experts in Germany who were the first to advocate for the lockdowns and PCR tests did so based on Chinese propaganda. If you go through the timeline of how the lockdown came to be, it is VERY suspect and reeks of malign Chinese influence.

Study in China programs

I recall reading some study of employees at the Internet Research Agency (Russia’s most well-known “troll farm”). Some of these employees were Russian liberals and opposed to the regime, but hey, this was a paying job. Since they were not ideologically invested in their work and they knew that their siloviki backers had deep pockets and would keep throwing money at the agency regardless, they didn’t make any effort to sound very subtle or persuasive in their posting at all.

Honestly, they could do so much by letting some of Chinese TikTok out on to the international side. I've seen quite a few reposts on Twitter and Reddit from Douyin that are completely inaccessible directly, and if they were actually trying to get people to like them they have a giant bank of content that they could curate to show whatever they wanted.

I have been quite suspect of some chinese content that turned up on reddit at interestingly specific times...

During or around the time of the protests in HK a lot of chinese content started popping up in r/videos and similar in a way that was out of context for the usual content there. Then it disappeared again. I assumed some kind of manipulation was going on.

This is similar to the common sentiment people have about advertising: It's so stupid... never works on anyone I know. I don't know why companies waste their money.

Meanwhile, advertising is an industry that rivals energy, shipping and such. If that's not markt proof of efficacy, IDK what is. From the advertiser side of the advertiser-consumer relationship, there's no doubt of efficacy. You open an online business. No one shows up. You advertise. People show up. Profitable or not, the causality is plain.

Consumers only notice that ads piss them off. Advertisers only notice that ads make consumers do stuff, and both think the other is dumb.

Believing that Chinese propaganda is ineffective is naive. It's a carrot and stick system locally. Internationally it's just carrot, but carrot removal is a lot like the stick.

When Deng he decided to liberalize the Chinese market, he had some saying about the danger of letting flies in when you open a window for fresh air. Fresh air meant the economics. Flies meant cultural-political influences. Mcdonalds, yes. Youtube, no.

Now the tables are turned. US media, entertainment and sports companies want into China for its market size and growth potential. They enter on China's terms, and those terms are always unstated. Increasingly, they relate to stuff entirely outside China. Favoured companies will succeed, misbehavors will not and we will rarely be able to say exactly where "propaganda" is at play.

The structural kind of propaganda is one thing: make sure American cultural products have to respect Chinese sensibilities, and that's huge.

I'm speaking strictly of the hamfisted Twitter accounts and silly press releases that are meant for international consumption.

I think the most hamfisted ones stand out the most, so we might be underestimating mean quality. Not sure it matters though.

Twitter sockpuppeting is a recurring red herring, not just regarding china. For all the attention it receives, it's not a major component of any major effort. FWIW, I don't think anyone's is particularly slick. It's not intended to be. At best, it's about algorithm hacks and generating a veneer of debate.

As "sentiment analysis" becomes integrated (intentionally, or accidentally) into recommendation engines and such... these may be more about fooling machines than people. Not saying this is a factor now (or ever, necessarily), just that stuff can look lame but still work.

This article seems to be referencing registered lobbyist budgets, which is another relatively minor component. It's also relatively easy to obscure, or act through proxies. In some cases, proxy can be fairly nebulous... relating to what you call structural propaganda.

The most visible parts are not necessarily good indicators, is my main point.

Yep. I live right between a Home Depot and a Lowe's. I feel a better brand association with Home Depot. I couldn't really tell you why.

Who has this sentiment about advertising? Some advertising is stupid, but in general it is not, and it obviously works.

You're only noticing the obvious Chinese propaganda. They've probably got bot networks that are using AI to generate responses that you'd never distinguish as Chinese.

Absolutely. And there is still value in propaganda that is recognizable as propaganda. The meta game has as many layers as an onion, and one piece of propaganda can serve multiple purposes. Maybe a particular piece is obvious to spot, but the ultimate goal might not be so obvious. Idiots will fall for anything, but tricking the intelligent isn't as hard as we'd like to think either.

Perhaps it is possible to subtlety influence a narrative by representing it poorly in obvious propaganda, sort of like negative space a painting. And the more time people spend trying to unravel the knot of lies and half-truths, the better. The propagandists win when we are arguing about their nonsense rather than seeking truth directly.

As soon as you think you can spot the propaganda, they've got you, as they can manipulate the presentation at any time.

For sure, anything can be propaganda. Wouldn't be surprised if unwitting people are being used by software that corrals and funnels ideas into influencers without their knowledge, and without even full understanding by the people who wrote the software.

Maybe it's because people such as ourselves aren't the target of said propaganda. We're a small fraction of the population. Frankly, most people are content consuming drivel of all kinds, and propaganda may actually have an influence over them.

If that's the tactic, it's genius. Find the boundary where intellectuals dismiss the propaganda as ineffectual yet it still works on the 80% to some degree.

All you have to do is read user comments on news outlets for example. If those are anywhere close to representing general populace then it is clear that propaganda got to be dumb and something in line of "do not let the facts get in a way of a story".

The future is the target — kids.

See: TikTok.

This, and the World’s app appetite in general. I’ve noticed them up their maker game in various ways with other apps like CapCut which makes video editing very easy and is owned by the same company as Tik Tok. People made a big stink about Tik Tok’s privacy, but there are so many apps still in there with sensitive info going through PRC servers. Marginnote is another app that is so good for research on iOS. I was reading a very obscure book with it while also on the Marginnote beta. I quit testing and noticed months later, in promotional material, the book I was reading was displayed as an example in the iOS store. Could have been coincidence, but the odds are quite low. They are gaining in cool tech soft power quickly.

>Chinese propaganda is just so... Tone deaf

Ironic, seeing as Chinese is a tonal language.

Half of the country thinks the Mueller report exonerated Trump. The body politic has become completely decoupled from reality.

If it's that easy for Russians to influence our politics, why wouldn't the Chinese perceive that there is low-hanging fruit in running general disruption?

And half of the country thinks the Mueller report showed Trump was undeniably guilty. The truth is in between.

See here's this guy proving me right. These nitpickers are extremely easy to fool into doing the work of propaganda.

Have you considered that « Russians did it » is by itself propaganda?

This is a stupid trap you're trying. See how they misdirect? I'm not saying d0mine is taking Russian money, I'm saying that the Russian money spent getting hooks into Trump leads inexorably to a bunch of chumps like d0mine trying to murk up the water in a shabby pretense of discourse.

the exact same argument can be applied in reverse (and the reverse is much more likely given relative military budgets of the countries).

Listen: If you are a human being: nobody reading it at this point; there is nobody to convince. Just do the math and make your own conclusions.

"While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."

>Chinese propaganda is just so... Tone deaf.

So apparently it works? :)

To be fair, $64 million for a government isn’t that much anyways.

Unfortunately 'we' are not very bright as well, and by 'we' I mean the general public of any nation, including us.

We are very susceptible to messaging. Even simple things. Just a basic quasi-factual statement about Taiwan, planted in pop-culture, can influence us.

"Taiwan has been part of China for Millennia" that's technically true and helps the populist China case. Just reading that etc. can help move the needle.

I'm less concerned about their propaganda as I am their control of apps.

Media, historically, much like the financial system and telecoms, public works etc. has had national protections. There's a reason the CBC/BBC exist.

I'm very wary of foreign control of media. If you live in a small country, you probably have more sensitivity to it, as Netflix comes to dominate your creative landscape, it's a real issue.

TikTok is a much bigger concern than most people realize, although it's not an existential concern yet.

A. You only notice it when it is done badly, not when it works.

B. Repetition is everything. How many people watch RT and its wild mix of true stories (copy&pasted) and blatant propaganda and soak it up? Or vaccine conspiracies in mommy Facebook groups? Badly done propaganda repeated 1000x still works.

Could you link to examples of the copy-paste, blatant propaganda?

RT broadcasts plenty of true stories too, mostly from Reuters, AP or simply translations of European papers. The trick is to report wjatever comes up for topics you don't care about and mix in false or misleading narratives on issues where you do, e.g. in relation to Ukraine.

Rather than expect me, random stranger, to point out what is or isn't propaganda, see e.g. that the EU has an entire site largely debunking Russian propaganda as Russia uses it so frequently and effectively:

https://euvsdisinfo.eu/headlyin-and-deceptive-fiction/

It's a classical (and, in this case, fortunate) case of wrong incentive structure. People who direct these propaganda campaigns are not rewarded by polling Americans for their perception of China. Presumably, they are rewarded by their superiors looking at beautifully curated Powerpoint slides.

You don't want to be the guy accused of using an expression that can be interpreted as China conceding $(some utterly inconsequential point). Guess how they will behave.

* That said, I'm sure some brilliant minds inside CCP already know this and are working on improving their methodology ...

Chinese propaganda is the reason the US and all other countries adopted the lockdown despite there never being any precedent or literature prior to COV19. Chinese propaganda is also the reason why nobody knows about this. More power to them if the US and other western nations aren't able to deflect it.

IMO unreasonable expectation that PRC can out-propagandize US / west in their own territories which is not remotely feasible. This is on top of western MSM / softpower / propaganda apparatus already being much more developed and mutually reinforcing, with an entire ecosystem of NGOs and think tanks to launder opinion and set narrative. It's why PRC netizens and PRC western diaspora (well western diaspora from many global south countries) are frequently awestruck by how "brain washed" westerners can be despite having "free media" - US propaganda power is very sophisticated relative to the crudeness of GFW and PRC censorship.

There's also point that PRC's western propaganda has been mostly defensive, trying to explain PRC perspectives - Xi's "tell the China story well" and where most of the FARA spending goes. Whereas Kremlin is fine with going offensive by undermining US polity on domestic fractures because they know you can't counter-program against decades of western narrative that's ongoing. Exception is influencing diaspora populations, in which case both PRC and Russia are fairly successful. But broadly PRC has not heavily invested in attack yet.

And ultimately PRC global propaganda is not... terrible considering what survives the filter of western MSM, bad translations, exaggerations, omissions, outright fabrications etc. PRC still has more supporters for XinJiang being counter-terrorism than human rights abuse. Compared to global positions on US/Israel/Palestine. Or how polling still consistently conclude US is still viewed as biggest risk to democracy / stability. It took 10 years of pressure, sanctions and finally a pandemic for most of FVEYs to get on board of Huawei ban.

PRC will be wasting time refining defensive messages against the tide of western MSM. Better off going on offensive and weakening US society itself which compromise global alliances. There's zero amount of lobbying / propaganda PRC can do to affect US security planning, but it could absolutely compromise US systematically to undermine US credibility and shift global politics in way that favours PRC.

TikTok is definitely affecting American brains. They are the cultural zeitgeist right now.

Some 80 million Americans voted for and many actually think Trump won in 2020, regardless of evidence. Much of them also think the events of 1/6/21 were fake or a non issue.

Think of someone you know of average intelligence then remember that 50% of the nation is under that bar. That's a lot of voters.

It's at least partly because the CCP allows no competition for or critical response to its propaganda, so it's never forced to get better.

Western propaganda by comparison must run the gauntlet of free speech, critical reception, and political adversaries, and as a result has become much more subtle, sophisticated, and effective [1][2].

[1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

[2]:http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

Increasingly, this pressure is happening in college campuses as well (not just in America)

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/world/australia/drew-pavl...

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/china-on-campus-doj-...

https://thefederalist.com/2020/08/25/american-universities-a...

To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.

– Sun Tzu, Art of War

> If the enemy is taking his ease, he can harass him

~50M of PRC "FARA" influence are likely legal media campaigns - full page ads, sponsored editorials etc. This likely doesn't include social media influence campaigns run out of PRC proper like building up twitter presence over last couple years.

IMO Long over due and prudent asymmetric investment. PRC can't compete against US media/propaganda, but relatively easier to target divisive US polity as Russians pioneered. Reverse not so true, PRC GFW and crippling of western NGOs has dramatically limited western influence.

Also keep in mind US just passed bill to spend 300M annually on Countering Chinese Influence Fund, with addition 100M annually on USAGM / Radio Free Asia. Layer on FLG Media / Bannon & Guo and PRC has a long way to go.

Anyone else noticing the YouTube showing a lot more Chinese propaganda videos? I find it funny, because are so bad.

https://www.youtube.com/c/ChinaViewTV https://www.youtube.com/c/cgtn

I've noticed this as well. I suspect that my watching video news stories related to China (and international news) probably caused this, but I find it bizarre that Youtube correlated my interest in China (and international) news with any interest I would have in Chinese state-run media channels.

The title is incredibly misleading. Previously, China State Run Media companies weren't required to register under FARA, new laws mean they have to. The amount of spending is the same, but the category is different. 50M of the 64M alone come purely from CCTV America.

I wonder how many of the "...but Chinese propaganda doesn't work" are writing their posts on a Chinese-made phone or computer and adroitly not thinking of why every piece of electronics they make is made in China.

It seems to me that all a foreign power has to do has to generate enough twitter/fake news saying "OMG we are running out of toilet paper/gas", and watch America crumble.

It is like the covid virus is not the one doing the damage; it is the immune system's own response, the cytokine storm.

Despite what Twitter might be saying, America is doing just fine.

Seems like the image of America crumbling over toilet paper is the real propaganda.

Twitter has the ability to create sudden panics - we saw that a year ago with the toilet paper issue being referenced. I agree that a lot of what happens on Twitter never escapes the bubble of Twitter - but that toilet paper panic was swept up by mainstream news and echoed across the nation.

Being able to incite a panic can be extremely tactically valuable if you can, for instance, leverage that panic to move a whole bunch of product at a mark up or weaken a critical system at a critical time.

My first reaction was to agree with you. Then I considered the possibility that the reassuring notion of "America is doing just fine" may actually be the propaganda.

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/trends-...

At least I thought it was worth considering.

Pretty amusing premise given the US economy has already recovered from the intense pandemic hit in terms of its output, and it's still just getting warmed up. US GDP per capita will cross $70,000 shortly and its overall GDP figure will hit a new high this year.

Here are the countries that have higher per capita figures at present:

Switzerland, Norway, Ireland.

The US is soaring far beyond anything Europe or the EU broadly have managed in terms of economic recovery and the same goes for basically all major economies not named China (which largely sailed through the pandemic economically).

Given the topic, some of you may be interested in the China Owns US [1] website.

[1] https://www.chinaownsus.com/

FARA registrations does not necessarily equate with trying to influence Americans per se. The mainly Chinese news agencies and all their US employees are registered under FARA. The consumption of their news is probably primarily consumers in China and China-watchers. My guess is their main desire is to influence the Chinese populace only.

During the cold war all Kremlinolgists would read Pravda to figure out the truth (pun definitely intended for the multilinguals). I doubt any Americans that read it were ever swayed by their coverage of blacks and civil rights. When atrocities against say blacks were highlighted, or bombing countries like Laos or Vietnam, the ensuing inevitable recriminations would always be on charges of whataboutism or disinformation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kremlinology

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pravda

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laotian_Civil_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation

“A Lie Can Travel Halfway Around the World While the Truth Is Putting On Its Shoes” - which ironically is misattributed to Mark Twain

Well it would be nice to see examples of the kinda of propaganda originating from China

Check out any thread on twitter from a respected medical researcher or scientist who provides any evidence that contradicts the prevailing "wet market" COVID origin theory.

I'm confused - are you saying it's propaganda to go against the wet market theory? Because the wet market theory is so childish - like saying the sun goes to sleep at night.

Propaganda doesn't necessarily always operate in the direction of the creators most obvious interests, there may be propaganda pushing multiple conflicting narratives all originating from the same source. Criticism of the wet market theory might be valid, but could very well be propaganda simply trying to muddy the waters.

That's the RT/Sputnik tactic: throw out dozens of absurd theories and see which ones catch attention/stick and then double down.

E.g.

https://thediplomat.com/2021/03/beijing-is-getting-better-at...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/10/eu-says-china-...

https://www.bbc.com/news/56364952

https://apnews.com/article/pandemics-beijing-only-on-ap-epid...

I wonder what the equivalent US spend (to influence China) is?

20 cents per Chinese person over five years.

We don't talk about that around here. Reported.

Does Hollywood count? (which is also receiving cash injections lately from foreign companies)

It's probably asymmetric. A lot of US sources are simply blocked over there. Including major social networks.

> Does Hollywood count?

I don't see why it wouldn't at least to the degree that taxpayer money was used to fund particular efforts/messages.

All (nearly?) nation states do some version of this, probably mostly in some sort of predictable relationship to their international impact.

Aside from their hard work & valuing education, how did China rise up in modern times to get all of this social, economic, & technological power? Recent history has some interesting twists & they have had many helping hands.

Marxism-Leninism

Never works. :)

Read about "The Great Chinese Famine"

Authroian regime and homogenous population(Han). It's same model as Singapore, just at bigger level.

Is there actual evidence that a homogenous population results in better economic output? That sounds like literal fascist propaganda to me.

China's population is not homogeneous, and neither is Singapore's. Singapore has large Indian and Malay ethnic populations, China's got dozens of ethnicities and the main Han ethnic group is really a mix of different cultural and ethnic groups where the best analogy is how "White" people in the US are treated as the same ethnic group despite originating from dozens of European countries.

No population is truly homogeneous. The trick is putting together the right social and economic incentives so you can brush over the ethnic differences. To get to a point where people think of ethnic differences as less dividing them into tribes in a battle royale where only one can survive, and more as different opinions on the best flavor of ice cream.

Chinese population is more than 90% Han Chinese. Also, language is very important for Homogeneity that's why Chinese Govt introduced Simplified Chinese as official language and Singapore introduced English as official language.

Here is a good video of `Lee Kaun yew` on why single language is important for development of country.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5vELNwtQO1E

There is a correlation between homogenous population and growth but as it is complex subject there is no clear distinction

[1]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/314469686_Does_Ethn...

What are you talking about? Singapore is highly diverse.

Singapore is 75% Chinese and everyone speak English.

25% minority population is hardly monoethnic.

Kraut has a fantastic video on the topic - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhMAt3BluAU

While its title relates to Trump, the video is much moreso about Chinese history and culture and what brought them to the position they're in today.

An equally interesting question would be, why China and not India? Both countries have massive populations, became fully sovereign in the 1950s, and started with similar economic backgrounds.

It's nothing new. China has been extremely powerful for a long time.

It's just one relatively short period from the mid-19th to mid-20th century where they weren't.

"from just over $10 million in 2016 to nearly $64 million last year"

Top sources:

CCTV America $50,244,312

Huawei Technologies $3,495,775

China Daily of Beijing, China $3,004,114

China-US Exchange Foundation $928,209

Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co $526,925

[1] https://www.opensecrets.org/fara/countries/223?cycle=

At the risk of being accused of whataboutism, I raise you the $300 million "Countering Chinese Influence Fund"

https://www.axios.com/senate-china-bill-474f96f1-467b-4c02-a...

That can't be propaganda, because it is from the US. Only the Chinese and Russians do propaganda, primarily through sneaky television stations that are openly owned by the state and think they have a right to broadcast opinions on US politics.

That's legit, not whataboutism.

But if you look at how the money is spent, they are definitely not the same thing.

It's the difference between China spending $1B to control the Spratley Islands while US spending $1B to make sure they are free and navigable by anyone.

I’ve noticed a huge amount of “I have an agenda” comments on youtube videos related to Chinese news. Check anything posted by smcp, especially anything on HK.

Do the right thing, and you do not need propaganda.

I know what this slogan is getting at, but it seems trite and naïve to apply it against well funded and organized information campaigns.

Interesting that potential calls of Russian influence are to distract or deflect from Chinese influence.

Or Israel, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, etc.

Just use the data that the article does.

https://www.opensecrets.org/fara

Are you sure it's not the other way around?

Not sure how anyone is surprised by this.

It's been proven that Russian influence peddling is well funded and active, even if its effect is hotly debated since Republicans pretend its negligible, while Democrats act like it's the only reason Trump won 2016.

It was just a matter of time before other foreign actors saw what's possible and decided it's a better use of their funds to influence American politics rather than expensive arms races or insurgencies.

Why spend a few billion on nuclear programs and arming militias when you can instead spend a few million on troll farms and push your agenda forward more effectively?

It's been going on for a long time however - 1996 is a good example of the CCP influencing American politics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_United_States_campaign_fi...

> Between the lines: Like those of other nations, Chinese state-run media have resisted U.S. Justice Department demands to register under FARA, a law originally created to expose Nazi propaganda in the U.S. Prior to their disclosures, these Chinese media organs operated in the shadows, unencumbered by FARA requirements requiring disclosure about their structures and finances.

So it's not that they've increased their spending. It's that their existing spending has now been correctly categorized.

Well it appears to be working, so they'd be foolish to not invest more.

We've currently got a major political divide over whether a pandemic was something to take seriously, expressed as a rejection of a common sense mitigation for respiratory virii. The "stop the steal" big lie is continuing ("AZ voter database has been erased"), with the Republican leadership continuing to fall in line behind dear leader.

FOX news was apparently not fake enough, so now we've got Newsmax and OAN. I even just got an unsolicited fake newspaper in the mail, which starts off with "Ninety percent of news outlets in the US are controlled by just six corporations", but then launches right into the bog standard red team myopic tropes.

Take a look at the recent gasoline shortages caused by the media itself spreading fear that there won't be enough. It's an increasingly postmodern world, where the media itself is creating reality. Of course every foreign country wants to buy into that!

Just for reference here, I'm a libertarian, not some Democratic partisan. I'm very concerned with mass media being pwnt by big business, but at least they represent the stabilizing interests of the US establishment rather than whomever is tearing us apart. The enemy of my enemy is not inherently my friend.

I don't have any simple answer that squares with our society's recognition of the natural right of free speech, but we are indeed staring down a very serious problem.

As a fellow libertarian and free thinker, your concerns are extremely valid.

They prob fund the race-baiting that separates American society by boundaries that pale in comparison to boundaries of economic status. Middle class people of all races have much more in common with each other in America, than compared to people of the same race but different economic statuses.

CCP wants to tear us apart, make our youth stupid, create plausible deniability during quick conflicts (like a blitzkrieg of Taiwan).

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