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.
I'm speaking strictly of the hamfisted Twitter accounts and silly press releases that are meant for international consumption.
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.
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.
See: TikTok.
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.
But it has national parks. There’s also only one Grand Canyon and only so many Death Valleys.
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.
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.
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 ...
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.
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.
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.
Ironic, seeing as Chinese is a tonal language.
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].
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.
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:
So apparently it works? :)
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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).
Last I checked Indian govt is not holding minority in reeducation camps or removing every trace of cultural heritage.