Propaganda in the People's Republic of China refers to the PRC's use of propaganda to distribute and sway public and international opinion in favor of its policies.^[1][2] Domestically, this includes censorship of proscribed views and an active cultivation of views that favor the government. Propaganda is considered central to the operation of the Chinese government.^[3]

Aspects of propaganda can be traced back to the earliest period of Chinese history, but propaganda has been most effective in the twentieth century owing to mass media and an authoritarian government.^[3] Mao-era China is known for its constant use of mass campaigns to legitimate the state and the policies of leaders. It was the first Chinese government to successfully make use of modern mass propaganda techniques, adapting them to the needs of a country which had a largely rural and illiterate population.^[3]

The origins of the CPC propaganda system can be traced to the Yan’an and the rectification movements carried out there^[4] following which it became a key mechanism in the Party's campaigns.^[5][2] The propaganda system, considered a central part of CCP’s “control system”^[2][6], drew much from Soviet, Nazi and other totalitarian states’ propaganda methods^[2][7]. It represented a quintessential Leninist “transmission belt” for indoctrination and mass mobilization.^{[8][9] [2]}

Propaganda and indoctrination are considered to have been a hallmark of the Maoist state^[4][2][6], and while ostensibly aspiring to a "Communist utopia," often had a negative focus on constantly searching for enemies among the people. The means of persuasion was often extremely violent, "a literal acting out of class struggle."^[10]

CCP propaganda and thought work traditionally had a much broader notion of the public sphere than is usually defined by media specialists, according to Brady.^[10] Chinese propagandists used every possible means of communication available in China after 1949, including electronic media such as film and television, educational curriculum and research, print media such as newspapers and posters, cultural arts such as plays and music, oral media such as memorizing Mao quotes, as well as thought reform and political study classes.^[10]

China Central Television has traditionally served as a major national conduit for televised propaganda, while the People's Daily newspaper has served as a medium for print propaganda. During the Mao years, a distinctive feature of propaganda and thought work was "rule by editorial," according to Brady. Political campaigns would be launched through editorials and leading articles in People's Daily, which would be followed by other papers.^[10] Work units and other organizational political study groups utilized these artilces as a source for political study, and reading newspapers in China was "a political obligation". Mao used Lenin's model for the media, which had it function as a tool of mass propaganda, agitation, and organization.^[10]

During the Cultural Revolution, PRC propaganda was crucial to the formation and promotion of the cult of personality centered around Chairman Mao Zedong. It also served as a useful tool for mobilizing popular participation in national campaigns such as the 1958 Great Leap Forward and the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution. Past propaganda also encouraged the Chinese people to emulate putatively selfless model workers and soldiers, such as the famous Comrade Lei Feng, suicidal Chinese Civil War hero Dong Cunrui, self-sacrificing Korean War hero Yang Gensi, and Dr. Norman Bethune, a Canadian doctor who assisted the Communist Eighth Route Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War. It also praised Third World revolutionaries and close foreign allies such as Albania and North Korea while vilifying both the United States "imperialists" and the Soviet "revisionists" (the latter of whom was seen as having betrayed Marxism-Leninism). One of the most famous propagandist who was supposedly sidetracked was Zhang Zhixin; her loyalty to the party as well as opposition to the ultra-left singled her out for severe punishment, yet her story provides a good example of how propaganda is delivered.

Following the death of Mao in 1976, propaganda was used to blacken the character of the Gang of Four, which was blamed for the excesses of the Cultural Revolution. During the era of economic reform and modernization that was initiated by Deng Xiaoping, propaganda promoting "socialism with Chinese characteristics" was distributed.

The events of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 were an indication to many elders in the CCP that liberaliation in the propaganda sector had gone too far, and that the Party must re-establish its control over ideology and the propaganda system.^[10]

Anne-Marie Brady, an Associate Professor at the University of Canterbury’s School of Political Science and Communication, writes that propaganda and thought work have become the "life blood" of the Party-State since the post-1989 period, and one of the key means for guaranteeing the CCP's continued legitimacy and hold on power.^[10]

In the 1990s, propaganda theorists described the challenges to China's propaganda and thought work as "blind spots"; mass communication was advocated as the antidote. From the early 1990s, selective concepts from mass communications theory, public relations, advertising, social psychology, and other areas of modern mass persuasion were introduced into China's propaganda system for the purpose of creating a modern propaganda model.^[10]

In early 2009 the CCP embarked on a multi-billion dollar global media expansion, including a 24-hour English language news channel supposed to imitate CNN. According to Nicholas Bequelin, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, it was part of Hu Jintao's plan to "go global" and make "the voice of China better heard in international affairs." Bequelin notes that in recent years CCTV and the People's Daily have come to look "slicker, more contemporary and less political than in the past," but that the fundamental premise is still the same: "all information on state-run channels must reflect the government's views."^[11]

Political scientists^[who?] believe that propaganda in the PRC is being utilized by the CCP to nurture the development of Chinese nationalism and loyalty to the Party-state. Many also believe that the CCP, having embarked on a program of capitalist-style economic reform and modernization in the late 1970s, is keen to use propaganda to portray itself as a nationalistic and patriotic party, rather than simply as a party that builds socialism or implements Marxism-Leninism in China, since these theories have largely been abandoned and thus can no longer serve as effective bases of loyalty to the regime. Common themes in the new nationalistic propaganda of the PRC include the lionizing of the People's Liberation Army and its soldiers for their exploits and sacrifices during the 1937-1945 Second Sino-Japanese War, and the proported seamless unity of the nation's 56 officially recognized ethnic groups.

Media operations and content are tightly controlled,^[12][13] and the Party largely determines what appears in news reports. Controlling media content allows the Communist Party to disseminate propaganda supportive of government policies, censor controversial news stories, and have reports published criticizing political adversaries, including advocates of religious freedom and democracy, supporters of Taiwanese and Tibetan independence, and representatives of the United States government.^[12]

While in the past the CCP’s Central Propaganda Department and its local branches sent faxes to all media throughout the country with instructions indicating subjects that the media should stress or avoid entirely, directives are now imparted to ranking media managers or editors during phone conversations—a move designed to reduce the paper trail.^[12] Media in China faces few restrictions on content that is not deemed to be politically damaging.^[12]

Wu Xuecan, a former editor of the People's Daily Overseas Edition, ^[14] reports that through control of the "ideological domain, material means and living necessities," editors and reporters are conditioned to keep news and reports aligned with the interests of the Chinese Communist Party.^[14] Wu further reports that, political study sessions ensures that editors first practice self-censorship.^[14] He Qinglian writes that long years of media suppression have bred in Chinese journalists a habit of "self-discipline," and that most Chinese journalists resign themselves to playing the role of "Party mouthpieces."^[13] Control is also directed at sources of information, as ordinary people are restricted from providing news to Chinese media, and more so to foreign media.^[13]

Propaganda and thought work in the Maoist era had a number of distinctive features, according to Brady, such as "ideological remolding" or "thought reform" (思想改造), ideological purges, ritual humiliation of ideological opponents, an emphasis on political study to raise levels of awareness of the current line, and targeting high-profile individuals as symbols of negative tendencies which must be eradicated.^[10]

The experiences of propaganda and thought work in the Cultural Revolution provided the CCP with a "profound lesson," according to Brady. Virtually all post-Mao era Party leaders had been under attack during that time, and drew two seemingly contradictory lessons: the rejection of mass movements and thought reform as means of transforming China, and the recognition of the "vital role of propaganda and thought work in China's political control." The administration of propaganda and thought work was plagued by these issues through the 1980s, and up to the events of June 4, 1989.^[10]

In terms of intensity and scope, spiritual control has been reinforced under the CCP's rule, and has become a basic feature of citizens' daily life, according to Victor Shaw.^[15] To an extent, the "freedom of silence" cherished by some older Chinese scholars was not even possible for an illiterate peasant in a remote area under the CCP mass propaganda.^[15]

According to Shaw, the CCP utilizes propaganda to spread its policies, build social consensus, and mobilize the population for social programs. Ideological tensions result in mass movements, and the resulting spiritual control legitimizes the political establishment.^[15] "Political studies, legal education, heroic models, and thought reform provide the CCP with effective weapons to propagandize rules and legal codes, normalize individual behaviour, and rehabilitate deviants in labor camps."^[15]

According to Anne-Marie Brady, the Foreign Ministry first set up a system of designated officials to give information in times of crisis in 1983, and greatly expanded the system to lower levels in the mid 1990s. Previously, China's spin had been directed only at foreigners, but in the 1990s leaders realised that managing public crises was useful for domestic politics; this included setting up provincial level "News Coordinator Groups," and inviting foreign PR firms to give seminars.^[10]

Brady writes that Chinese foreign propaganda officials took cues from the Blair government's spin doctoring during the mad cow disease crisis of 2000-2001, and the Bush government's use of the U.S. media after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. According to her, the Blair model allows for a certain amount of negative coverage to be shown during a crisis, which is believed to help release some of the "social tension" surrounding it. She believes information managers in China used this approach during coal mining disasters of 2005.^[10]

According to Brady, trained official spokespeople are now available on call in every central government ministry, as well as in local governments, to deal with emerging crises; these spin doctors are coordinated and trained by the Office of Foreign Propaganda/State Council Information Office.^[10]

According to David Shambaugh, professor of political science and international affairs at the Elliott School of International Affairs^[16] and a fellow of the Brookings Institution,^[17] the CCP's propaganda system extends itself as a sprawling bureaucratic establishment, into virtually every medium concerned with the dissemination of information.^[2] Shambaugh notes that according to the CCP publication Zhongguo Gongchandang jianshe dazidian.^[2][18] numerous public places, such as media and news organizations, educational institutions, literature and art centers, and cultural exhibitions come under CCP's propaganda oversight. Shambaugh believes that this expansive definition implies that every conceivable medium which transmits and conveys information to the people of China falls under bureaucratic purview of the the CCP Propaganda Department (CCPPD).^[2] Shambaugh states that the writ of the CCPPD has remained unchanged since the Maoist era, although the mechanics of oversight and active censorship have undergone considerable evolution.^[2]

According to official government reports in 2003, channels of propaganda dissemination of the CCPPD included 2,262 television stations (of which 2,248 were “local”), 2,119 newspapers, 9,074 periodicals and 1,123 publishing houses,^[2][19] in addition to internal circulation papers and local gazetteers, approximately 68 million internet accounts with more than 100 million users, and more than 300 million mobile phone users who fall under the system's purview.^[20]

Propaganda work by the CCP has been, historically, divided into two categories: directed towards Chinese people (internal or duinei) and directed towards foreigners and the outside world (external or duiwai) as well as four types: political, economic, cultural and social.^[1] The Central Propaganda Department oversees internal propaganda, and, the closely linked bureaucracy, The Office of Foreign Propaganda matters relating to external propaganda.^[1]

According to Shambaugh, the Central Propaganda Department is a highly secretive office with its address and contact details classified, and it is only indirectly represented online. The propaganda system, including the Central Propaganda Department, does not appear in officially published diagrams of the Chinese Bureaucratic System, whether in Chinese or in other languages.^{[1] [2]} The Office of Foreign Propaganda, while similarly descreet, has a more public front under the name 'Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China.'^[1]

Traditionally, the CCP propaganda apparatus had been based around suppressing news and information, but this often meant the Party found itself in a reactive posture, according to Chinese media expert David Bandurski.^[21] In later years the Internet played a key role in the spread of propaganda to Chinese diaspora. PRC-based Internet sites remain a leading source of Chinese language and China-related news for overseas Chinese. The Internet is an extremely effective tool for guiding and organizing overseas Chinese public opinion, according to Anne-Marie Brady.^[22]

Brady cites an example of the role of the Internet in organizing popular protests by overseas Chinese, its usage by the state against a perceived bias of the Western media in its coverage of unrest in Tibetan areas in March 2008 and, a month later, in organizing a series of worldwide demonstrations in support of China during the Olympic torch relay.^[22]

Brady noted that these protests were genuine and popular, demonstrating the effectiveness of China’s efforts to rebuild positive public opinion within the Chinese overseas diaspora, but the demonstrations nevetheless received official support both symbolically and in practice ^[22] While there was no compulsion for overseas Chinese to attend the rallies, those who did were given free t-shirts, souvenirs, transport, and accommodation, donated by local embassy officials and China-based donors.^[22]

China is known for using internet "spin doctors", specially trained internet users who comment on blogs, public forums or wikis, to shift the debate in favor of the Communist Party and influence public opinion.^[21] They are sometime called the "50-cent party" - named so because they are allegedly paid 50 Chinese cents for each comment supporting the CCP they make.^[23]

An internal government document released by the BBC outlines the requirements for those employed as spin-doctors, which include having "relatively good political and professional qualities, and have a pioneering and enterprising spirit", being able to react quickly, etc.^[23]

It is believed that such government-sponsored Internet commentators have now become widespread and their numbers could be in the tens of thousands;^[23] Bandurski suggests the number may be up to 280,000^[21] while The Guardian puts the estimate as 300,000.^[24] According to The Guardian, the growth in popularity of such astroturfing owes to the ease with which web 2.0 technologies such as Twitter, Wikipedia and YouTube can be employed to sway public opinion. The BBC reports that special centres have been set up to train China's 'army of internet spin doctors'.^[23]

The Chinese state refers to all media work abroad as wai xuan, or "external propaganda."^[11] According to Brady, China sees the Cold War as never having ended. According to strictly classified materials she was able to obtain, China sees itself as facing a hostile Western world that constantly seeks to undermine it.^[10] The CCP's foreign propaganda activities are therefore an important means of combating and managing this "foreign enmity." Since 1989, a nadir for China's propagandists, CCP propaganda officials have worked hard to rebuild China's international image, bringing in new technologies and methodologies, and at the same time retaining a few "tried and true methods from the past."^[10]

In 2005, Reporters Without Borders published a report about the state-run news agency Xinhua, calling it "the world's biggest propaganda agency".^[25]

In a 2008 report, the U.S. State Department’s International Security Advisory Board declared that China was in the midst of a "comprehensive strategic deception campaign," which was said to include "Psychological Warfare (propaganda, deception, and coercion), Media Warfare (manipulation of public opinion domestically and internationally), and Legal Warfare (use of ‘legal regimes’ to handicap the opponent in fields favorable to him)."^[26]

On its official Chinese Web site, CCTV describes itself as "the mouthpiece of the Party and the government," and lists its main operations under the heading "propaganda situation," referring to new foreign language channels as "reaching a new stage in external propaganda."^[11]

In the realm of the arts, the theory of socialist realism that was adopted by the USSR and the PRC of Mao Zedong explicitly states as its goal the education of the people in the objectives and the meaning of the ideology of communism. One of the official goals of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution in the PRC was "to transform literature and art."

• Eight model plays (八个样板戏), revolutionary themed operas and ballets allowed during the Cultural Revolution
  • Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy (智取威虎山), a play about communist soldiers infiltrating a bandit camp during the Chinese Civil War.
  • The Legend of the Red Lantern (红灯记), a play based on the activities of the communist resistance against Japan in Hulin during the Second Sino-Japanese War.
  • Red Detachment of Women (红色娘子军), a pre-Cultural Revolution-era play, later extolled during the Cultural Revolution, about the women of Hainan Island who rose up in resistance on behalf of the CCP
  • The White Haired Girl (白毛女), a play exploring the miseries of China peasants in 1930's China.

Propaganda songs and music have a long and storied history in the PRC and also in Nepal and Pakistan, and they figured prominently in the popular culture of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Many of these songs were collected and performed as modern rock adaptations for several albums that were released during the 1990s, including "Red Rock" and "Red Sun: Mao Zedong Praise Songs New Revolutionary Medley". The latter sold 6-10 million copies in China.^[27] Most of the older songs praise Mao, the CCP, the 1949 revolution, the Chinese Red Army and the People's Liberation Army, the unity of the ethnic groups of China, and the various ethnic groups' devotion to Mao and the CCP.

The titles of some of the more well-known propaganda songs are as follows:

• "Nanniwan" (南泥湾), a 1943 revolutionary song
• "The East is Red" (东方红), the de facto national anthem of the PRC during the Cultural Revolution
• "Socialism is Good" (社会主义好), a modern rock adaptation of which was performed by Zhang Qu and featured on the 1990s album Red Rock.
• "Song of the People's Liberation Army" (中国解放軍军歌)–
• "Battle Hymn of the Chinese People's Volunteers" (中国人民志愿军战歌)–a well-known song from the Korean War period
• "Red Sun Shining Over the Border" (紅太陽照邊疆)–a song from the Yanbian in Jilin
• "A Wa People Sing New Songs" (阿佤唱新歌曲)–a song attributed to the Wa ethnic minority of Yunnan
• "Laundry Song" (洗衣歌)–a song celebrating the liberation of Tibet
• "Liuyang River" (浏阳河)–a song about a river near Mao Zedong's hometown of Shaoshan in Hunan
• "Saliha Most Obeys Chairman Mao" (薩利哈最聽毛主席的話)–a song attributed to the Kazakh minority of the Xinjiang
• "The Never-Setting Sun Rises Over the Grassland" (草原上升起不落的太陽–from Inner Mongolia
• "Xinjiang is Good" (新疆好)–attributed to the ethnic Uyghurs of Xinjiang
• "I Love Beijing Tiananmen" (我爱北京天安门)–claimed to have been translated into over 50 languages, this song is frequently taught to schoolchildren in the PRC
• "Zhuang Brocade Dedicated to Chairman Mao" (莊錦獻給毛主席)–a song attributed to the Zhuang ethnic minority of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region
• "Sweet-Scented Osmanthus Blooms With the Arrival of Happiness" (attributed to the Miao, or Chinese Hmong, ethnic minority group)
• "Generations Remember Chairman Mao's Kindness" (a song celebrating the "liberation" of the ethnic Xibe people)
• "Salaam Chairman Mao" (薩拉姆毛主席)–a Xinjiang song praising Mao, a modern version of which was performed by Chinese rock singer Dao Lang
• "Song of Mount Erlangshan" (歌唱二郎山)–a 1950s song celebrating the development of Tibet, which made Mount Erlangshan in western Sichuan famous
• "Story of the Spring" (春天的故事)–a song performed by Dong Wenhua, initially at the 1997 CCTV New Year's Gala, days before his death, dedicated to late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping
• "The Cultural Revolution is Just Great" (无产阶级文化大革命就是好)–a song praising the Cultural Revolution
• "On the Golden Mountains of Beijing" (北京的金山上)–a song attributed to the Tibetan people praising Mao as the shining sun
• "Sing a Song of Praise to the Motherland" (歌唱祖国)–This general patriotic song continues to be sung at national and regional celebrations and galas.

Most of the songs listed above are no longer used as propaganda by the CCP, but are exhibited in mainland China as a means of reviving popular nostalgia for the "old times" and sentiments of nationalism.

• List of campaigns of the Communist Party of China
• Propaganda Department of the Communist Party of China
• Thought reform in the People's Republic of China
• Censorship in the People's Republic of China
• Media in the People's Republic of China
• Propaganda in the Republic of China
• Propaganda Poster Art Centre, Shanghai, China
• Propaganda model
• Spin doctoring
• 50 Cent Party

• Min, Anchee, Duo, Duo, Landsberger, Stefan R., Chinese Propaganda Posters, 245 x 370 mm, 320 pp., ISBN 3-8228-2619-7 (softcover)
• Wolf, Michael Chinese Propaganda Posters: From the Collection of Michael Wolf, 2003, ISBN 3-8228-2619-7
• Harriet Evans, Stephanie Donald (eds.), Picturing Power in the People's Republic of China, ISBN 0-8476-9511-5
• Stefan Landsberger, Chinese Propaganda Posters: From Revolution to Reform, ISBN 90-5496-009-4
• Hunter, Edward. Brain-washing in Red China: the calculated destruction of men's minds. New York, N.Y., USA.: Vanguard Press, 1951, 1953,
• Lincoln Cushing and Ann Tompkins, Chinese Posters: Art from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, San Francisco, CA : Chronicle Books, 2007, ISBN 978-0-8118-5946-2

• Template:Zh icon Website of the Propaganda Department
• Maopost.com: Vintage Chinese Propaganda Posters
• Stefan Landsberger's Chinese Propaganda Poster Pages
• Rethinking Cultural Revolution Culture
• Jon Sigurdson’s Collection of Posters 1963-1983
• University of Westminster Collection
• Ann Tompkins (Tang Fandi) and Lincoln Cushing Chinese Poster Collection
• Artemoto Collection of Chinese Propaganda Posters
• Chinese Propaganda posters