Abstract
The power of Party-state propaganda practices is not confined to the domestic political sphere. The Party-state also uses propaganda practices in its relations with those outside its own sovereign territory. This chapter examines the propaganda practices the Party-state uses internationally, beginning with an explanation of the role that such practices play in the broader context of the Party-state’s attempts to exercise power in the world. The second section identifies the official bodies that are responsible for carrying out the Party-state’s foreign propaganda practices. This shows the extent to which these official organizations are embedded in the structure of the Chinese political system and highlights the role of propaganda across the range of organizations that are responsible for foreign affairs. The third section explains the range of propaganda practices the Party-state uses to exercise power and focuses in turn on the international news media, public diplomacy, and the Party-state’s use of propaganda practices in relation to individuals and organizations outside China’s borders. Finally, the chapter highlights some of the main features of the official Party-state discourse that these foreign propaganda practices are designed to support.
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Notes
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One list of factors includes, for example, population and natural resources, the “hard” elements of economic, military and scientific capabilities, and the “soft” elements of political values, the morale of the armed forces, social cohesion, foreign policy values, ideology, and cultural attractiveness. Zhao Kejin and Ni Shixiong, Zhongguo guoji guanxi lilun yanjiu [China international relations theory research] (Shanghai: Fudan Daxue Chubanshe, 2007), 141.
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This occurs by way of a practice that Brady translates as “one office, two name plates,” and Shambaugh translates as “one organ, two signs.” Anne-Marie Brady, Marketing Dictatorship: Propaganda and Thought Work in Contemporary China (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008), 13; Shambaugh, “China’s Propaganda System,” 47.
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© 2014 Kingsley Edney
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Edney, K. (2014). China’s Foreign Propaganda Practices. In: The Globalization of Chinese Propaganda. Asia Today. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137382153_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137382153_4
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