CMP Discourse Tracker #03

A month-to-month reading of the Chinese Communist Party's flagship People's Daily newspaper and key discourse trends – with crucial context. Here is the roundup for August 2024.

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Dear Subscribers:

As we prepare to hit “publish” on this latest edition of the CMP Discourse Tracker, covering August 2024, the top story promoted on the front-page of the People’s Daily, just to the right of the masthead, is a read-out from the 17th collective study session of the Politburo. The study session, which addressed the question of building China as a “cultural power” (文化强国), was naturally led by Xi Jinping. But how is the session significant? How should we begin to “read” it? And why, as China watchers, should we devote even a moment of precious time to such a tower of official babble? 

Building on what we said in the last two reports, the “framing words,” or tifa (提法), within elaborate constructions like this one are the building blocks of discourse reading. It is not sufficient to treat the read-out like a piece of text to be “translated,” even machine translated, and summarized — as though its content was simply being dumped out of a box. This text, in fact, is made up of boxes. Reading means unpacking. Each specialized term has a history in the CCP context, sometimes also of change and co-optation, and many derive their meaning from the boxes to be found within them. The distinct packets of consensus concepts within the text are your key to drawing out greater meaning and specificity. 

Let’s turn, for example, to a portion of the read-out that addresses most directly the issue of what the CCP terms variously “international communication” (国际传播) or “external propaganda” (对外宣传). Both of these pertain to China’s strategies, both covert and overt, for advancing the influence of the Party-state, a priority that also falls under the umbrella of “cultural soft power” (国家文化软实力). If you are researching “influence” issues, what the European Union, seeking a consensus definition, now terms foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI), these framing words drawn from within the CCP textual context itself will unlock far more than selective frames that may have currency within our own international research contexts — terms like “information warfare,” or “united front.” The keys to the black box are hanging right on the door. 

So, a bit of text from the read-out:

Xi Jinping emphasized that [we must] continuously enhance the country's cultural soft power and the influence of Chinese culture. [We must] promote the pattern reconstruction of international communication, engage in innovative online external propaganda, and build multi-channel and three-dimensional patterns of external communication.

Here I’ve chosen two keys hanging on the door. These are: “pattern reconstruction of international communication” (国际传播格局重构), and “innovative online external propaganda” (创新开展网络外宣). We want to better understand what China is planning concretely, right? So these keys can help.

Search “pattern reconstruction of international communication” and “external propaganda” together and you quickly turn up references to Xi Jinping’s address to the Third Plenum back in July, where he spoke of “building a more effective international communication system” (构建更有效力的国际传播体系). Another key, this system is the goal of “reconstruction.” So what is it? 

Search “building a more effective international communication system” in double quotes and you quickly find other coverage through August — the month we cover in our discourse report below — elaborating the significance (“spirit”) of Xi’s Third Plenum speech. Here is the top-most one on my search results, a piece about effectively “telling China’s story” globally. Beyond just more boxes, we have important and revealing specifics in the text. It notes, in particular, that "in recent years, international communication centers have been set up across the country, becoming a new force in China's international communication.” 

And there you have a key piece of the puzzle.

Here at CMP, in fact, we were the first to report on these “international communication centers” (国家传播中心), or ICCs, which utilize the resources of provincial and city-level media groups, in close collaboration with propaganda offices, to join the national struggle to “tell China’s story.” On the CMP site, you can find more than 10 in-depth stories since the middle of 2023 on this trend, one of the most important developments in external propaganda studies in years. We’ve even developed an interactive map for provincial-level ICCs.

 The method of reading past the official discourse we outlined above, which we apply in our daily research at CMP, is the reason we were ahead of the curve on ICCs. And we hope it is useful for more researchers as they endeavor to “read” the official discourse. 

On to our August analysis. 

David L. Bandurski /CMP Director

Chu Yang / Editor, Discourse Tracker