Just as the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China passed with a lavish demonstration of China’s new economic and political power in the world, the Communist leadership is planning to push its agenda around the world with a multi-billion dollar public relations campaign – although it came as media and rights groups meeting in Beijing said they wanted fewer restrictions on reporting.
The ambitious PR strategy originated with party leader and Chinese President Hu Jintao, who sees “soft power” - as influence on other countries through culture and ideas is often described - as “an increasingly important factor in national strength,” according to Deutsche-Presse-Agentur (dpa) and China has regularly been inviting groups of journalists, including many from the European Union, on state-sponsored tours centered around Beijing and the boom city of Shanghai, which will host the Expo 2010 world forum beginning in May next year.
While newspapers in the United States and Europe reel in the recession and deep losses in advertising to Internet outlets, China’s predominantly state-run media is thriving and includes legions of well-educated and well-disciplined journalists, part of the nucleus of Beijing’s attempt to influence international opinion through the media. Liu Yunshan, the director of the Publicity Department of the Communist Party’s Central Committee and the country’s propaganda chief, called it an “urgent strategic task for us to make our communication capability match our international status.”
He added that, “Nowadays, nations that have more advanced skills and better capability in communications will be more influential in the world and can spread their values further,” he wrote in an essay in the Chinese political magazine Qiushi, which means Seeking Truth.  The campaign coincides with the push for more openness in the media, a contradiction for the government, which is coming under more intense scrutiny. Despite the presence of highly-skilled journalists, the state-run media puts clamps on them, limiting criticism of leaders and government officials and the few independent media are subject to censorship, earning the country poor rankings on media freedom from the advocacy group Reporters Without Borders.
One of the state-run media outlets, the Xinhua news agency, has launched a television news service under the government’s media expansion plan, following in the footsteps of the Arabic channel Al-Jazeera, a popular and influential outlet and one the Chinese are seeking to emulate, along with the presence of a corps of young, intelligent and skilled junior diplomats and press officers in key embassies around the world, particularly in Brussels and the Chinese Mission to the European Union, a key target for the government plan.
The first news shows were offered worldwide in the summer, and they are to be expanded into a global, 24-hour Chinese TV service. At the service’s inauguration in July, Xinhua president Li Congjun said the new channel would interpret global events “objectively” and “impartially” from a Chinese angle, giving foreign readers and viewers a “novel perspective.” China’s status as guest of honor at this week’s Frankfurt Book Fair is also part of its “soft power” campaign as is a World Media Summit, to which Xinhua invited representatives from 100 foreign media outlets to Beijing this week.
China’s state controlled media were “subject to strict government controls which ensure that reporting falls within the boundaries of the official propaganda line,” US-based Human Rights Watch said in a statement coinciding with the opening of a three-day World Media Summit in Beijing. “The summit’s participants need to know that this event is being convened by a government that regularly denies basic press freedoms,” Sophie Richardson, the group’s Asia advocacy director, said in the statement.
“Without a candid discussion about the difference between genuine media and propaganda, the need to stop harassing and abusing Chinese and foreign journalists, and the importance of reliable, real-time information from inside China, the summit runs the risk of eroding rather than defending media freedoms,” Richardson said.
The summit was organized by the Xinhua news agency and included delegates from 130 foreign media groups.
In an earlier statement to mark the Oct. 1 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, Paris-based Reporters Without Borders also urged the government to ease its controls over the media. “Journalists and bloggers nowadays are no longer locked in a totalitarian grip but the censorship has never stopped,” the group said. The new news channel is expanding China’s already large radio and television presence in the world. Central China Television, or CCTV, broadcasts to about 100 countries in many languages - including in Arabic to 22 countries since the summer. China is striving to build its own international media empires, following the Western examples of Time Warner Inc and News Corp. A plan released by China’s State Council at the end of last month looks to transform the country’s news, entertainment and culture companies into free-market entities.
Using the catchword “privatization,” foreign capital is also being sought for state publishing houses although it won’t translate into more publishing freedom after propaganda czar Liu warned all publishing houses to always “maintain the right direction of the advanced socialist culture.” The party’s newspaper, the People’s Daily, launched the English-language Global Times in the spring with an appealing, modern editorial concept although a slight nationalist tone. China Daily also launched a US edition in February while Xinhua and CCTV are said to be opening new offices around the world.    The South China Morning Post in Hong Kong reported that China has earmarked 45 billion yuan ($6.6 billion dollars) for the strategy to modernize its media and shake off its image as a repressive government. This amount has never been officially confirmed in Beijing although it has been quoted in state-controlled media.