11 minute read
Cognitive Warfare
Strategic Vision vol. 9, no. 45 (March, 2020)
China employs propaganda to control narrative during COVID-19 pandemic
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Hon-min Yau
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi addresses reporters in Beijing.
photo: US Government
In the 21st Century, diseases have become a significant threat to global public health. As travel becomes more frequent and less expensive, outbreaks of infectious disease can quickly traverse from one country to many continents and destabilize established political structures and economic order. While the digital age can exacerbate public discussion of an incident, the framing of how a crisis is handled has strong security implications for any government. In this discursive battlefield, rhetoric and words are bullets, and new and old media are weapons. Hence, during disease outbreaks, the public opinion within and outside one country regarding a government’s crisis management could present a security challenge to the survival of an administration and even the legitimacy of a regime.
Western-style democracies rely on direct support from their constituents, and maintaining a positive discourse has been one of the essential tasks of public diplomacy in any liberal democracy. However, is this concern any different in a non-democratic government? Specifically, what is the role of public opinion in decision-making in an authoritarian nation such as China?
In December 2019, word leaked out of Wuhan, China about a new type of infectious disease, first dubbed the Wuhan Coronavirus, later named COVID-19 by the World Health Organization (WHO). Within just two months, the virus had spread to more than 40 countries and six continents. By the end of February 2020, new COVID-19 cases outside of China exceeded the confirmed cases in China, and there were more than 100,000 infections globally. Dr. John MacKenzie, a member of the emergency committee of the International Health Regulations in the WHO, said that Beijing was too slow in reporting new cases in the early phase of transmission, calling the regime’s behavior “reprehensible.” On contrast, the director-general of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, publicly praised China’s effort for their immediate actions. This praise was quoted by the Chinese state media for weeks.
Extolling China’s efforts
Furthermore, on 26 February, the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) released a publication, A Battle Against Epidemic, to extol China’s efforts in dealing with this new disease. It was reported by Xinhua News that this book would soon be published in five different languages, including English, French, Russian, Spanish, and Arabic. These contradictory views clearly show that there is a struggle over the narrative of China’s handling of COVID-19. Global health officials were aware of COVID-19 on 31 December, 2019 when China informed the WHO, just one day after word of the viral transmission, already well underway in China, was posted online via a shared private message from Chinese ophthalmologist Li Wenliang. Dr. Li’s intent was to save lives by alerting the medical profession about the impending epidemic, for which he was later persecuted by the Chinese government. Li, along with seven other people, were reprimanded by police for spreading rumors online.
In retrospect, COVID-19 is not China’s first experience with disease outbreaks—or their cover-ups—on this scale. The most infamous was probably Beijing’s mishandling of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in November 2002, which drew enormous
criticism internationally. Initially, a period of hesitation by the Chinese government regarding information-sharing and action spawned panic, anxiety, and domestic rumormongering. There were also problems of communication and collaboration among Chinese provinces and special administration regions regarding the allocation of resources, countermeasures, and responses.
These fatal mistakes undermined China’s efforts in the early 2000s to create a positive image of itself in the international arena. China was severely criticized for not informing the international community for more than four months, and thereby contributing to the quick global transmission of SARS. At the time, Taiwan could only deal with the unknown disease by itself as China’s political position forced the WHO to exclude Taiwan from the global health dialogue. It was seven months after the first discovery of the SARS that China’s Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) finally sent the first contact to Taiwan’s Strait Exchange Foundation (SEF) on 23 May, 2002, to inquire about assistance. Finally, when responding to questions raised by Taiwanese media in the World Health Assembly (WHA) regarding Taiwan’s participation in the WHO in May 2002, China’s top diplomat, Sha Zukang, famously remarked: “Who cares about you?” In the end, SARS turned out to be a public relations nightmare for China.
Based on past experience, the CCP is more prudent and responsive in guiding general narratives in media, academia, and even relative stakeholders to reduce resistance and negative impressions. The CCP uses the term “media warfare,” to describe actions which emphasizes the “soft kill” effect of media and stresses the strategic leverage of information to manipulate perceptions of both domestic and international audiences. As a manipulative strategy by an authoritarian regime, this technique is also similar to “sharp power,” as coined by the National Endowment for Democracy in 2017. This Chinese strategy is different from the consensus-building nature of “soft power,” and it is uses strategic communication to influence targeted audiences to advance China’s political ambitions. Three approaches can be observed in China’s media warfare: distraction, manipulation, and making an opponent less attractive.
With distraction, China uses one-sided representations to hide the other side of the event. In January and February 2020, China’s Central Television broadcasted multiple times that the deaths due to influenza in the United States had reached the highest number in 40 years, and by late January 2020 these reports also indicated that there were more than 6,600 deaths and 13,000,000 infections in the United States.
By comparing COVID-19 to the so-called “US influenza,” Beijing’s intention is to downplay the severity of China’s domestic outbreak. In addition, the COVID-19 whistleblower, Dr. Li Wenliang, unfortunately became one of the disease’s first victims on 7 February. To deflect people’s anger at the CCP, the media emphasized that Li was a responsible and loyal “communist comrade,” and his sacrifice exemplified the unique tradition of unselfish devotion without thinking about one’s own safety. China used Li’s CCP membership to divert negative sentiment from its earlier handling of the situation.
Yellow Crane Tower sits on Snake Hill in Wuhan, China. Citizens in Wuhan have faced tremendous hardship during COVID-19.
photo: Kong Fu Wang
Through manipulation, China reframes a particular event with an inaccurate account. For example, on 10 February, 2020, when Chinese students in France gathered at Place de la Bastille under the name of “Mourning Dr. Li Wenliang” to protest the CCP’s clampdown on freedom of speech, the Chinese Consulate in France stated that using “whistleblower” to describe Li’s sacrifice is to tarnish his reputation, as the term implies that Li was an “informer” or “spy.” China twisted the meaning of whistleblower, which is often used by civil activists with a positive implica- tion, into a negative connotation to stop people from discussing Li’s act.
A propaganda banner adminishes citizens “A bite of wild animals today, See you in hell tomorrow.”
photo: SupChina
In another case, Taiwan briefly participated in the WHA as an observer from 2009 to 2016 at the invitation of the WHO Director-General. However, China’s dissatisfaction with the current administration in Taiwan led to the termination of this gentleman’s agreement in 2017. Hence, there has been little to no official exchange between Taiwan and the WHO regarding the actual status of COVID-19.
One China principle
On 22 January, Geng Shuang, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, responded to journalists’ questions regarding Taiwan’s participation in the WHO and its first confirmed case two days earlier, stating that “Taiwan region’s participation in WHO technical activities” must be arranged by the Chinese side “through consultations under the one China principle,” which posits that Taiwan is part of China.
Geng added that Taiwanese medical experts had been invited to Wuhan on 12 January, 2020. However, he did not mention that these Taiwanese medical staff visited China under Taiwan’s initiative, which follows the Cross-Strait Agreement on Medical and Health Cooperation signed in 2010, which stemmed from the practical need to handle medical incidents. China exploited the actual event and skillfully linked their visits with the question of WHO membership, painting an image of China’s support to the wellbeing of people in Taiwan.
China also makes opponents look less attractive in order to build coalitions abroad and encourage domestic frenzy to support the CCP. For example, there were Taiwanese businessmen who were trapped in Wuhan when China suddenly quarantined the whole city in early 2020, and Taiwan was trying to bring its citizens back. China wanted to avoid the impression that Taiwan was conducting an “international” emergency evacuation of its citizens. The initial settlement of the flight and itinerary was organized by China when the first flight arrived in Taipei on 3 February, 2020. However, the ROC government claimed that more than 70 percent of the flight manifest was different from the agreed-upon passenger list, and there was one confirmed case among the passengers.
Alabama National Guard’s 46th Civil Support Team work a threat scenario created by Dugway’s Special Program Division . Training teams.
photo: US Army
Follow-up flights were postponed before China could agree with Taiwan’s request to send its designated flag carriers and check all passengers with a Taiwanese medical team before they boarded. Other countries, as well as Hong Kong, used this same model to evacuate their citizens from China. Nevertheless, China still views Taiwan’s efforts as politically incorrect, and this issue became a cross-strait dispute. During the ongoing negotiations over charter flights, China’s Taiwan Affairs Council later accused Taiwan of sabotaging humanitarian aid and ignoring the actual needs of Taiwanese people.
Sick man of Asia
Another case where China made its opponent look less attractive was when The Wall Street Journal published an article titled, “China Is the Real Sick Man of Asia.” The article discussed the uncertainty of China’s economic juggernaut, but the title was viewed negatively by China as it employed a term rarely used since China’s “century of humiliation,” wrought by Western powers. On 19 February, 2020, Beijing decided to expel three journalists with the Wall Street Journal after publication of the contentious title, instead of focusing on the arguments within the article itself. In retaliation, Washington put a personnel cap on employees of five Chinese media outlets operating in the United States. Amid the COVID-19 crisis, this latest escalation offers China the opportunity to create a “rally around the flag” effect to secure its political legitimacy among the Chinese people.
From China’s efforts to win hearts and minds, we can observe the following implications. Firstly, given the fact that Xi Jinping is the “chairman of everything” in China, he certainly would be responsible for everything, including the handling of the outbreak of COVID-19. Xi emphasized that he had been in the “people’s war” against the virus since 7 January, 2020, to ease criticism that the Chinese authorities were a day late and a dollar short in their handling of COVID-19. This instead presented a dilemma for the CCP to explain why the Chinese public was kept in the dark until the sudden quarantine of Wuhan on 23 January.
There were also multiple reports of CCP official’s wrongdoing from the distribution of resources to the utilization of donations, and the CCP quickly changed the leadership of Hubei Province on 13 February. There were reports of severe shortages of protective equipment and face masks and questions of countermeasures by Chinese medical staff, Zeng Ying-chun and Zhen Yan, in the medical journal The Lancet on 24 February. While the article indirectly criticizes the Chinese method of governance, it was mysteriously retracted by both authors two days later. On 2 March, it was reported by Xinhua News that the People’s Liberation Army’s Central Theater Command had sent over 10,000 military medics to the region. This development indicated that, in a globalized world, even an authoritarian regime now cares more about public opinion, and even their policy response can be reactive instead of proactive.
Secondly, this also presents challenges to China’s communication strategy. As exemplified by Dr. Li’s case, both domestic and overseas Chinese citizens now possess the positive energy to critique social injustice. Hence, when a communication from the CCP is deemed by the audience as not being truthful, justifiable, or sincere, information that clearly has manipulative intent will be more destructive than constructive to the regime. On 26 February, 2020, when China Global Television Network reported that the leading scientist, Zhong Nanshan, claimed COVID-19 might not have originated in China, comments aroused criticism from the Chinese public because he presented no scientific evidence or argument to support the assertion. On 2 March, six days after the release of A Battle Against Epidemic, many in the Chinese media indicated that there were no signs of the book in shops, and critics believed that the book’s title was extremely inappropriate, as the Chinese people continue to suffer and die from COVID-19. The CCP’s claim of victory has been deemed untimely, as it comes before the epidemic is actually over.
Finally, the CCP prioritizes the One-China principle in the WHO without acknowledging the potential risks to global security and the actual needs of Taiwanese people. As exemplified in the case of COVID-19, the CCP may be able to stop the dissemination of information, but it cannot stop the virus it unleashed. There is always a limit to China’s approach to winning hearts and minds.
Patients enter the ward of Leishenshan Hospital in Wuhan. China has been touting it’s ability to quickly build such facilities.
photo: PRC Government
Dr. Hon-min Yau is a professor at the ROC National Defense University. He can be reached for comment at cf22517855@gmail.com
