By Manoel Ossato | 2024-10-18

RIO DE JANEIRO -- A forum that brought together nearly 100 Latin American and Chinese media outlets and think tanks has raised concern among some journalists and human rights activists about freedom of expression.

The 2024 China-Latin America and Caribbean Media Cooperation Forum was co-organized by the People's Daily, the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee, and Brazilian business and economics newspaper Monitor Mercantil.

In line with CCP messaging, Hu Guo, vice president of the People's Daily, provided a positive perspective of the event.

"In the past 10 years, we've focused on improving our structure and have produced a vast number of stories that showcase the vitality of both China and Latin America," she said at the event, according to state-run China Global Television Network (CGTN).

The forum, which took place October 16 in Rio de Janeiro, provided Beijing an opportunity to promote its model of state-controlled and censored journalism, critics said.

'Telling China's story well'

The Chinese effort goes back many years.

In August 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping addressed the National Propaganda and Ideology Work Conference, outlining his vision for propaganda and international communication.

He emphasized the importance of "telling China's story well" and called for a stronger focus on "external propaganda" to shape global narratives.

Over the past decade, a growing number of journalists from Latin America and the Caribbean have visited China, at Beijing's expense, for media "training" programs.

Instructors of those courses urge the visitors to align with the CCP's perspectives on international affairs and to adopt the practices prevalent in Chinese journalism, according to several participants of these training programs.

"Telling China's story well" essentially involves replicating CCP propaganda.

The instructors encourage trainees to produce only positive reports about their countries' institutions instead of advocating for accountability, thereby compromising the independence of the media in Latin America.

Billions spent

During one recent training at the end of August, China hosted more than 200 representatives of 191 media outlets from 76 countries, according to China's Global Times.

Onstage, CCP officials played up the purported benefits of the infrastructural Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) -- proposed by Xi in 2013 -- for participating countries.

The officials emphasized "win-win cooperation," a narrative pushed by state-controlled Chinese media.

However, criticism of the BRI and of Beijing's predatory lending -- labeled "debt trap diplomacy" -- extends abroad.

In September 2023, the US State Department issued a report accusing the Chinese government of subverting global news media.

"China is manipulating global media through censorship, data harvesting and covert purchases of foreign news outlets," Reuters summarized then.

Beijing suppresses disagreement with its narrative on Taiwan, human rights and the Chinese economy, the report said.

The State Department blasted China's expenditure of billions annually to manipulate foreign information and to encourage trumpeting of the Chinese regime's supposed feats.

"Unchecked, Beijing's efforts could result in a future in which technology exported by the PRC [China], coopted local governments, and fear of Beijing's direct retaliation produce a sharp contraction of global freedom of expression," the State Department said.

'A grand performance'

The CCP dedicates considerable if undisclosed funding to hosting foreign correspondents on these highly organized and controlled visits aimed at controlling the narrative on sensitive issues.

It is not uncommon for the authorities to bring foreign journalists and diplomats to regions like Xinjiang and Tibet, where Beijing faces allegations of human rights violations and even genocide.

The visits are tightly controlled and follow a strict itinerary, during which Chinese government representatives bombard guests with official data to persuade them that negative reporting represents persecution by Western media.

"It all feels like a grand performance, with the script extolling the Party's achievements repeated incessantly, even by the 'ordinary people' carefully chosen to speak with us," a reporter who requested anonymity told Entorno.

"We're under constant surveillance; there's no escaping the script or freely exploring the region to understand the local reality," he added.

Compromising journalists' privacy

Beijing appears to be defining more and more territory as "sensitive," the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China (FCCC) reported in April following a survey of members.

"An increasing number of journalists encountered issues in regions bordering Russia (79%), Southeast Asian nations (43%) or in ethnically diverse regions like Inner Mongolia (68%)."

"Eighty-five percent of journalists who tried to report from Xinjiang in 2023 experienced problems," the FCCC said.

A whopping 99% of survey respondents agreed that "reporting conditions in China rarely or never met international reporting standards."

Meanwhile, reporters suspect Beijing of violating their privacy.

"A majority of respondents had reason to believe the authorities had possibly or definitely compromised their WeChat (81%), their phone (72%), and/or placed audio recording bugs in their office or home (55%)," the FCCC added.

China hosts one of the "world's most restrictive media environments and its most sophisticated system of censorship, particularly online," Freedom House said in its 2024 country report on China.

Now it is striving to export that model to Latin America.