David Ferguson, honorary chief English editor with the Foreign Languages Press, CICG
It’s always a very interesting experience. When the first volume came along, we didn’t know anything about it.
China’s political discourse is very, very different. It is really difficult to express some ideas in a way that makes them accessible for an English—speaking audience.
One of the important elements is what China calls “Party building.” And it’s about the internal Party process. If you say “Party building” to an English speaker who doesn’t know anything about China’s political structures and processes, it doesn’t mean anything. I prefer the expression “strengthening the Party’s political base.” It’s still not clear exactly what it means, but the words “strengthening the Party’s political base” in English actually communicate something.
I think the most important thing that it taught me about China’s political system, about Xi Jinping Thought, started as early as the first book. It covers things like the economy, it covers society, it covers the environment. It covers China’s international diplomatic efforts and international affairs. It’s not a whole lot of different ideas in different fields. And I think it’s very important to understand the governance of China in these terms.
I think that there has been an improvement in terms of China’s mainstream media’s ability to communicate with a global audience. But I think it’s still far too much directed to China’s formal political discourse. One of the fundamental problems that I see is that China, in its international communication, puts almost all its emphasis on China’s formal political discourse. And China’s formal political discourse has a very, very narrow audience.
And from the perspective of the mainstream media, they are still reflecting the views and they are still adopting the approach, and they are still adopting the style and the tone and the language of China’s formal political discourse.
So China has to find different and better ways of presenting its argument. And the mainstream media has to be part of that. But in order to do that, they have to develop a style and a tone that is different from the formal political discourse. Speaking more broadly, China also has to find a lot more channels of communication.
There are many more channels of communication available now. Specifically, movies. China is really, really good at making blockbuster movies. You’ve got fantastic ones like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, House of Flying Daggers, you’ve got historical ones like Red Cliff and you’ve got modern ones like The Battle at Lake Changjin. In the past 10 years, how many big movies has China made actually targeting a Western audience and trying to tell China’s story? The answer is, so far, as I am aware, zero and that’s a big opportunity.
So there’s one pillar that can be added: social media. The vast majority of ordinary people nowadays, get their information, and they form their views, from social media. What China needs is a strategy that brings all these channels together, plans how they’re gonna be used and uses them effectively.
Young people are a specific target audience. One of the strengths of young people is that they have not spent years listening to anti-China propaganda. So they haven’t formed a hostile view to China, that many of the people have, and you need to talk to them and [you] need to turn them into friends. You need to talk to them through people that they can identify with, things that they’re interested in.
And a good example of that has happened: the 2022 Winter Olympics. [With] some very successful Chinese athletes in fashionable sports that young people relate to, like snowboarding. You need to think about that and you need to build a strategy using people, like the young Chinese athletes, as ambassadors to communicate with young people outside of China. And as I say, turn them into friends before somebody else’s had a chance to turn them into enemies.
Company Name: Center for the Americas, China International Communications Group
Contact Person: Li Qing
Email: liqing@cicgamericas.com
Country: People’s Republic of China
Website: https://youtu.be/z_No1s62JFs
