Party Messaging Belies International Outreach
Executive Summary:
- Recent international coverage in the People’s Daily contains an unwavering ideological line that is often at odds with the Party’s external messaging—a reminder of its uncompromising worldview.
- Core message repeated throughout the coverage are that the United States is a destabilizing and dangerous power in decline; that powers in alignment with the United States are to be treated with hostility and suspicion; and that only those who advance Beijing’s interests are to be spared from criticism.
- Messaging on Europe is the most nuanced, with different approaches taken toward the European Union, individual member states, and transatlantic relations.
- In all cases, other countries are characterized as internally dysfunctional, in an implicit contrast with coverage of the People’s Republic of China under the Party’s stewardship.
Beijing’s high-level diplomatic overtures are following a familiar path in the new year. Foreign Minister Wang Yi (王毅) has taken the foreign minister’s traditional first trip of the year to select African countries; a politburo standing committee member—in this case Vice Premier He Lifeng (何立峰)—has journeyed to Davos, Switzerland, to address assembled elites at the World Economic Forum; and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) general secretary Xi Jinping has received various world leaders in Beijing. The Party’s messaging has been consistent, pairing concern about the current state of the international system with the confidence that its own domestic system has the requisite strength to make it “both a leader and an enabler” (中国是引领者，也是赋能者) in global affairs (People’s Daily, January 19).
As of January 23, Xi Jinping has met with the leaders of the Republic of Korea, Canada, and Ireland. In each case, he has spoken of multilateralism, of win-win cooperation, and of setting aside differences in pursuit of mutual benefit. In the coming weeks, Xi has plans to meet with the British prime minister and the German Chancellor, and, further down the line, with the president of the United States. His outward messaging will similarly frame Beijing’s relationships with these important global players in terms of partnership, emphasizing openness and a willingness to work together. But this bonhomie contrasts, often starkly, with how the Party frames these countries in its domestic messaging.
A look at the almost 40 articles published in the People’s Daily over January 10–23 that cover the United States, U.S. treaty allies, and other Western democracies is instructive. The paper indicates adherence to a (mostly) unwavering ideological line. It relentlessly criticizes the United States for its overseas activities; it decries the European Union for the bloc’s economic policies; and it rails against Japan, fixating on its imperial past. In all cases, individual countries are framed domestically as in crisis, with aging and failing infrastructure or beset with economic problems. And a significant portion of column inches are used to emphasize division, particularly between members of the Western alliance.
In some ways, this is unsurprising. The People’s Daily is, after all, a propaganda outlet. Its primary agenda is to spread the Party’s worldview to its membership, alongside reporting the activities of the leadership, communicating key policies, and tracking developments across the country and around the world. But as the official mouthpiece of the CCP Central Committee, the paper’s ideological line must be taken seriously. The framing of its message reflects the leadership’s priorities. The views espoused in its pages are ones it expects its more than 100 million members to internalize. As a result, its content is in some ways more true than anything the Party communicates to those outside of it, irrespective of the veracity of any factual claims it makes.
The United States Remains Public Enemy Number One
In recent months, analysts have observed a relative thaw in the bilateral relationship between the world’s two most powerful nation-states. Ample evidence attests to a form of rapprochement, as both sides have pared back directly antagonistic actions. The journalists and expert commentators at the People’s Daily, however, do not appear to have received the memo. Recent commentary on the state of the U.S. body politic is exclusively negative. One article focuses on the possible deployment of approximately 1,500 paratroopers to the state of Minnesota, fueling the narrative of domestic chaos and disorder within the United States (People’s Daily, January 19). Another largely consists of a compilation of quotes from U.S. think tanks, nonprofits, and media reports criticizing the administration’s tariff policy as “relentlessly intensifying domestic pressures” (不断加剧自身民生压力) (People’s Daily, January 15). Foregrounding such organizations’ criticisms of their own governments is a common device for emphasizing divisions within Western countries. Implicit in all this coverage is the comparison with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which by contrast is portrayed as stable, ordered, and rational.
The most excoriating coverage is reserved for U.S. foreign policy, in particular what the paper characterizes as its militaristic and hegemonic tendencies. An article from January 15 does this bluntly, leading with the headline “The United States Launched Nearly 600 Unilateral Military Strikes Within a Year” (美国一年内发动近600次单方面军事打击) (People’s Daily, January 15). Most are reserved for coverage of Operation Absolute Resolve, in which the U.S. military captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, and tracking the administration’s rhetoric toward Greenland. These function to undergird the long-held belief that the United States is the world’s most dangerous actor. A January 14 commentary under the name Huan Yuping (寰宇平) declares that the world doesn’t need a “new Monroe doctrine” (新门罗主义). It says that the United States “seeks hegemony rather than justice, demands spheres of influence rather than sovereign equality, and insists on supremacy rather than mutual respect” (要霸权、不要公理，要“势力范围”、不要主权平等，要唯我独尊、不要相互尊重). It goes on to argue that its actions in Venezuela indicate its “bullying logic and power-driven nature” (霸道逻辑和强权底色), its willingness to engage in “brutal violation” (粗暴侵犯) of a sovereign nation and “flagrant trampling and open defiance” (肆意践踏和公然挑战) of international law and fundamental norms of international relations (People’s Daily, January 14). January 14 in fact served as a high point for this line of argument, with the United States’s “hegemonic logic” (霸权逻辑), “hegemonic mindset” (霸权思维), “classic hegemonic thinking” (典型的霸权主义思维), and “rule-breaker” (规则破坏者) tendencies driven home across reporting, commentary, and opinion pieces (People’s Daily, January 14, [a], [b], [c], [d]). [1]
These articles are keen to point out the upshot of the United States’s behavior. One provides a friendly warning to Global South nations that they should “remain highly vigilant” (保持高度警惕) (People’s Daily, January 14). Taking a step back, some point to the Party’s preferred structural analysis of developments and trends that provide readers with hope for a safer tomorrow. One opinion piece, penned by the deputy dean of Tsinghua University’s Institute of International Relations, argues that U.S. national power is waning (美国国力有所衰落) (People’s Daily, January 14). Another claims that U.S. activity reflects an “unchanging trend” (不变大势) toward multipolarity and democratization in international relations (People’s Daily, January 14).
Differentiated Approach to Europe
People’s Daily coverage of Europe is more nuanced. This appears to reflect three strategies within the Party’s thinking: mitigating possible adverse policies from the European Union, cultivating friendly relations with willing EU member states, and driving a wedge between Europe and the United States.
Evidence of the first strand of this thinking comes from a January 22 article, in which the ministry of foreign affairs “urges the EU to avoid further straying down the wrong path of protectionism” (敦促欧盟避免在保护主义的错误道路上越走越远). After dismissing the EU’s policymaking process as a “classic example of politicization” (政治化 … 的典型表现) and “naked protectionism” (赤裸裸的保护主义), it finishes with what appears to be a veiled threat of economic coercion, warning that such actions “significantly erode the confidence of companies from various countries in investing in Europe” (严重影响各国企业赴欧投资信心) (People’s Daily, January 22).
The second part of this agenda is seen in the differentiation between painting certain European countries as dysfunctional while praising others that hew more closely to Beijing. In this way, one article on EU housing policy is spent largely on lamenting the continent’s “increasingly severe housing and rental crises” (为应对欧洲日益严峻的住房与租房危机) and its impacts on young people and low-income households (People’s Daily, January 13). Another covers recent snowstorms that hit multiple European countries by choosing to concentrate on travel disruptions, people stranded, power outages, and other evidence of poor state capacity (People’s Daily, January 13). The one article on Germany from the two-week period is devoted to its economic challenges, which it argues stem from U.S. tariffs and Western sanctions against Russia (with no mention, of course, of the reason for those sanctions) (People’s Daily, January 16). France, meanwhile, is the subject of another standalone piece. This article describes the sorry state of the “land of baguettes” (法棍之国), which now faces low profitability in its flour industry. It notes that France, once the world’s top flour exporter, has been a net importer since 2018, “prompting significant reflection within French society” (引发法国社会不少反思). The root cause is attributed to obsolete production tools and repeatedly postponed investment plans, which have eroded the industry’s competitiveness (People’s Daily, January 15). Over and over again, the implicit contrast is with the PRC, framed as an industrial and exporting powerhouse fueled by Chinese modernization and new quality productive forces.
The one European country singled out for praise is Hungary, whose relations with the PRC are described as “an exemplary model for new-type international relations” (新型国际关系的典范). Prominence is given to the deputy speaker of the Hungarian National Assembly, János Latorcai, who is quoted as saying that the PRC “is indeed a trustworthy friend” (正是值得信赖的朋友) (People’s Daily, January 21).
Recent developments concerning U.S. ambitions to acquire Greenland have provided easy fuel for portraying transatlantic divisions. A January 23 article on President Trump’s “so-called ‘Board of Peace’” (所谓“和平委员会”) contains quotes from both a spokesperson from France’s foreign ministry and Britain’s foreign secretary saying that they would not be joining, while coverage of Trump’s Davos speech is replete with quotes from European leaders and parliamentarians criticizing the U.S. president (People’s Daily, January 14, January 21, January 22, [a], [b], January 23 [a], [b]). One representative piece has as its final sentence a quote from a Dutch politician that could easily have been written by a People’s Daily propagandist: “America’s provocations and blackmail once again demonstrate that Europe must draw a clear line with the United States” (美方的挑衅和讹诈再次证明，欧洲必须同美国划清界限，一味地顺从和奉承是行不通的) (People’s Daily, January 19).
Conclusion
Nothing that the People’s Daily published in last two weeks is exceptional. But a sampling of the rhetorical force contained in the paper’s international coverage should serve as a reminder to Western politicians of the CCP’s uncompromising worldview. The messages contained within its pages are consistent: the United States is a destabilizing and dangerous power in decline; powers that align with the United States are treated with hostility and suspicion; and only those who advance Beijing’s interests—as Hungary does in fracturing European unity—are spared from criticism.
Notes
[1] Interestingly, this dense series of indictments of the United States follow directly after four articles published the preceding day that praise the deepening of people-to-people ties between the PRC and the United States following a recent youth delegation visit to the PRC (People’s Daily, January 13, [a], [b], [c], [d]).
