CCP Propaganda in 8 simple steps

The Chinese Communist Party has always been successful with their propaganda machine, spinning devastating PR screw-ups into PR wins, thereby coercing the rest of the world to agree. An example from history was the nation-wide poverty and starvation caused by ‘collective farming’ as ordered by Mao Zedong. The Chinese propaganda machine spun it as if they had lifted the Chinese people out of poverty, conveniently ignoring the fact that they had put the people into poverty, and it was the people who managed to pull themselves up once the CCP backed off a bit on their communistic economic policies. Eventually, even Western media outlets were coerced into publishing these skewed perspective of historical facts. The CCP is doing the same trick on the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak, thereby propagating the authoritarian regime to the Western world, in 8 clear steps listed below.

Step 1: Massive Cover-up

The first case of the coronavirus disease can be traced back to 17 Nov 2019, with 266 confirmed cases by the end of 2019. Yet the CCP responded by covering up the news. They detained people talking about it online, and arrested the doctors who first reported on the viral outbreak. The official media lied for two weeks that there were no new cases of infection, no firm evidence of human transmission, and no medical workers were infected. By mid January there were too many cases for the CCP to cover it up.

Step 2: Declaration of War

“We are fighting a war against coronavirus!” Xi Jinping declared that China would ‘resolutely curb the outbreak of the virus’, right when the number of confirmed cases tripledin China. The coronavirus was not spreading faster; but getting politically riskier for officials to cover it up. The central authorities announced that ‘lower-ranking officials who covered up the spread of the virus would be “nailed on the pillar of shame for eternity”’.

Step 3: Ruthless Authoritarianism

By the end of January, the official statistics reported around 12,000 confirmed cases and 259 deaths; the actual numbers would be higher. The whole province of Hubei with 58 million people was under lockdown, and with measures of various strengths over half of the population of the whole nation was restricted. Local authorities rounded up patients and put them into mass quarantine camps with dubious sanitary conditions. Police would beat pedestrians without face masks, and even welded sick people into their apartments in some cases. All negative news were censored, including ‘disappearing’ citizen journalists into indefinite quarantines. The public were told not to go back to work, leading to a record low for the Chinese manufacturing industry. This became a huge problem for the CCP as it affected the continuous economic growth, thereby disrupting their political legitimacy.

Step 4: Announcing They’ve won

The CCP had no choice but to tell people to go back to work and revive the economy. State media took on the narrative of a declining coronavirus infection, as early as mid February, although they only included the number of infections outside of the main epicentre of the Hubei, and was also misleading. The total number of infections were not declining, and there were new cases everyday; only the number new cases per day was declining. The CCP wanted everyone to believe that the outbreak in China was under control in less than 3 weeks. The CCP leaders clearly knew it was a lie, as they canceled 2 important political meetings in March.

Step 5: Co-Opting Respected Global Institutions

The CCP was co-opting with respected Institutions like the WHO,who released a report in which China was praised for ‘perhaps the most ambitious, agile and aggressive disease containment effort in history’, taking reference from the data set compiled by Chinese scientists. WHO, a well-respected institution that received Chinese money, were seen lavishing nebulous praise on the CCP.

Step 6: Repeating the Praise in State-Run Media

After coercing the WHO and even UN officials into praising CCP’s efforts in fighting the virus, thesemessages were pushed onto state-run English media platforms.

Step 7: Getting Western Media to Praise China

Now that the CCP has announced its victory in fighting the disease, and with global institutions praising the China’s effort, Western media now are willing to take up the same narrative. Major western media were reporting the ‘success’ of China, quoting media sources directly from Chinese media outlets without being as skeptical as they should be.

Step 8: China Saves Us All

After reporting on China’s success, Western media went on asking if implementing the same drastic measures in China would work in their own countries, insofar as to claiming that ‘China saves its people as democracies slaughter theirs’. This not only propagates the idea that China’s suppressive authoritarian regime had contained the virus, but also that the regime had saved the rest of the world. This narrative of ‘China buying the rest of the world time’ had been taken by state-run media since February, and took hold in Western media as well.

And with these 8 steps, the communist propaganda machine took over the world’s media.