Chinese Propaganda Machine

US orders Chinese media to register as foreign agents

By Lily Kuo

The Foreign Agents Registration Act requires anyone acting on behalf of a foreign government to register with the US Department of Justice. 

Beijing has complained to the US following reports that Washington has ordered two Chinese state-run media agencies to register as foreign agents.
The US Department of Justice has ordered China’s largest state-run media outlets, Xinhua News Agency and China Global Television Network (CGTN), formerly known as CCTV, to register under a law that would treat them as lobbyists working for a foreign entity.

Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said on Wednesday that Beijing had “contacted and communicated” with the US regarding the order, first reported by the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.
The Foreign Agents Registration Act (Fara) requires anyone acting on behalf of a foreign government to register with the US Department of Justice and file public reports. 

If registered as foreign agents, Xinhua and CGTN would have to disclose their budgets and expenditures as well as include disclaimers identifying the outlets as foreign agents on all broadcasts.
“Countries should perceive media’s role in promoting international exchange and cooperation in an open and inclusive spirit,” Geng said at a news briefing. 

“They need to facilitate rather than obstruct media’s normal work, still less politicising their role.”
The news comes as relations between the US and China have hit a low over an escalating trade war. Geng’s comments also struck some as ironic, given China’s extremely restrictive media environment.
Last month, the US embassy in Beijing said it was “deeply concerned” when a US journalist for Buzzfeed News, known for her reporting on human rights abuses in East Turkestan, was denied a visa to continue working in China. 

Other foreign journalists have also been effectively barred.
Last year, Russia’s state-run RT Television was ordered to register under Fara after a US intelligence report said RT and the website Sputnik news were part of a misinformation campaign during the 2016 US presidential election.
Chinese media operating in the US are expanding efforts to influence public opinion through Chinese and English-language news from Chinese state outlets.
Paid inserts of the government-run China Daily have appeared in major newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post. 

CGTN has claimed it reaches 30m US households a year. 

In 2016, Xinhua paid for a mega-screen in New York’s Times Square that played a video promoting “China’s historical role and standing in the South China Sea” on loop.

In January, a group of US senators including Marco Rubio and Patrick Leahy wrote to the US asking the Department of Justice to assess whether state-controlled Chinese media should be registered under Fara.
They also asked the department to assess whether the dissemination of Chinese state media, including the inserts from the China Daily and the use of social media, complied with the law. 

Both Xinhua and CGTN have Facebook pages.
Citing a report last year from the National Endowment for Democracy, the senators said China was exploiting “glaring asymmetry” by raising barriers to external political and cultural influence at home while simultaneously taking advantage of the openness of democratic systems abroad.”
The US Department of Justice has been contacted for comment.

Chinese Spies

U.S. Congress urged to require Chinese journalists to register as agents
By David Brunnstrom

China's mole in New Zealnd: Yang Jian
Spying HQ: Xinhua serves the functions of an intelligence agency by gathering information and producing classified reports for the Chinese leadership. It had important offices at the United Nations in New York, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston and San Francisco.

WASHINGTON -- A report to the U.S. Congress released on Wednesday accused Chinese state media entities of involvement in spying and propaganda and said their staff in the United States should be required to register as foreign agents.
The annual report of the U.S. China Economic and Security Review Commission said that while China had tightened restrictions on domestic and foreign media, Chinese state media had rapidly expanded overseas.
The commission, created by Congress in 2000 to monitor national security implications of U.S.-China trade relations, said China’s state media expansion was part of a broader effort to exert greater control over how China is depicted globally, as well as to gather information.
The report highlighted the rapid growth of the Xinhua news agency and noted that it had offices at the United Nations in New York, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston and San Francisco.
“Xinhua serves the functions of an intelligence agency by gathering information and producing classified reports for the Chinese leadership on both domestic and international events,” the report said.
It quoted testimony to the commission by the U.S. Government-funded rights organization, Freedom House, as saying it was a “loophole” that individuals working for Xinhua and China’s People’s Daily newspaper were not covered by the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
FARA, first passed in 1938 in the lead up to World War Two to combat German propaganda efforts, requires foreign governments, political parties and lobbyists they hire in the United States to register with the Department of Justice.
The China Daily, an English-language newspaper owned by China’s government and ruling Communist Party, is already registered under FARA but only its top executives are required to individually disclose working for the publication.
A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers is working to overhaul FARA after Paul Manafort, former campaign manager for President Donald Trump, and a business associate were indicted for failing to register under the law.
The reform, backed by powerful Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley, could provide an opportunity for Congress to act on the commission recommendations.
On Monday, the Kremlin-backed television station RT America registered under FARA after U.S. intelligence agencies in a report in January called it a “state-run propaganda machine” that contributed to the Kremlin’s campaign to interfere with last year’s U.S. presidential election.
Under the act, RT will be required to disclose financial information. 

Moscow has said it views the action against RT as an unfriendly act.

Media Censorship

Justice Dept. Is Asked to Review Chinese Company’s Hollywood Purchases
By MICHAEL FORSYTHE

Wang Jianlin, chairman of Dalian Wanda Group, in Beijing in August. 

HONG KONG — The aggressive expansion of the Chinese company Dalian Wanda Group into the American film industry drew increased scrutiny from Congress this week as a prominent lawmaker asked the Justice Department to review a spate of recent purchases by the company, which has close financial ties to relatives of senior Chinese Communist leaders.
The congressman, John Culberson, Republican of Texas and chairman of a subcommittee overseeing the Justice Department in the House Appropriations Committee, asked the department in a letter to review Wanda’s acquisitions as part of an effort to overhaul and possibly broaden rules on foreign purchases of United States companies and to review decades-old laws governing foreign agents in the country.
Wanda, now the world’s biggest owner of movie theaters, bought AMC Entertainment Holdings, a chain based in the United States, in 2012 and is bidding to buy its rival Carmike Cinemas. 

In January, Wanda bought Legendary Entertainment, a Hollywood production company, and Wanda’s billionaire chairman, Wang Jianlin, is seeking to buy a major Hollywood studio.
The concern of Mr. Culberson and others is that Wanda’s purchases are part of a move by the Communist Party to expand its global influence to try to ensure that any portrayal of China in Hollywood movies is favorable. 

It has been more than a decade since a Hollywood studio made a major movie critical of China’s authoritarian government.
“These acquisitions, as well as many more cofinancing arrangements, allow Chinese state-controlled companies a significant degree of control over the financing and content of American media that raises serious concerns about how this may be used for propaganda purposes,” Mr. Culberson said in the letter, dated Oct. 6, to John P. Carlin, the assistant attorney general for national security. 

The letter also mentioned recent Hollywood purchases by other Chinese companies.
A spokeswoman for Wanda North America said Friday in an e-mailed statement, “Wanda has and will continue to comply with all applicable U.S. law in connection with its media and entertainment investments in the United States including without limitation making the appropriate filings with the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice.”
The Communist Party ties of Wanda and Mr. Wang were the subject of a New York Times investigation in April 2015. 

The report found that relatives or business associates of four members of the party’s ruling Politburo, including relatives of Xi Jinping, were among the company’s earliest outside investors. 

All appear to have earned spectacular returns.
Shares held in the name of a niece of one Politburo member, Wang Zhaoguo, multiplied in value by more than 1,000, from less than $500,000 at the time they were acquired in 2007 to more than $600 million in early 2015, the Times investigation found.
Wang Jianlin, a longtime Communist Party member, was a delegate to the 2007 congress that chose the next generation of party leaders, including Xi. 

From 2008 to 2013, he was a member of the standing committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a high-level advisory body to China’s legislature. 

A company owned by an employee of the son-in-law of the body’s chairman at the time, Jia Qinglin, had acquired a stake in Wang’s family holding company only weeks before the 2007 party conclave, The Times found.
By early 2015, those shares were worth more than $250 million, and a stake in Wanda’s Chinese cinema company that was owned by the son-in-law’s investment company was worth more than $130 million.
Late last month, Wanda fired an executive after he was found to have bribed a local official in the northeastern city of Dalian in 2008 and 2009. 

The official helped the company obtain government approval to complete its transition from a state-owned company to a private enterprise, according to a court judgment.