Kevin Sheives
Hi, welcome. We’re thrilled you all could join us today, on behalf of CEPA and Freedom House. My name is Kevin Shives. And with the National Endowment for Democracy and international forum for democratic studies, we’re here today to talk about a really compelling topic of China’s online influence in Central and Eastern Europe. Everyone is dealing with the global challenge of China these days. And China’s influence really pervasive is pervasive influence. It’s one in which it’s touching every sector of society, and not least of most the information space, whether it’s through traditional media, whether it’s through social media, China’s a big story all around the world. Today, we’ve assembled a really fantastic group of experts. I’ll save the introductions for when I when I introduce them, and then try and speak with them. We got a great group, many of which have launched really great analytical tools in this area, many of which have great long experience dealing with China’s influence both online and elsewhere in their own sectors and in home countries. So let’s get started. So first, I want to introduce Ellie Young Ellie Young is a research analyst at China, for China at Freedom House, Ellie, want to talk a little bit about how you perceive China’s online influence globally. Freedom House came out with a really fantastic report, just I believe in December, that dealt with country studies from all around the world in terms of China’s influence in the media sector and elsewhere. The report was incredibly detailed, your team looked at this issue, specifically in Central Europe as well, within Poland and Romania, I believe what surprised you about your research that you weren’t expecting? And really the second report is freedom houses has really been working on this for a number of years.
Ellie Young
Thanks for your very kind introduction, Kevin. And yeah, so we published that agents global media influence report. In September, actually, we looked at 30 countries around the world, including Romania, and Poland. And we were looking at traditional media influence, so covering both print radio, to television, and also social media. And it was very, and the report covered from 2019 to 2021. So it was actually really interesting, we got to see during this time period that we were looking at in detail, a growing shift, and an evolution and tactics on the sort of growing dominance of social media for spreading China’s message. So in 26, of the 30 countries we looked at, we found evidence of diplomatic accounts and state media on social media. And while we did track a sort of variation in both style and tone, and authentic engagement from viewers as well, what was really surprising was the growing range of languages, and countries that were being targeted. So even languages that didn’t have a huge target audience. For example, we found social media accounts in Romanian or in Hebrew, or in Sinhala, and also targeted disinformation, campaigns on social media, in countries like the US and the UK, but also in countries like Philippines, the Philippines, Italy, and Romania as well, as well as a growing range of sort of this artificial amplification of state media accounts. Even if they weren’t getting a lot of authentic engagement, they were still really being pushed to the top of search engine results. So all these changes just in the past few years, and definitely sort of an emerging area to look at.
Kevin Sheives
Did you find that China’s reach into some of these societies was was deeper than you expected? What did you think about this issue of impact China’s narratives? Across the board was a country specific, did you find some commonalities across countries.
Ellie Young
Was your assessment? Again, it was there was a lot of variation. And we were surprised by that. In some countries where we expected to see more engagement. We didn’t see that. So for example, in Peru, we noticed that there was a sort of very hands off very limited messaging on both social media and traditional media, in other countries that was a lot more engaged, you know, with with local diplomats really sort of weighing in on local issues. And, and sort of wading into that. We are one thing that sort of surprised us. Another thing that surprised us was the variety of actors involved. So actually, in Romania, we found that China Radio International which has been present and broadcasting in Romania, for something like 50 years, actually scaled down there. or radio broadcasts in Romanian, but stepped up their activity online during during 2020 2021. And so it was sort of that change in some actors becoming more involved in the space that we didn’t expect. But also, you know, constantly changing their tactics. That was really sort of notable. Did you zero in
Kevin Sheives
A little bit on the findings that you came across with your country studies in Poland and Romania in this region specifically? Tell me a little bit more about about what you find and then want to turn to Anna to get her perspective?
Ellie Young
Yeah, absolutely. So our research was based on a new methodology that we created, it’s all available online, we tracked a couple of different figures. One was a figure we created to sort of gauge the extent of media influence, and then also local resilience and response. And then based on the interplay between those two figures, we came up with a categorization ranking countries as either vulnerable or resistant to Chinese media influence. And so we found that both Poland and Romania, which were the only countries in Central and Eastern Europe that we covered, were resilient. But we did find sort of major gaps and vulnerabilities in both countries. One source of resilience that local analysts that we worked with really like sought to sort of underline and point out was both countries. Familiarity with communist messaging, and ability to sort of leverage their experience with malicious foreign propaganda from other countries to respond to this growing threat of sort of Chinese propaganda. But we did sort of track these major vulnerabilities, right, one was a major one was this lack of knowledge and awareness of the Chinese Communist Party and its propaganda apparatus, and unfamiliarity with the sort of tactics that it uses to influence journalists and social media influencers. And that sort of presented an ongoing weakness that that potentially could be exploited in the future.
Kevin Sheives
I want to get back to this issue of later on in the discussion of the post Soviet post communist legacy, Central Eastern Europe and whether or not that helps prepare them for for the challenge from China. But before we get there, we bring in the end of the conversation Ana Krstinovska the founder of Estima, which is a nonprofit research and consultancy service in North Macedonia. She’s got a great background experience in government and research there. Ana you were part of the team that developed SEPA as online dashboard to measure both the reach of Chinese propaganda disinformation in Central Eastern Europe, but but also it made some interesting assumptions about impact. Can you talk a little bit about what this tool was hope to accomplish? What might have surprised you during the development of it and your own part in the project?
Ana Krstinovska
Thank you very much, Kevin, for this nice introduction. It’s really a pleasure to be with you today. Let me give just a little bit of context regarding the research that we conducted receiver 17, local analysts, one from each of the CEE countries, joining forces to prepare a tailor made methodology, and reports for each country aiming to uncover the means that China is using to further its influence in the region. And then we combined our qualitative research with quantitative research. And we analyzed a pool of 820,000 posts published between the period of October 2021, and April 2022. And actually, this approach helped us to better understand how China is becoming more and more influential in the region in the past decade since the launch of the 17 Plus One COoperation Platform, which became put in plus one on at the moment. But we tried to conquer the world specifically that China is using. And just to give you one example, for instance, in the Western Balkans region, the conventional literature says that China is expanding its economic process. And thanks to this economic presence, it is expanding its political influence. However, this is a bit contradictory, because if we see in most of the Western Balkan countries, there are simply no economic benefits of their engagement with China. So, but still, we see enthusiasm for continued economic cooperation. And thanks to our research, we actually understand that we need to look beyond this economic engagement. We need to see how China influences the public debate how China’s shaping perceptions and all these tools that it has been using basically under the radar and no one has been paying attention Shun, until present. And it is actually precisely these tools that are helping China to become more popular to shape more positive perceptions and become more influential in the region. If we take for instance, North Macedonia, according to the two recent NDI service, we actually see the China managed to increase its popularity from 25% in 2018, to 38%, in 2021. And all of this most of this has been due precisely to China’s influence in the Digital and Information space.
Kevin Sheives
As well, fascinating. I know the the big bridge in Montenegro finished this past week, I believe, was sort of a parallel to the beginning of it. I’m kind of curious specifically in in the Balkans region, what’s been your perspective of this interplay between economic opportunity, and this sort of, like core democratic challenge that China sometimes presents in terms of, you know, its models of governance, how is that played out? In terms of, you know, local elite Prilep perceptions and, and in the like? Well,
Ana Krstinovska
There are virtually no China China funded or China implemented projects that have gone without any irregularities without any deficiencies in terms of good governance. And still, China is seen as an economic opportunity as a big economic giant. Why? Because in most of the countries, we have systemic weaknesses, we have a widespread corruption. We have deficiencies in terms of the rule of law. And the these corruption scandals or projects gone bad or not associated with China, but are usually associated with the local actors. The whole debate revolves around the local politicians or government officials that are corrupt, but there is no emphasis put on China, the model that it has been implementing in the region, and why or how this model is actually, in the core of all these corruption scandals. The blame is simply put on our local weaknesses and local agency, but not enough attention is paid to what the role what role China has in all these shady deals. Thanks. Yeah,
Kevin Sheives
I’d love to get back to this issue. As well. Later on the discussion. Let me introduce Edward Edward Lucas is a senior fellow and advisor at the Center for European policy policy analysis or sepa, but he also has a very long history as an editor and reporter with The Economist. Edward at this past year, we’ve seen authoritarian powers. China and Russia specifically exert themselves into the eastern half of Europe in some pretty unparalleled ways. Obviously, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the biggest example. But also China has pressured Lithuania, following its decision to open up a bid to Taiwan and to establish an office of Taiwan’s representation there and Lithuania. How have you seen this pressure exhibit itself online in the Baltic states, where you spent, you know, much of your career?
Edward Lucas
Well, I think that we’ve seen quite a big change. Overall, I’m leaving the Western Balkans aside, because a Anna knows a great deal more about it than me. And we’ve we’ve been she’s given us a very thorough treatment in the last few minutes. But I think overall, I’m both in the Baltics and more widely in in, in Europe. China’s on the backfoot at the moment, and I was just looking back at some of the stuff we wrote in the weekly China influence monitor that we had back in 2019 to 2019 2020. And in those that was the high tide of wolf warrior diplomacy, you had constant aggressive episodes, whether it was with Chinese tourists in Sweden, trying to complaining about a statue outside the parliament in Copenhagen, bullying, a public children’s publishing house in Germany. Violent and really quite rough demonstrations not exactly violent, but big demonstration sponsored by the Chinese Embassy in Vilnius against human rights, pro pro pro human rights demonstration. And, and the 17 plus one doing really quite quite well. All that’s changed, and I wouldn’t say that Lithuania’s can be praised for this, but I think Lithuania’s decision to go ahead with the opening of the Taiwan office, sort of exemplified the willingness to have real pushback, picking up the baton from the Czechs who were the first people really to start complaining about the, this sort of hegemonic approach to the One China policy. The trays have got really quiet quiet now. I mean, you don’t see the same. If you look at the embassy Twitter accounts, they’re far less combative than than They used to be, I think that it’s the story that China has to tell is far less impressive. If no one’s looking at China saying now and saying, Wow, those guys know how to deal with the COVID pandemic, that was a big thing. Back at the start of COVID, with the sinovac vaccines, generosity with vaccines, and the idea that the Chinese system was able to do lockdown more efficiently and so on. And that’s pretty much gone. It may be still the case in Serbia or somewhere like that. But the idea that China has, we have a lot to learn from China on the public health front is gone. I think the Chinese backing for Russia, in the Ukraine has both been too little to help Russia win, thank goodness for that, but also has seriously damaged China’s image particularly in the Baltic states, which are 110%, behind Ukraine. And so they see if you were if you’re worried about Russia, you’re therefore also worried about China, China’s Russia’s ally. And so it’s it’s they’re facing a real really uphill struggle getting their message across and we also see big countries changing their outlooks. It’s now no longer a kind of being an eccentric outliers have worries about China you’re following on from what soon will be the German policy is the EU policy is the British policy is the American policy. So that gives a lot more space for trying to criticism. I think that the the big point on Lithuania, Taiwan is that Taiwan has not taken full advantage of Lithuania’s bravery. To be to be fair, the Taiwanese were not expecting this. This was something that Athenians did because they believed in it. The Chinese the Taiwanese response has been pretty slow. And the beam for example, Lithuanian exporters trying to export their agricultural products to Taiwan to make up for the markets they’ve lost in China, and finding that they can’t get certification from the Taiwanese authorities, which is not not I mean, this is your best ally. In all of Europe, you should be bending over backwards to help. But once things go beyond the foreign ministry in the president’s office, most of institutional Taiwan is not particularly concerned to help Lithuania. So that’s been a problem. And we’ve also I think, the the Lithuanians are quite rightly disappointed by the failure of the European institutions really to stick up hard for them in the WTO and elsewhere in response to Chinese sanctions, and that’s, that’s been a bit of a disappointment. But on the other hand, Lithuania is still there, the office is still open stuff is happening, although it’s a bit late. And the US Mao’s famous phrase I think Chinese refers to is a bit of a paper tiger. There’s, you know, the Lithuanians broke this enormous taboo, trying to huffed and puffed, but in the end, it hasn’t really it hasn’t crashed the Lithuanian economy. And the three, Lithuania is reaping some some benefits. But in terms of the online space, I think it reflects reality, which is that China is now on the backfoot.
Kevin Sheives
Do you feel like it’s a really fascinating, fascinating analysis that China’s on the backfoot? It gives some some courage, and I think a number of countries, do you feel like this was an issue where China overplayed its hand? Or do you feel like the response from communities in the Baltics or perhaps even some of the measures of democratic solidarity that Estonia and others had for Lithuania, they had an impact.
Kevin Sheives
What do you think?
Edward Lucas
I would love to say that this was that China is on the backfoot. Because we’re playing brilliantly, I would love to say that the three seas initiative is so amazingly successful as its left the 17 plus one looking completely redundant. I can’t say that because it’s not true. I think that are on the whole China succeeds, where we fail. And the Western Balkans story is probably a part of that. But China fails to, and I can’t whether it was Martin or one of his colleagues put it very well when he said the Chinese mainland China sucks at multilateralism, they just are not good at it. And the 17 Plus One was an attempt to do multilateralism and it fundamentally failed, it lacked institutional momentum, it didn’t have a proper secretary at the time had no internal cohesion. And in the end, it wasn’t really a multilateral organization. It was a beauty contest in which to increase the competitive intensity of the different bilateral relationships. And that I think, is why it’s it’s fundamentally failed. I wouldn’t want to be complacent about this and I think China still it builds long term relationships with immense patience and considerable expense. It remains to be seen how much this really amounts to in the long run, but that we see this this that they’re still they’re still doing this sort of long term relationship building. And I’m sure we could do more to push back against it and I you know, we could talk about Confucius Institutes and the I hear in Britain we have problems with up political party financing and so on. But I think if China when wolf warrior was a mistake, it alerted us to the threat and it didn’t succeed in gaining them any serious political advantage. So they’ve dropped that. And I’m not sure at the moment they have an alternative to all four, I wouldn’t say their back to hide and Bide. But they haven’t worked out how to do a sort of proper charm offensive. With the limited exceptions what we see in places like Serbia.
Kevin Sheives
Thanks, I’m reminded of a study that the Australian strategic policy institute put out maybe two years ago on China’s use of coercive diplomacy as a tool reminds me to Lithuania case, one of the key findings from that study talked about how China rarely, I think, if never took on multiple countries at a time when it came to using these coercive economic tools or other tools, in order to, you know, to get its way on a certain issue, whether it was South China Sea or whether it was an issue in Europe or what have you. And it sort of begs the, the response tool as well, you need to have solidarity, you need to show support to others undergoing these things within the Democratic community. So let me bring in Martin Martin Hala is the founder of synopsis. He’s a Czech research nonprofit specializing in China. He himself has a long background and history and nonprofit funding and academic institutions. Martin synopsis has been a real leader in civil society responses to PRCs influence in the Czech Republic. And it’s been released cited as a model for how other organizations could consider responding to China in their own home countries. How do you think civil society should respond to these developments? And one particular question is how do you deal with sectors of society that have a completely different view of China? And I talked earlier about the economic opportunism argument, for example, for perhaps most exhibited by the business community, or perhaps government elites? How do those see it as a those who come to the issue of China, they see it more as an opportunity sometimes and not a threat? How do you deal with that from a civil society perspective?
Martin Hála
Right, so Well, first of all, thanks for inviting me on this panel. I think for for the civil society to be efficient in its responses, a lot of things, similar things need to come together. So there has to be a coordination and collaboration, preferably among different sectors of civil societies. So you, you need to have the area knowledge, the knowledge of China, the knowledge of contemporary China, CCP, but you also need to be well grounded in your own society. So you also need to know what makes your own society tech and how to present your, your, your argument to the society at large. So basically, you know, the, the academia, the academic knowledge, needs to get out from the ivory tower and go down there and get their hands dirty in the sort of like, social discourse, public discourse, you know, everyday life. I think that’s, I think if I can say so myself, I think that’s what happened in the Czech Republic, where, you know, we have very good cooperation between the academia, the media, and the NGO sector in general. And that, that ultimately, is what makes for a thorough or successful response in my mind. It’s, it doesn’t come entirely naturally, because most academics are not trained to go out to the society. You know, they’re they’re also not motivated. They’re, they’re looked upon in the, in the university environment, through different prism. So it takes a little bit of effort. And now how to deal with with those people who may have different opinion, I guess, you deal with that exactly the same way that you deal with people who don’t agree with you in on other issues. You need to you need to be prepared for a long, ongoing discussion, debate even you need to be prepared for some public controversies and plushies we’ve had a number of those. We had a very public spat with the with the den Deputy Prime Minister two years ago. You know, you need to be ready to face the threat of lawsuits, things like that. So in short, you you need to realize that the topic, this discussion, this debate, will be the last for some time that you need to be patient and explaining your points and that sometimes the other side, people who don’t agree with you will eat at you through various means. So you need to take that into consideration and very beginning, I suppose.
Kevin Sheives
How did you work on this issue honestly and aggressively within Czechia society without without marginalizing Chinese ethnic communities that might be there? Where would you have advice for other countries with with very large Chinese ethnic communities say, you know, Canada or Australia or others with delays issues.
Martin Hála
I wouldn’t dare to give advice to places with more established Chinese communities, because as you know, in Central and Eastern Europe, Chinese communities are relatively recent, and also still quite, quite tiny in comparison with, for instance, the Anglo Saxon world. So, you know, how do you how do you avoid marginalizing? I think, again, you need to constantly keep in mind that there’s a distinction between the CCP and China, and of course, Chinese people. And you need to explain to people that very often, the Chinese people, including the Chinese people living in your own country, either first victims of Chinese repression, transnational repression in this particular case, and we’ve seen quite recently in a number of cases, in that direction, like the, like the Overseas Chinese police stations and things like that. So basically, you need to, you need to keep this in mind. And again, like patiently explain that long term, and make sure that there’s this distinction between between Chinese people, and between China as such. And the CCP is always there, it’s maintained.
Kevin Sheives
You mentioned in your response about working with media organizations, I wonder if you could dive a little bit deeper into that for a moment, before we move on to bring in others back into the conversation. You know, a lot of Chinese influences and what is multisectorial? It’s in social media, it’s traditional media. It’s an individual elites sometimes who are parroting, you know, CCP talking points. How did you work in terms of the response note of this with traditional media, and in a context that is really multi sectoral and across platforms?
Martin Hála
Well, it’s, in my mind, it’s, it’s a crucial aspect of our work. And since since the very beginning, we’ve put a lot of effort into working with the mainstream media, because this is your interface with the general public right? Now, you have to understand that in Central and Eastern Europe, probably more so than elsewhere, the media sector has been in a deep crisis, the traditional model of publishing has been shaken. And because the because of the fact that the most of these languages are quite small, the markets are very small. So the media crisis is deeper than and some other parts of the world. So what it translates into in real life is that very often, there’s zero capacity in even well established papers to deal with complex issues like China, they would not have Arion specialists, they would not have anybody speaking Chinese, or even remotely understanding the basic issues. So. So that’s, that’s where that’s where the specialists, the area specialists, the academics like ourselves, come come in, right? Like you can provide this for them. And they’re actually welcoming this kind of input because they can upgrade themselves, it’s sort of like pennies from from heaven for them, right? It’s presented well, if you if you manage to translate the academic knowledge into a format that’s media friendly, and sort of easy, easy to understand for the general public. So So that’s, that’s the thing. That’s the that’s the, that’s the main step that needs to be taken. For for for the experts to be able to cross the divide with the the the general public discourse, and formulate their ideas, their analysis, in a way, formatted in a way that’s accessible to the general public.
Kevin Sheives
Thanks so much, I want to transition us a little bit and bring in two panels at a time with with sort of one question, if you guys could sort of give me one or two minutes of response, and feel free to pick up anything else that was spoken to if you guys want to respond to anything or amplify anything that that others have already raised? Let’s start with with Anna and Edward. So this region is really primed to deal with a threat from Russia. Opinion polls generally show pretty negative view among the general public towards Russia. There are a number of negative aspects of the post Soviet legacy at play. And war really has fairly consistently been on the borders between Eastern Europe and Russia over the past decade or two. But China is a bit the new kid and a block new kid On the block in a way, what are the unique challenges that you think China presents online and elsewhere here in this region? Do you think the region is really ready to deal with the unique challenges that China presents? Or can it learn from sort of its post Soviet legacy and dealing with Russia for the last number of a decade or two to develop a threat to China? We’ll start with Anna.
Ana Krstinovska
Thank you for this question. As you rightfully pointed out, we have had quite a lot of experience in dealing with Russia. And I can say that, to a large extent, Russia is already a book that we have read in the Western Balkans. And over time, we develop different tools. Civil society, for instance, has worked a lot on disinformation, on fact, checking on media, literacy, etc. But apparently, these tools are not sufficient or efficient to deal with China. Why because China’s primary focus is not on disruptive activities on disinformation, fake news, or creating issues within our countries. That was Russia’s model or playbook. To the contrary, China has been putting a lot of emphasis on white propaganda. And that is propaganda coming from Chinese official sources. And usually, the focus is on overly positive news and a largely embellished version or vision of China that these CCP media outlets, but also their local proxies and local media’s are putting forward and we need to have different tools in order to be able to present an objective version, a realistic version of China that our citizens would somehow accept and understand, so that they do not believe that China is this perfect model that we would all like to emulate and that we should not become as authoritarian or illiberal as China. But we should understand that that model brings a number of challenges. But unfortunately, these challenges until now have been apps absent from the public debate, and we need to shift the focus back to a more realistic and objective picture. Edward, what are your thoughts?
Edward Lucas
Yes, I agree with that. I think that this sort of mystique of the Chinese model has taken a tremendous kicking. And I there was a time when when Western countries were very keen on good relations with China, the Central East European ones could go along in the in the slipstream, and they weren’t doing anything. Anyone else wasn’t doing Germany does it? It’s fine if we do it. But I think that the kind of street sense that countries in this region have as a result of the totalitarian past, makes them very alert to they can smell Marxism Leninism, even when it’s dressed up as crony capitalism. And I think that’s that’s been that’s been a benefit. And I think there’s also this the underlying thing about human rights, which is still tremendously important, particularly in countries like Lithuania and the Czech Republic, these countries really care about it. And all the stuff we’ve seen about the constantly labor, labor camps for the Uyghurs the plight of the underground Catholic Church, and all these other other things, they resonate there. And it’s sometimes a source of some amusement to the kind of old west, how much countries in the so called East really care about this stuff that they do.
Kevin Sheives
I think it’s true, the more I get to know civil society organizations in Central Eastern Europe and see some of their responses to China or Russia and have you keep getting the sense that the Central and Eastern Europe have a lot more to teach Western Europe at times than the other way around. And it’s really quite impressive some of the leadership and innovation specifically in the counter disinformation sphere that’s that’s come from this region. And before moving on to bringing in Elliot, Martin back again, I wanted to see if you could talk a little bit more about this issue of information access among the elite and the general public. You wrote at one point in some of your work in aseema, that Chinese sources often portrayed China entirely in a positive light in Macedonian society of downplaying and excluding all the negative elements, which could really help Macedonian citizens crave informed and realistic opinion. But elites actually have access to a broader range of sources and language proficiency and media literacy that actually could allow them to have a more realistic view of China, whether that’s in the online space or elsewhere. Can you talk a little more about that? It’s sort of an interesting dynamic, because we’ve talked a lot about this issue of of elite capture and how elites oftentimes are more subject to China’s pressure because of the economic incentives and what have you. But you sort of presented it a little bit different idea that there’s sort of five access to a bigger range of information. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Ana Krstinovska
Sure. Elites, and here I mean, intellectual elites do have a Access do have the advantage to understand foreign media outlets because they speak foreign languages, they have the resources to procure access to different information sources. However, they do not have the incentive. And I think that that is the key word here, they do not have the incentive to do anything to somehow demystify or unmask China’s approach to the region. And I think that there are three main reasons behind this. The first one is the fact that elites and now if we could shift to political elites, especially, they have oftentimes material benefits in their dealings with Chinese entities. And this comes in the form of bribe corruption. We saw that, for instance, with the construction deal to build two high resections in North Macedonia. But it’s the same case in Montenegro, or in many projects implemented in Serbia and Bosnia. Then the second reason why they are willing to side with China is actually the fact that China is more responsive to the needs, to their needs, and their promises, the promises that they have made in front of their constituents, because you have politicians that promise, for instance, we will build or upgrade our thermal power plant, we will build a bridge here a highway, they are really over here. And then they need to find funding to deliver all these promises to their constituencies. If they ask the EU, the EU is sometimes likely to say this project is not financially viable, environmentally sound, or it will take several years to develop all the document documentation. But China is willing to provide them with what they need within one year or two years. And it’s somehow built their political capital in front of their constituencies. And the third reason is that they are actually using or abusing the China card when they’re talking to the EU. And there were some partners in general. And they are, I would say, purely scare mongering they’re making they’re portraying China as a sort of alternative. And they’re saying to the EU, well, if you don’t do not want to take us on board, if you’re not willing to enlarge, then we will improve our relations with China. And then I think that the EU is back backing out, they are allowing these political elites to continue with their oftentimes undemocratic practices or authoritarian neoliberal tendencies in order not to push them as they believe further into into China’s embrace.
Kevin Sheives
Thanks, thinks it’s really comprehensive thoughts on that I was speaking to a couple a couple of weeks ago with a researcher in Africa actually talking about this issue. And you mentioned the second point about, about elite seeing their cooperation and work with China as sort of a badge of respect and credibility within their society. It’s that way, according to my, you know, contact, and I’m in African media organizations, or certain organizations where if they go on a journalist training, you know, enterprise to China, or they work a lot with the Chinese embassies, and sometimes that’s a, that’s a real, that’s a real career boost for them in these organizations. So it’s something to be mindful of for sure. I want to bring Ellie and Martin back into the conversation. This past year or two has been a lot of big developments in China. I was curious to get your sort of projections a little bit kind of moving forward what you think might might change in the future about China’s online influence. President Xi spoke to the poll of Bureau back in June 2021. He gave a speech emphasizing the need for more considered and resourced China’s strategy towards international communication. I think the headline from that was about maybe a softer tone in terms of China’s will for diplomacy. But there actually was a lot behind that speech as well in terms of its resourcing of the International propaganda apparatus from China. Jelly. Jan was just sort of a bit sidelined in terms of a personnel reshuffle at The MFE. Just this past couple of weeks. He also had the party congress that met in October really consolidated she’s power within China and within the party. How do you China? How do you see China adapting its online influence and propaganda operations? What might change in the future? And I’d love to hear your perspective specifically about what what might change online or through traditional media influence and investment in Central and Eastern Europe.
Ellie Young
Ellie. Thanks. So one thing that I think would be an interesting thing to keep an eye on changing in the future, is this continuing sort of shift and growing increasingly coercive, or covert tactics? As you know, we’ve been discussing the sort of growing backlash and awareness and familiarity with with some of the existing sort of strategies and how, you know, they they’ve failed to an extent, Wolf warrior diplomacy, sort of more aggressive. More bombastic diplomatic presence hasn’t hasn’t succeeded in necessarily telling a likable story of China. Right? So, you know, we saw even after platforms, like Twitter and Facebook started labeling state affiliated journalists, we did see a sort of pretty immediate tactical shift where Chinese media personalities started obscuring their affiliation. Journalists started sort of removing their connection with China Radio International trend daily, we saw and we are seeing this growing increase in social media influencers who are very familiar with a local language, very familiar with local culture. But who are sort of have this don’t have clear links to the PRC propaganda apparatus in the same way that they might have sort of promoted them in the past. And so they are, you know, they are often a more effective way of disseminating their message. And we’re seeing more of this than in the past, you know, we were looking a lot at the sort of outright purchase of media outlets, but we don’t, we actually didn’t see that that much in the past three years. And I suspect that we’re not going to see that too much in the future with the sort of growing economic issues. So there’s going to be a lot more like of this, like borrowing the boat mentality that maybe outright buying the boat. That’s one thing that I’d be on the lookout for. And another thing would be the sort of rise of the lack of transparency issue with both of social media platforms. You know, in some cases, they’ve been the sort of clearest insight into how we’ve seen these sort of state affiliated disinformation campaigns. But that insight can be taken away pretty quickly. If researchers aren’t given access to those platforms, API’s. And so you know, you’re seeing with less transparent platforms like Tiktok, or WeChat, we just don’t have the insight into what’s happening there. And similarly, you know, you see with news aggregators, we saw in Indonesia and Nigeria, and recently, I think there were even some revelations about bytedance as purchase of news aggregator in the US, right, that we’re sort of, again, more and more obscuring this, like content moderation. And that can be a really sort of, insidious way of affecting the narrative that we just don’t have insight into. So I’d be on the lookout for, for issues like that.
Kevin Sheives
Perhaps a move from more overt to more covert efforts. It’s interesting, Martin, one minute as well as think about how China might adapt in the future.
Martin Hála
Oh, I think, overall, like we have discussed, there’s no evidence of this shift towards a bit of a charm offensive in Europe overall. But specifically in in Central and Eastern Europe, I think for some time now, for a couple years now. The Chinese leadership realizes that they’ve essentially hit a wall. And it seems to me that they’re now in the process of reevaluate Viet alleviating the situation. They’ve been sending their diplomats and other people, people from think tanks to Central and Eastern Europe to sort of test the ground see what what what exactly went wrong, you know, how they, how they how they have come from the heydays of the 16 plus one to what we have now. So I think there’s this re evaluation, and we have yet to see what exactly comes out of that. They seem to be looking for new allies, new approaches. But again, overall, I think in terms of larger trends, what is obvious is that the you know, the traditional approach from from the CCP has been emphasizing propaganda, right? Like the big positive narratives, portraying portraying China in the best possible light. And that was certainly the case in Central and Eastern Europe until very recently, but now we see an increasing use of an increasing deployment developed these negative narratives, you know, disinformation, essentially sort of like tactical, negative pieces of disinformation that are meant to support the main positive propaganda narrative, and that is something relatively new in the in the Chinese and the CCP arsenal. It has, I think it has essentially started with the, with the onset of the pandemic, a couple of years ago, started in Taiwan, a little bit of a sold out during the presidential elections of 2020. But now, it’s spreading further afield. And it seems to me that the propaganda department in the CCP is not all that well versed in this tactic. They’re basically learning the skills mostly from the Russians. They’re sort of like copying some of the rational approaches, but they don’t have the kind of weakness that, you know, the the Russian disinformation sometimes takes on. So it’s a learning curve. It’s even more difficult in Central and Eastern Europe, because of the, you know, the very complex language situation. In places like the Czech Republic, they apparently do not quite yet have the language and cultural expertise to do this, effectively. But it’s, it’s coming and it will be growing, and it will be that we’ll be getting better in it. So we better get ready for it.
Kevin Sheives
Thanks, a lot of transition. Before we take a few questions that have been submitted in advance from some of the viewers just to ask one question to each of you all. And if you could just limit your responses to 20 seconds, so not not much lined up, go ahead and hit the ball out of the park right away to the American baseball analogy. So I’ll go in order here. So first, I’ll start with Ellie, and then move to Martin and then Anna, and then Edward. So new platform, new platforms online and elsewhere are really popping up everywhere in media markets, seemingly every day, the media market is more and more diverse. Sometimes those are state affiliated platforms favored by authoritarian leaning regimes, while others are simply meant to diversify the social media traditional media landscape that has really been dominated by a few big players. What new platform or media outlet? Are you worried about being an unexpected source of Disinformation and Propaganda in your region? So 15 to 20 seconds? Ellie, let’s start with you.
Ellie Young
Yeah, just going off with my previous answer. I think news aggregators that are sort of growing in popularity are going to be something to watch for, just because the recommendation algorithms are on them are so non transparent. So things like top US which was owned by bytedance, or Newsbreak. In the I think, in the EU, this was which are not just promoting probado content, but also sort of potentially have the capacity for this more ideological content manipulation. Great, thanks,
Kevin Sheives
Martin. What about you? 1520 1520 seconds.
Martin Hála
10 seconds. So I’m really more worried about the the traditional platforms, you know, things like WeChat, and their their impact on the Chinese societies, Chinese diaspora societies and other countries. That’s something that’s very difficult to tackle.
Ana Krstinovska
And what about you, I would also not go with the new platforms, I think that we’re still stuck with Facebook. And that is the social media platform that has been most widespread in the Western Balkan region. And it is also the only platform where we have the official presence of Chinese state entities through the embassies.
Edward Lucas
I agree with all that I particularly hate tick tock. And I think there’s a new element here is not just the way in which the Chinese tried to get their message across. There’s also the collection of data about our societies. If you have tick tock on your phone, you’re basically handing over the entire contents of the phone to the Chinese Communist Party. And I think that should be more widely known.
Kevin Sheives
Great, thank you. I’ll be the fifth respondent and say something along the lines of telegram that seemed to be quite a big issue after the Ukraine invasion in terms of its growth among in use among Ukrainian society. And not just for sort of everyday secure communication, but also for response to disinformation that was really prevalent in the lead up to the invasion from Russia on that platform as well. And that’s a tough one, because there’s so little content moderation there, because that’s by design a secure platform. I was one of the next one. So if you could each sort of name one critical or innovative tactic that you think civil society organizations should undertake to address China’s online influence, specifically in Central and Eastern Europe. What is that? Let’s start with Martin.
Martin Hála
Well, I still think that the main the main thing that needs to happen is to combine the academic world with the with the public discourse, very basically a combination of academia and media. Perfect.
Kevin Sheives
Thanks, Anna, what about you?
Ana Krstinovska
I would go for a combination of civil society and media. I think that civil society should work more with media to somehow publicize all the knowledge that has been produced on China with different China related issues,
Kevin Sheives
Especially at the local level. You know, media markets can be so diverse when you have a region where there’s so many different languages that play and things like that. It’s the local players that really know the landscape best. Ellie, what about you and then over to Edward?
Edward Lucas
Yeah, I mean, we One really cool thing we saw was in almost all the countries we looked at, we found that investigations and expos days of CCP influence tactics could be really effective. So I think, you know, the more peer learning there are between different civil society organizations, organizations in different countries, the better that can be, because they have a lot to learn from each other. A lot of them are facing similar circumstances. And we’re,
I always have great and I’ll just add humor, communists have no sense of humor, they find it extremely upsetting when we make jokes with them, they didn’t know how to react if you do more of that.
Kevin Sheives
Where there’s some really great organizations out there and eastern central US Europe that you satire is such an effective means of bringing truth to the public. One last question for the lightning round before we bring in some of the audience questions and answers. So looking globally, outside, get out of your region for a moment, if you could, outside eastern and central Europe, but including Western American United States are advanced democracies out there, who I think could actually be learning a lot, as I mentioned earlier, to innovation and responses coming from this region. What’s the lesson that you could draw from in dealing with China’s online influence in Eastern Europe that might be able to be applied elsewhere? If there’s a global parallel to another set of countries and some of their circumstances than they are going through, feel free to draw that as well. So let me start with Edward, back to you.
Edward Lucas
I suppose the thing that really strikes me is how we are so failing to get across our message in most of Africa, Latin America and Asia. It’s really shocking to me with Ukraine, that we have got what’s basically imperialist war and in the large chunk of the global south that was subject to European imperialism in almost living memory. And this doesn’t resonate these big democracies, Nigeria, South Africa, Indonesia, Brazil, India, it’s a really uphill struggle. And they see things through the sort of, we see things so nice Westlands, they see it through a north south one. And I think many of their complaints are entirely justified. So my point of view whether it’s going to redeem with Russia with China, we can’t fix these West after we get the north south stuff, right.
Kevin Sheives
That’s great insight. Yeah, there really is a bit of a polarized polarization and responses Ukraine has done fantastic at winning sort of the messaging war and much of the traditional West. But there really has not been many other Ukrainian voices that had been elevated too long, for longer extent in the Global South. Martin, what about you?
Martin Hála
Well, it seems to me that, you know, the the intensity of the CCP and PRC push into the Central and Eastern Europe, through other news, like the 16 plus one is exactly the thing that that created the backlash, you know, that let’s do this very intense response in Central and Eastern Europe. So there’s a lot of focus in in this region now on Chinese influence that I think is not exactly the case in big parts of Western Europe, for instance. So if there’s something that regions like Western Europe can learn from Eastern Europe, this is that’d be really neat, more focused on these issues. And anelli.
Ana Krstinovska
If I can reverse it, because coming from the Western Balkans, I don’t think that we have a lot of things to teach to different parts of the world when it comes to China. But we have been taking a lot of lessons from the Central European countries, and especially the Czech Republic. So I think that what Martin said even earlier on, I fully subscribe to that, and that is probably the way to go.
Kevin Sheives
Excellent. Thanks so much. We actually draw on the lessons learned from a Serbian organization publication we did on dealing with China’s surveillance equipment that is really popped up in Belgrade. And they really had some incredibly innovative responses from grassroots responses from from citizens, and Belgrade was really a fantastic example of that. Ellie let’s finish with you before we go to some of his audience questions.
Ellie Young
Yeah, I mean, I don’t know if it’s necessarily innovative. But I think it’s really important and should be done more systematically, but documenting and monitor monitoring, sort of issues where, you know, Chinese propagandists have tried to coerce or bully local journalists, local activist is really important sort of sheds a light on all of these behaviors, and also sort of shows that it’s not permissible, right when when states respond and have an have a process for responding, so to the extent that they can do that more in Poland, there was a really great incident where a journalist simply reported on the ways that Huawei had tried to influence his reporting. That went a long way in sort of showing that they’re not, you know, just a normal company trying to sort of develop relations, business relationships, like there are more there are more sort of issues with with the with the businesses that they do not went a long way. So simple. It’s
Kevin Sheives
Great. Thanks so much. So Martin, Anna, I want to kick this question received from an individual over at CEPA and To you, and the question is says what can we do when the national government itself of a given country proactively spreads Chinese or Russian propaganda? And they’re asking this question in the context of Hungary as well. Martin, you first 30 seconds to a minute if you could.
Martin Hála
Well, we live in democratic countries in this region. So if we don’t like what the government does, we try to change it. And, you know, if the government spreads the wrong narratives, we just use it against the government. And eventually, if you explain to people that, you know, the government’s policies are wrong, that eventually will contribute to the change of government has actually happened in places like the Czech Republic.
Ana Krstinovska
And I think that we should work both at the grassroot level to debunk this propaganda that that is usually spread by the government. But we have to be realistic that in cases like Hungary, or in Serbia, there is a total state captcha and also the local media are simply going forward with this government or Chinese propaganda. So in addition to the grassroots approach, or the bottom up approach, we should be definitely counting on our western democratic partners to somehow also send the messages because we do not have a fully controlled information space, as is the case in China, for instance. So there are some channels that we could still exploit, but there should be a combination between the bottom up approach and the outside in approach.
Kevin Sheives
Okay, great. Let me bring in Ellie and Edward, to help with this question received from the ELT faculty of social sciences, a lecturer there and Emma Tomas para, para Govich. And for what really is the he’s asking really what really is the tangible consequence? If and when a great power like China is pushing its own narratives in other countries successfully? Maybe Why does all this matter? Ellie, we’ll start with you. And then Edward.
Ellie Young
Yeah, thanks. I mean, you know, in some cases, we’ve talked about how some of the positive narratives that China has been pushing can kind of hide more critical coverage that sort of obscures the full story. And that can be really problematic for countries, especially countries that are less familiar with the CCP and with sort of state of domestic issues in China. But we also see that intimidation and widespread censorship have been pretty widespread are pretty popular tools that the CCP uses to, to silence critical commentary. And that can be problematic in its own in its own case. So in our research, we found incidents in more than half of the countries that we looked at of the local governments suppressing coverage related to China because of their own interests.
Kevin Sheives
Edward?
Edward Lucas
Yes, I think there’s this idea of hegemonic Dysport, discourse control is really important that the Chinese Communist Party reckons that any discussion of China anywhere in the world is their business, and that where they can they will intervene, whether it’s in academia, and publishing, and journalists, whatever. And they feel that’s a natural thing for them to do. And that’s absolutely incompatible with the way in which our societies work. And there’s been, I think it was the was the nine points, there was some things really Communist Party document a few years ago, I’m sure Martin remembers it about how the great threat to Communist Party rule is these sort of Western ideas of the separation of powers and media freedom and competitive politics, and so on. And I think we underestimate how much they don’t like, when we don’t like it when we do stuff like that. And I think the tide has gone out a bit. They’ve, they’ve realized this, this doesn’t work. But it’s still the pressures still work. And I think I mean, I’m particularly keen to defend our information, space, our academia, publishing an our political system, from any kind of Chinese pressure, whether it’s carrots or sticks.
Kevin Sheives
Imagine, Edward, maybe if I could just ask you one other question that we received from the audience as well, about local intelligence operations in Central and Eastern Europe and the relationship between those immediate influence in the region, do you have 30 seconds, you could provide on that. And then I’d like to ask everyone just to give 15 to 20 seconds of any final thoughts that you’d like to get out there. Before we close and wrap up, Edward?
Edward Lucas
Well, I would very strongly commend the Estonian Latvian Lithuanian security services for their annual reports, which, obviously mostly about Russia, but this is the stuff that in most Western countries is classified and not talked about. And they made a decision. I think, starting 20 something years ago in the Estonians case, to have an annual unclassified report on foreign influence your view on foreign influence operations, whether it’s espionage, economic coercion, or whatever. And these increasingly now have a Chinese chapter or Chinese paragraphs and I think that’s really important. So I would strongly recommend that other countries do the same. I think the weather checks polls, but actually Germans for fastening shirts, Britain’s mi five, we all need to be much more open about dealing with hostile state activity. And sitting and calling it out saying this is going on. We don’t like it, we can see it happening. We’re going to try and make life difficult for it. We’ve tried being quiet about it, it hasn’t worked. So let’s try being be more open about it.
Kevin Sheives
Great. So 15 seconds each for any other final thoughts, if you want to take it or not. Anything else they didn’t get a chance to get out there. Let’s start with Martin.
Martin Hála
Yeah, I think there’s one one important aspect we haven’t discussed. And that’s the that’s the importance of institutions. We need to build sustainable long term institutions to deal with these issues, because this is going to be a very long, protracted competition with the PRC and all areas.
Ellie Young
Thanks. Yeah, I mean, there’s been a great conversation. I think one thing that we also, you know, touched on a little bit less was this growing sort of competition of ideas on norms, like universal human rights and things like that. That’s something that we can sort of focus on in the future to absolutely Anna.
Ana Krstinovska
Well, not one, but three messages from civil society in the Western Balkans, we need to build the expertise to understand China, both in civil society in media and the institutions, we need to launch and sustain the public debate and provide counter narratives and different types of information and narratives about China. And finally, we need to push and hold our governments accountable to develop China related policies that would be actually beneficial for the region and not harmful.
Kevin Sheives
That’s great one great quote I heard from a friend a couple of weeks ago, and I was talking to him about the influence of China economically and how you need to invest in people and this expertise. He talked about investing and mines in my ndS in order to counter China’s investment and minds in my n e. S. Any final thoughts? Last but not least before we wrap up?
Edward Lucas
No, this has been great. And I think building our Chinese expertise is the most important thing. And we can’t outsource this to PRC sponsor things. I just wish that the synopsis had another note on the end of its budget, and another note on the end of the number of staff or even to notes, because this is what we need this overlap between civil society, campaigning investigating, understanding, and raising public awareness. And we are late to this we should have been doing this 20 years ago. People like Martin were on this determined when everyone else was asleep, but that’s no reason not to start catching up now. So bless you for all you’re doing. And I want a lot more of it in future.
Kevin Sheives
Thank you so much behalf of CEPA and Freedom House. Thank you all for joining us today. And again, check out some of these new analytical tools that Ellie and I mentioned and other work by this this group and we will take you later. Enjoy the rest of your day or evening.
