For Americans seeking to understand China, state propaganda and internet memes are replacing journalistic reporting just as tensions between Washington and Beijing are rising over Covid-19, trade, and the future of Hong Kong.
While Chinese propaganda and misinformation campaigns are accelerating in the U.S. and the EU, Washington and Beijing are locked in an acrimonious tit-for-tat over foreign journalists. In March, Beijing expelled American journalists from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. It was retaliation for Washington’s February announcement that Chinese state media ranks would be whittled, and those remaining will be more closely tracked. Later, U.S. authorities also announced Chinese journalists for non-U.S. outlets will be placed on short-term visas.
The result: the U.S. and China are increasingly at risk of entering an information winter in which neither possesses quality information about the other. What does this mean for increasingly tense relations between two heavily armed rival powers who are also major trade partners?
To examine the long-term implications of these moves, I gathered a group of expert China watchers with backgrounds in media and government. In our second China Watcher roundtable video conversation, I asked them what the changing landscape for journalism means for policy-making in both capitals, how Washington and Beijing can arrest the downward cycle and whether any of them thought China’s “Wolf Warrior” diplomats — so named for a top-grossing Chinese action movie depicting a Chinese hero beating up on foreign mercenaries — could change U.S. hearts and minds with their strident anti-U.S. tweets.
The short answer: An information winter, or at least a sharp drop in the quality of information flows, is a serious problem for Washington, Beijing and investors and companies in both countries — and there are no easy negotiated settlements on the horizon. At least no one’s losing sleep about those wolf warriors.
Joining me were Lingling Wei, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal and author of the book Superpower Showdown: How the Battle Between Trump and Xi Threatens a New Cold War, Marcus Brauchli, managing director and co-founder of North Base Media and former top editor at The Journal and The Washington Post, and Dr. Evan Medeiros, the Penner Family Chair in Asian Studies at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, who served as senior director for Asian Affairs at the National Security Council under President Barack Obama.
The roundtable guests lamented that the intensifying dispute and mutual crackdown would make it harder for the public in both countries to understand one another. The Chinese government is not nearly as internally coordinated as outsiders think, said Wei, and there were many within the Chinese government who did not hear about the expulsions of U.S. journalists until they were announced.
Brauchli pointed out that quality information about the two countries is vital for investors and operating companies. To that end, he recommended that Washington “make the collection, distribution and sale of information [in China] into a trade issue.”
Medeiros estimated that news services like Reuters would get to stay, “in large part because it’s important for the financial outlets to have access to that kind of information.” But he worries that the U.S. government is “opening up the potential for a race to the bottom. And there's really no way to stop that unless you're prepared to go to zero.”
None were particularly worried about the strident criticism Chinese diplomats like noted “Wolf Warrior” Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, are mounting against the U.S. on Twitter. Wei said the new, scorched-earth approach to foreign diplomacy was “even controversial within China. Many Chinese are wondering out loud, ‘Is this how we want to present our country?'”
The full transcript is below. It has been edited for clarity and brevity.
POLITICO: Lingling, you were born in China, are a U.S. citizen, and were reporting in Beijing until March, when Beijing asked you to leave. Tell us about your experience, and what you think it portends for Americans’ ability to understand China.
Lingling Wei: You know, it just came to a very abrupt sudden end. It's devastating. The potential information winter really is happening. Now more than ever, people want to know what's going on in China because of the size of the Chinese economy. People still have this desire to know about China, to engage with China. A drop in quality in terms of information coming out of China is not in China's interest, either. Just before I left, I received a phone call from a senior financial executive. He was about to talk to me about certain initiatives his firm was doing and I told him, “I'm so sorry, I can't talk to you anymore because I just handed in my press credentials.”
POLITICO: Marcus, you ran two global newsrooms at the Post and the Journal. What are the long-term effects of these journalist restrictions likely to be? What’s at risk here?
Marcus Brauchli: I like your phrase that we're at risk of an information winter here. The importance of transparent flows of information between two great powers like the United States and China can't really be overstated. Chinese companies come to U.S. capital markets to raise money and American investors depend on access to information on China to know the state of their investments. Chinese companies want to do business in the U.S. and we've seen that not all Chinese companies understand the political situation in the United States. They actually could benefit, I think, from better information flows. They might make fewer mistakes that get them crosswise with the U.S. government. To not have visibility because of these sorts of petty squabbles between the bombastic insecure people who run these two countries is deeply unfortunate and unhealthy for the world.
POLITICO: Evan, you negotiated across the table from the Xi administration when you were at the National Security Council. Is there any way to roll some of this back? Could Washington and Beijing feasibly reach a new understanding and what might that look like?
Evan Medeiros: There’s a paradox here. The fact that you have major American newspapers who don't have bureaus in China anymore is worrisome by any standard. But on the other hand, I've been studying China for 25 years and my access to information on China is better than ever before. I mean simply opening up my email, I'm flooded with these great newsletters. It is better than it was a decade ago, which is better than it was 20 years ago. So I'm not sure that the term “information winter” captures the challenge. What concerns me more is the quality of information. As superstar reporters like Lingling are pushed out of China, the quality of information we're going to get will go down. So our ability to have insights into how the Chinese leadership is thinking about and in particular debating about [issues like] negotiations on the phase one trade deal [will go down].
Now, the Chinese may allow the wire services to stay — AP, Bloomberg, Reuters — in large part because it’s important for the financial outlets to have access to that kind of information. So the Chinese push the information flows into that space.
Then a lot of reporters will decamp to either the United States or Taiwan. And it accentuates the degree of ideological differences. Just imagine if you have a group of Western reporters who are all based in Taipei reporting on Beijing. You know the biases of being based in Taipei. It's inevitable. Same thing for formerly China-based reporters now operating in the United States.
LW: Many people think China is a monolithic government. You probably would be surprised how infrequently the Foreign Ministry and other parts of government talk to each other and how uncoordinated they actually are. I don’t think a lot of people within government knew about [the expulsions until they were announced].
It [also] doesn't help when you hear, day in, day out, the kind of disparaging of the press in the United States by the highest levels of government. Ever since President Trump came to power, you have heard China's Foreign Ministry spokesmen and spokeswomen starting to call us “fake news.”
MB: You could go down the path of creating quotas, a sort of Cold War-style deal where each side gets a certain number of spots. I'm opposed to that, in principle, because I'm concerned about any approach that requires the U.S. government to negotiate on behalf of news companies because it reaffirms the view of some in China that the media is an arm of the state. A better approach is to make the collection, distribution, and sale of information into a trade issue. The information business is a global industry of significant and growing scale. The Chinese have rules governing distribution of content. These rules affect and impair the global operations of these businesses. So it seems like a legitimate trade issue.
EM: Of course, it depends on which administration is in power. Biden would take a very different approach than Trump would. But what I don't understand is how that allows you to resolve the issue of access on both sides. I mean, at one level, media can be, and is, moderately regulated by WTO. But it's not clear to me that the WTO will be able to adjudicate how many reporters are on either side.
The real challenge here is there's an inequity, right? There are far fewer American reporters in China than there are Chinese reporters in the United States. And the Trump administration is trying to rectify that. The problem is, they're opening up the potential for a race to the bottom. And there's really no way to stop that unless you're prepared to go all to zero.
POLITICO: There has been a lot of focus on China's “wolf warrior” diplomats and Chinese state outlets, which are increasingly using the means of dissemination in the United States, whether it's Twitter or ads in mainstream U.S. outlets to get their message out. How worried should policymakers be about that?
MB: In an open society, people floating contrary ideas and interpretations can be pushed back by people presenting good information. It doesn't trouble me very much.
LW: Well, you know, this whole strategy with wolf warrior diplomats is even controversial within China. Many Chinese are wondering out loud, “Is this how we want to present our country?” It really has hurt China's standing on the world stage. You know, China actually has a lot to celebrate. It’s too assertive. Chinese people, the Chinese culture, is not like that. Modesty and humility is the gist of Chinese culture.
EM: This has been very counterproductive for China’s short-term diplomatic goals in Africa, in Latin America and in Europe in particular. I do think it's an interesting leading indicator of sentiment within China. Right, it really captures the sense of overconfidence. But it's overconfidence that's manifesting in overstretch and overreach. And of course, the Chinese Communist Party can just dial it down as quickly as they've dialed it up.
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