According to an official US study, China has established a network of worldwide activities to influence media narratives and seek major control over the Pakistani media. China has made an effort to recruit other close allies to fight unfavorable narratives in addition to cooperating closely with Russia in the media sphere, according to a report issued here last week by the State Department. Pakistan stands out among them, it claimed.
According to the research, Beijing has worked to strengthen collaboration with Pakistan in the area of countering misinformation, particularly via the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) Media Forum. Beijing and Islamabad have developed programs like the CPEC Rapid Response Information Network and, most recently, promised to build the China-Pakistan Media Corridor (CPMC) in order to counter what they see as propaganda and harmful misinformation, the statement stated.
In the China-Pakistan Media Corridor, China reportedly intended to negotiate extensive influence over Pakistani media in 2021, including the establishment of a jointly run nerve center to monitor and direct Pakistan’s information environment. The proposal’s scope and the fact that the mechanisms it described seemed to disproportionately benefit Beijing are noteworthy as an explicit example of Beijing’s ambition to assume direct control over a close partner’s domestic information environment, it said. However, it does not appear that Islamabad has given the proposal much thought.
According to China’s draft concept paper, the governments of China and Pakistan should construct a nerve center to monitor Pakistan’s information environment by integrating input from media organizations, PRC firms, think tanks, opinion leaders, CPEC research centers, and even local Confucius Institutes. Three mechanisms and two platforms would have been used by the planned nerve center to complete this task. According to the State Department, the procedures would have given ways to translate significant reports into Urdu products to influence public opinion, deliver PRC Embassy reports directly to Pakistan’s official press release system, and monitor and address public criticism of the PRC.
It said that the two platforms under consideration called for the development of a combined PRC-Pakistan official system for putting to rest rumors and a news feed application to sell authorized news to the local market. The State Department said in its report that China invests enormous sums of money each year in attempts to influence international public opinion. Beijing promotes favorable perceptions of China and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) by using inaccurate or biased information.
At the same time, it said that China conceals important information that runs counter to its preferred narratives on topics like Taiwan, its human rights violations, the South China Sea, its domestic economy, and its participation in international trade. More generally, it said that China aims to develop and preserve a worldwide incentive system that motivates other governments, elites, media, and civil society to embrace its favored narratives and refrain from criticizing its actions.