Credibility for Legitimacy? How China Coordinated Its Narratives

• In Event: Global Social Media and Information Flows from Authoritarian Regimes

Abstract

Authoritarian countries often disseminate information to both domestic and foreign audiences via propaganda. When these countries view reputation as a vital asset, and since the audiences differ, the content of propaganda should be tailored accordingly. Particularly, while foreign propaganda is aimed at an international audience familiar with global discourse, prevailing research suggests that excessive criticism of other countries may be counterproductive. However, contrary to this theoretical expectation, we sometimes witness a shift in Chinese propaganda towards a more assertive and aggressive stance. This paper examines China's approach to managing its information strategy both domestically and globally. We have collected a vast number of newspaper articles published by China since 2015, both domestically and internationally, and compared them with international discourse. Using a combination of UMAP and HDBSCAN, we embedded cross-lingual content (from domestic Chinese media, international media, and global discourse) into a unified dimensional space and tracked propaganda policy trends over time with time-series anomaly detection. We observed that China disseminates distinct framings tailored for their target audiences during typical periods. Moreover, China emphasizes negative information about other nations, especially the U.S., during crises. This suggests that China employs a reactive strategy, emphasizing the construction of legitimacy over the credibility of the information. This insight offers a deeper understanding of existing scholarly theories on soft and hard propaganda.

Authors

• Yuki Mikiya, Keio University

• Kentaro Nakamura, Harvard University