Culture as Propaganda: How China Shaped Cultural Uniquness as a Narrative to Support its Path to Expansion
By Jack Rider
Date: 25 January 2023
Statue of Chinese ancient philosopher, Confucius in his temple in Jianshui, Yunnan
Courtesy of David Stanley (2019).
According to Chinese president Xi Jinping’s speech at the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Beijing aims to provide ‘a new alternative for those who aim to achieve modernisation’ through its ‘Chinese model’. Xi understands China’s way of development as a unique method separate from the Western way due to China’s special history and characteristics, which allows the Chinese to ‘contribute significantly to the holy enterprise of peace and development of humankind’.
Ever since China began its journey to integrate into the international system after the Cultural Revolution, numerous ethnic-Chinese scholars and politicians have attempted to frame China as a cultural entity that exists outside of ‘Western’ universal values and the process of modernisation (Zheng, 1999; Chen, 2005). This article argues that whether the Chinese is completely incompatible with Western ways of social organisation is only a topic for normative philosophical discussion. With it being unverifiable by empirical evidence, the research produced based on this assumption could be easily affected by personal biases. Due to the plasticity of this narrative, it is often used politically to defend China’s authoritarian system from foreign intervention.
In the following sections, I will first discuss how there has been several severe contradictions amongst the theories proposed by the mouthpieces of the party in the cultural understanding of the Chinese identity. Consequently, I will go on and explain how these contradictions emerges in synchronisation with the political needs of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and how they, in one way or another, function more as a form of professionalised political propaganda rather than legit academic viewpoints. Ultimately, based on these discoveries, it could clearly be observed that the claim of which China should be treated as an outlying case in national development studies is merely a cultural construct formulated with political intentions. Hence, it is not advisable for foreign institutions and governments to take this narrative into consideration when developing China-related policies.
Members of the Chinese Communist Party listening to Hu Jintao’s speech in the 18th CCP National Congress.
Courtesy of Remko Tanis (2012).
Double Identity: How the Communist Party’s Original Role as a Revolutionary Party Contradicts Its Current Bureaucratic Role
The Party’s understanding on traditional Chinese culture have undergone major changes. To understand how Party narratives vary throughout time, we could compare the theoretical understanding of the Party on Chinese traditional culture in 1948, 1980 and 2022. The 1948 narrative offers a strong voice of criticism against traditional culture. Wang Yanan, a Marxist economist born in 1901 during the late Qing period, has drafted a thesis in 1948 on the issue of Bureaucracy in China. According to Wang’s (1948: 15-22) work, China’s millenniums-long bureaucratic system has been established to supplement the power vacuum left over after the decline of feudalism. The West experienced a similar process, yet they soon developed out of bureaucratic control. The free flow of capital and the Western individualist culture made it difficult for the state apparatus to control every dimension of society, and thus they had no choice but to give way to liberal democracy. However, in China, the collectivist ideology was dominant throughout history and a vibrant civil market economy had not been established. Thus, the imperial order remained strong and its ruling body expanded exponentially across dynasties (Wang 1948: 15-22). This resulted in a stagnated system where knowledge and power had been monopolized by the bureaucrats, who shaped culture and education to retain ruling legitimacy.
The book was then republished in 1980, with a foreword by Wang’s pupil added to explain that bureaucratic reform should be conducted at a slow and stable pace. He elaborated that existing cultural influences should not be directly treated as an element of backwardness. Only through a steady and well-thought-out reform, will China not experience deadly yet non-transformative revolutions yet again.
This shift towards a positive view of traditional culture only strengthened in the 21st century. If we look at Xi Jinping’s declaration in the 20th National Congress, we can notice a significant change in discourse. He argues, on the implementation of socialism in China, that to continue Marxism in China, one must ‘combine it with the excellent cultural traditions of the Chinese nation’. He claims that the Chinese culture is ‘endless and rich, and is the essence of centuries of wisdom’. This type of wisdom, then, demonstrates the traditional values of ‘appointing officials according to their ability, embracing nature with one’s personal state, self-motivating relentlessly, deepening your ethical practices in order to comprehend the world’, which are all in line with the ‘scientific claims of Socialism’.
While comparing the different line of arguments, two points in particular should be noticed: (1) Wang analysed the Chinese society based on Western sociological theories, while Xi emphasised that the Chinese society should be analysed within its specific cultural context and the Marxist framework; (2) Wang criticised traditional Chinese culture constructed by the ruling elite and the bureaucracy as a tool to fool peasants into loyalty despite obvious exploitation, while Xi praised said culture as the source of embodiment of the excellent qualities of the Chinese, which they should ‘based their self-confidence in accordance with’. The point here is obvious. While the 1980 edition served as a buffer zone for the contradicting areas, fundamentally, Xi and Wang’s perspective do not align. Two major questions arise out of this contradiction: (1) what causes the party narrative to shift drastically on Culture; (2) Why is it important for the leaders to uphold that specific view on Culture in their time?
A Statue of proletariat revolutionaries outside the Mao Zedong Mausoleum in Beijing, China.
Courtesy of Nir Sinay (2009).
Red is Always Right: Communist Theoretical Development Within Historical Context
Certain analysts have proposed that works produced by the Chinese academia and theory-building within the Communist Party are merely tools used by the Party as a demonstration of discursive power (Tang, 2004; Zeng, 2016). Since power struggle occurs often from within, the Party ideology changes frequently, and theoretical inconsistency arises. If politics plays such a heavy role in how the Chinese formulate their academic and theoretical studies, then perhaps it will be a better idea to put the two texts listed above into their respective historical scenarios.
Wang’s theory was proposed when China was at war. The ruling Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) had become a massive disappointment to the mass when it was heavily corrupted and centralized despite claiming itself to be the revolutionary force that aims to construct democracy in China (He: 1990). Hence, when one looks at how strongly Wang criticised bureaucracy and the corruption that it had brought, it is extremely hard for a contemporary to not look at the Kuomintang in a similar light. Adhering to the idea of the National Father Sun Yet Sen to ‘construct our nation through the party,’ the Kuomintang had attempted to build a highly centralized party apparatus since the early 1920s. Taking power in 1928, it had also monopolised the national bureaucratic system and expanded it to a new level owing to its Marxist-Leninist roots. Yet, even until 1949, 89.36% of the population remained peasants, most of whom were illiterate and could not join the Kuomintang or its government. Hence, Wang’s attack on bureaucracy, regardless of what his actual motivation was, functioned as direct criticism of the corruptive and exclusive nature of Kuomintang. His expertise as a Marxist economist and his deep affiliation with the Party could only further evidence this line of inference. By 1949, however, it could be said that the initial target Wang and his leader, Mao, had set in the 1940s to ‘liberate’ China was achieved with the Communist takeover, making it less crucial for the Communists to criticise the trend of bureaucratisation.
Regardless, an interesting sidenote should be pointed out. In the reprinted version of Wang’s book in 1980, the foreword written by Wang’s pupil suggested using Wang’s theory as a justification for the development of a modernized state system in China after the Maoist havoc. However, this claim could easily be refuted. By remaining as a centralized state, an expanded and revitalized bureaucracy in China would only make it even more impossible for the mass to own power. Nonetheless, the foreword was written with political intentions in mind. In ‘On the Current Situation and Task’, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (1980) mentioned that ‘all the emphasis should be placed on modernisation’. This demand involves the need to reorganize the bureaucratic system of China, of which Wang’s arguments somehow fit into the realistic consideration of the Party. The Party’s political aspiration is expressed through domestic academic research trends and ideological narratives in both the Maoist and Deng era. With this established, it will be easier to understand why Xi upholds traditional culture as an inalienable element of his regime.
Xi’s China has been shouldering ambitious aims while being increasingly isolated by the West. China’s grand strategy focuses on seeking further influence in the international domain, both through gaining extensive control over existing bodies such as the UN, and offsetting the current norm by building its own set of institutions outside of US influence (CSIS, 2022). To realise its plan, China has not just further radicalised its integration into the global market, but also attempted to secure partners in Euroasia. Control over Euroasia would allow China to gain dominance over the traditional heartland in Geopolitical terms, which could function as a barrier to the West while guaranteeing energy supply. Another primary goal for Xi is to gain control over the South and East China sea. By securing an outlet to the Pacific Ocean, the Chinese could set up its own buffer zone against the alarming US Command of the Sea.
Nevertheless, the current attempt to expand China’s sphere of influence has suffered major setbacks. On the economic level, Washington has started a trade war with China while also banning Chinese involvement in domestic high-tech developments such as the expansion of 5G technology. Similarly, the Belt and Road Initiative in Eurasia suffered from serious criticism and setbacks. For instance, Tanzanian President Magufuli claimed that the loan agreements of BRI projects domestically were ‘exploitative and awkward’ and reevaluated deals that had been made with China. In terms of the South/East China Sea dispute, the US and its allies became more assertive in preventing China from subsuming said regions under its sphere of influence. The Department of State issued a statement as early as 2020, stating that the PRC had ‘failed to put forth a lawful, coherent maritime claim’. While the statement is from the Trump administration, Biden and the current regime remain constant on the stern approach. In face of a multitude of blockades against China’s expansion, Xi has to find reasons to: (1) domestically justify the impediment of the Chinese government in achieving its said aim to rejuvenate the nation; and (2) externally defend China’s encroachment on global norms against international criticism. It is under these circumstances that the cultural uniqueness of the Chinese nation has been employed as a discursive weapon.
In Xi’s speech, two of the points made under the subtopic ‘promoting cultural confidence’ directly align with my analysis above. Domestically, Xi pointed out that it is important to educate the mass to ‘deepen patriotic, collectivist, and socialist education, such that the younger generation could be nurtured into the “new man” in the new era in servitude to the aim of national rejuvenation’. Externally, he proposed that the regime should ‘defend the cultural stance of China’, ‘speed up the process to construct a system of narrative to serve the needs of China’, and to ‘accumulate discursive power in the international stage to a phase where it is as strong as China’s national strength and status’.
Overall, major political changes in mainland China coincides multiple times with the shift in interpretation of the academic and Party narrative on Chinese traditions. Depending on the political needs at hand, academic work and theoretical analysis could be rewritten or reinterpreted to provide ideological support for the Chinese leadership. The heavy-handed political influence makes it difficult to take cultural and social science research conducted under CCP supervision as creditable. To further understand whether these tactics are successful in achieving China’s political aims, we will briefly go through how the CCP have used ‘cultural exchanges’ as a source of propaganda to affect Western opinion.
Chinese President Xi Jinping giving a speech in the PARIS 2015 Climate Conference.
Courtesy of UN Climate Change (2015).
Cultural Education as External Propaganda: How Discourse has been Manipulated by the CCP
Overall, China has been eager to promote its cultural uniqueness through international exchanges. Initiatives employed by the Chinese to increase their soft power influence overseas could generally be classified into four types: (1) Acquisition or collaboration of/with foreign media; (2) Promotion of China’s ‘own voice’ through state-funded media targeting external audiences; (3) Cultural exchange through official departments, such as the Confucian Institution; (4) infiltration in academia or overseas politics (Brady, 2017).
According to the Freedom House report in 2020 on China’s Overseas Media Influence, the Chinese not only could affect the broadcast decisions made in less well-off states such as Kanya, but also impact the media in Europe and the US. The methods used include both promotion and censorship. For instance, Portuguese television opens a prime-time ‘China Hour’ with broadcast content provided by the Chinese state media (Freedom House, 2020). Similarly, a South African newspaper partially owned by the Chinese cancelled a writer’s column after he had tackled issues regarding human rights in Xinjiang (Freedom House, 2020). These incidents demonstrate that the infusion of Chinese capital in foreign media cannot simply be treated as a matter of investment. State-funded or simply affiliated organisations within China all have the obligation to carry out central policies in accordance with Chinese legal regulations. Of course, the use of a foreign voice to ‘tell a spectacular Chinese story’ is accompanied by China’s own efforts to expand its directly controlled media internationally.
Beijing has attempted to strengthen its voice through multiple mediums. For instance, originating as a news press, Xinhua News Agency has been the prime voice for China directed towards the international audience. Xinhua has been constantly leading in the overall ranking among the 700 million sites worldwide, with its reach higher than Reuters and the Associated Press (AP). Moreover, it does not just focus on developing its written press but has also expanded its multimedia approaches. According to the information on their company site, Xinhua provides broadcasting services in multiple languages including not just English, the major language of communication in the international world, but also French, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, Arabian, Korean, German and more. The desire to provide services to audiences outside of China stems from a rather simple but significant reason: to wage a ‘discourse war’ with the West. According to an unnamed Xinhua official, the goal of Xinhua is to become a ‘real world international news agency’, with the marketing directed towards the developing world which the West media has less influence over. (Shambaugh, 2015).
However, there is a certain limit to what mouthpieces could achieve. To directly reshape the perception of foreigners towards China, education is imminent. The Confucian Institute has been labelled as one of the major organisations used to promote CCP ideological views overseas. On the superficial level, the mission of the Confucian Institution is to focus on teaching and researching the Chinese language, support the development of teachers who teach the language, organise cultural-exchange activities between the Chinese and the West, as well as providing language qualifications. Nevertheless, the hidden political agenda could be easily revealed if one goes through the official documents in Chinese, the personnel arrangement within the organisation, as well as the institutionalised setting of the Institute within the Chinese bureaucracy.
In 2007, when addressing the role of the Confucian Institute, Li Changchun, then member of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party ranked number five in the Party hierarchy, proposed that the platform could serve as a tool for ‘China to enter the world’ and ‘allow the world to understand China better’, eventually ‘benefitting the construction harmonious world that is sustainably peaceful and mutually prosperous’. One should notice that the notion ‘harmonious world’ is constantly used by then CCP General Secretary/ Chinese President Hu Jintao to illustrate his vision of establishing a stable society within China. Moreover, to ‘allow the world to understand China better’, the Confucian Institute inevitably requires a political and historical narrative to perform as the theoretical backbone of its course contents. To understand where the political influences come from, we can proceed to look at the institutional arrangements of the Institution.
According to research conducted by the Institution for Strategic Research, a research body under the French Ministry of Armed Forces, the CCP exercises direct control over the operations of the Confucian Institute (IRSEM, 2021). The first board of the Institute was formed in 2007, with former United Front Work Department Head and Vice Premier of the State Council Liu Yandong chairing the body until 2018. He was then replaced by the current Vice Premier, Sun Chunlan, who had also served as the former head of the United Front Work Department. The United Front Work Department is responsible for helping the Party secure its Allies and identifying and eliminating potential threats both internally and externally.
In terms of its structure, the United Front Work Department directly heads the National Ethnic Affairs Commission, State Administration for Religious Affairs (SARA) and the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office (OCAO) as the Party desires to assert its ideological influence in every sector of domestic lives as well as on external perception on China. For our case, however, we should particularly pay attention to the OCAO, since it is responsible for external infiltration and often collaborates with the Chinese embassy, which supports the work of the Institute. All branches of the Institute overseas consist of a Chinese and a foreign correspondent, with all staff recruited and trained by the Chinese side and works under the instructions of the local Chinese embassy or consulate. Hence, with the upper end tied to the United Front and the Politburo, and the rank-and-file managed and educated in a centralized manner, the CCP is able to assert its direct influence through the Confucian Institute and propagate its political agenda directly to university students across the world, most of which has limited to no knowledge about the political affiliations behind the organisation.
British students being educated by Chinese instructors on the art of Chinese calligraphy.
Courtesy of Coventry University (2016).
Epilogue
Claiming to be simply ‘promoting Chinese culture’ and ‘maintaining the cultural uniqueness’, it may seem difficult for one to link Chinese education and cultural promotion with political struggles. Nonetheless, it is more than obvious to the ones who have done their research that most of the cultural-promoting activities or institutions are directed and headed by the CCP itself. Most of the time, these infiltration attempts are even led by those on the top of the hierarchy.
Wang, in 1948, was correct in pointing out that Chinese regimes tend to use culture and education as a method of strengthening central rule, and most importantly, assimilating foreign cultures under the superiority of Confucianist morals. Strikingly, half a century later, the Communist Party he whole-heartedly supported has used the same tricks to expand its influence overseas to secure its soft power dominance. Numerous Western intelligence organisations have attempted to warn its civilian government, the education sector, and the military about the threats of Chinese infiltration (IRSEM, 2021; VOA, 2023; Conservative Party Human Rights Commission, 2019). While certain regions have decided to assess the risk accordingly, others remain in hopes to facilitate relations with China to secure economic and cultural links.
This article mainly focuses on pointing out the contradictions stored within the theory and discourses employed by the Party. By proving that academic and cultural studies have often been manipulated to serve political means, I aim to argue that foreign actors and institutions should be extremely aware of the potential risks of cooperating with China. Moreover, former cases of infiltration further evidence that by allowing Chinese-controlled organisations to remain on their domestic soil, states are allowing national security threats to prosper. Hence, any exchanges with the Chinese regime for non-political reasons should also be carried out with extreme caution.
Chinese students wearing a red scarf, which signifies their loyalty to the party, giving a speech in public.
Courtesy of Pixabay (2016).
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