China's Discourse Power in Africa and the Global South

July 16, 2022 by Eric Olander

https://chinaglobalsouth.com/podcasts/chinas-discourse-power-in-africa-and-the-global-south/

 

China, like all major governments, uses a variety of tools and methods to influence international public opinion. Some, like CGTN, China Daily, and China Radio International, serve as conventional propaganda that is easy to identify; other tactics are far more subtle yet often very effective in shaping the global conversation about China and its role in the world.

This so-called “discourse power” is now an important field of study. Kenton Thibaut, a China fellow at the Atlantic Council, and Tuvia Gering, also a fellow at the Atlantic Council and a research fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, join us to talk about their latest research on the issue that explores not only how Chinese interests are communicating but also what they’re saying.

Show Notes:

• The Atlantic Council: China’s Discourse Power Operations in the Global South by Kenton Thibaut
• The Discourse Power newsletter by Tuvia Gering
• The China Media Project: Discourse Power by Roy Katzenberg

About Kenton Thibaut and Tuvia Gering:

 Kenton Thibaut is the resident china fellow of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab based in Washington, DC.

Prior to joining DFRLab, Thibaut served as an associate at GreenPoint Group, a boutique strategic advisory firm in Washington, DC, where she conducted analysis in Chinese and English on the implications of Chinese policies on client interests vis-à-vis US-China commercial and foreign relations. She possesses professional fluency in Mandarin and extensive in-country China experience, as well as a strong research background supported by various fellowships, including a Fulbright Fellowship, Blakemore Freeman Fellowship, and Boren National Security Fellowship.

Thibaut holds a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in international economics and China studies. She is also a PhD candidate at Georgetown University, where she focuses on China’s role in the global information environment and implications for authoritarian learning and resilience. Thibaut was also recently named as a 2021 security fellow at the Truman National Security Project.

 Tuvia Gering is a nonresident fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub. He is also a research fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, specializing in Chinese security and foreign policy, and the Tikvah Fund’s Krauthammer fellow based in Jerusalem. Previously, Gering was a research analyst at the Israeli Chinese Media Center and a special lecturer, in Chinese, to guests from the Chinese government hosted by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Gering has published in peer-reviewed journals, with bylines at the Middle East Institute, Sinocism, SupChina, Asia Times, Tablet Magazine, and Israel Defense, as well as other international and Israeli media, and his quotes can be found in major publications.

Gering is the editor and author of Discourse Power on Substack, a newsletter covering leading Chinese perspectives on current affairs, and he holds a BA in East Asian studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (summa cum laude) and an MPH in disaster and emergency management from Tel Aviv University (summa cum laude).

Transcript: (please note this transcript is produced by artificial intelligence so it’s not 100% accurate)

 

The China in Africa Podcast

China's Discourse Power in Africa and the Global South

The China in Africa Podcast is brought to you in partnership with the Africa China reporting project at VITs university in Johannesburg, the ACRP promotes balanced, considered reporting on China. Africa relations through training programs held throughout the year more information at Africa, China reporting.com Hello, and welcome to another edition of The China in Africa Podcast, a proud member of the cynic network from sub China. I'm Eric Olander, and joining me as always from Johannesburg, South Africa, China global south project, managing editor Cobus Phen stat, and a very good afternoon to you.Cobus good afternoon. Well, as everybody can hear from my voice, I am fully recovered from COVID. Thank you again,

for all of your kind wishes. Last week was a little bit better, but not fully recovered. I got a couple more emails saying, you know, Joe, Eric hang in there. And so we're, we're all fully recovered now and I've spent the past week in Washington, Cobus going out and talking to people. And one of the big issues that's come up in my discussions throughout think tank world, the governments different services is this question of Chinese debt in Africa. And there is the perception here in Washington, as it is in many other parts of the world that not only is China, the primary source of credit in Africa, but it is engaging in very predatory practices.

We have some new data that just came out this week from the NGO debt justice that I think will really transform our thinking on this. And Cobus let me just get your take on this. His is from the new report that came out this week by debt justice, Chinese public and private lenders accounted for just 12% of Africa, $696 billion of external debts in 20 20, 30 5% was owed to private creditors. And that was the big headline. That three times as much debt is owed to private creditors as to the Chinese. Now these figures are all based on world bank data. They also found that the average interest rate on debt payments, so to China in 2021 was just 2.7% compared to 5% on non-Chinese private debt.

So again, that speaks to this predatory lending issue. And then here's another interesting 0.6 countries and Gola Cameroon Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Zambia sent over a third of their debt repayments to Chinese lenders in 2021, but twice as many sent a third to private creditors. So Cobus, the situation is very different than the perception. And let me just add this one little final point. The Washington post over the weekend, ran an editorial about what Washington should do to help Sri Lanka out of its debt predicament. And it referenced China. The United States should use its power as the IMF largest shareholder to help countries restructure their debts.

But this will be much harder to do with the multiplicity of private bond holders involved and with China engaged in the equivalent of international predatory lending. So there you have it just on Sunday. So the timing Cobus of these narratives, one coming out of debt justice showing that Chinese debts in Africa are much lower than a lot of people perceive. And yet this persistent position coming out of Washington about Chinese predatory lending, what is your take on the data and the narratives and the discourse that's going on today about debt? This is fascinating and I couldn't, but laugh a little bit at it. You know, like a lot on the China side, a lot of these, a lot of these kind of data points they raising are things that we've seen mentioned, you know, for example, the number, the number of countries that with an actual Chinese debt problem and the, the kind of proportions of Chinese debt, even the, even the, the interest rates weren't necessarily such a big surprise for me because we didn't know the Chinese interest rates are frequently concessional, but it's just kind of seeing it all together.

It's really, it's really interesting. And it very revealing that the, you know, kind of that the Chinese debt problem, having received so much attention over the last while, whereas the, the Western private debt problem having received almost zero in there, zero kind of focus over the last while those things happening together is very interesting. And I think it's going to be, it's going to be difficult. I think for, for this kind of discourse around Chinese predatory lending to, you know, kind of, to continue as is without the kind of counter question of whether this is all of this discourse about Chinese predatory lending. Isn't just in order to isn't being put out there in order to draw attention away from the real issue, which is Western private lending.

You know, I think that that I think is probably is, is, is, is an oversimplified narrative. But I think that we, we will probably see some of that narrative around, Well, it's interesting you say that because that is the main thrust coming out of the debt campaign report that they said, and let's be very clear here. The Jubilee debt campaign and debt justice. I have not been friendly to the Chinese over the years. So this is not a pro-China organization by any measure. So in many ways, the critique of the narratives coming out of this report are to me, very, very credible and something that everybody should take a listen to. We'll put links to the report in the show notes. And of course we've had coverage all week in our newsletter, but let's talk about this question of discourse and narratives and the conversations that surround the Chinese in places like Africa, but also throughout the global south debt is a major strain of that conversation.

And we're going to get two fantastic perspectives today on this from experts who've been following it. Kenton Teebo is a resonant China fellow of The Atlantic council's digital forensic research lab based in Washington, DC. Back in April, she published a fascinating paper on China's discourse, power operations in the global south that explored both the motivations and the tactics that China uses to shift the conversation to make it more in alignment with its own interests. Kenton, a very good morning to you here in Washington. Good Morning, and thank you so much for having me. It's wonderful to have you on the program and we're thrilled to have back on the show again, Tuvia Gehring who is a non-resident fellow in the Atlantic council's global China hub and a research fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for strategy and security.

Plus, he is also one of the foremost experts on Sino Israeli relations and the author of the indispensable newsletter discourse power. If you're not getting this newsletter, you are absolutely missing something special. It's free. You can get it at Tuvia <inaudible> dot com. I have a link in the show notes just in case you didn't get that Tuvia I want to make sure everybody knows upfront where to get your fantastic newsletter and a very good afternoon to you. Welcome back to the show. Thank you very much and good afternoon. And I really appreciate it. The plug there, and let me reciprocate by just telling everyone who's listening right now. If you're not subscribed to Eric and Cobus his newsletter, then you need to reassess your life choices.

This is seal him the, the best newsletter there is on this topic and it's worth every penny. Go ahead, buy a subscription by to your friends, by to your institution. And thank you again for having me. It's really fun. And we will call to order the convening of the mutual admiration society. Forthwith, let's go Kenton, let's start with you by the way, two of you, thank you very much and Kenton, thank you for being a subscriber as well. Kenton, let's start with you on your paper. You heard the numbers about debt. Again. Debt is a major part of the narrative. You said in your paper that the end goal for the Chinese is to shape a world that is more amenable to China's expression and expansion of power.

But this question of debt reveals a critical failure among the Chinese on the part of the Chinese in articulating their part in this, in this conversation. Everybody still thinks for the most part, that China is the largest creditor in Africa, in many parts of the global south. When in fact it's not, they think that they're charging exorbitant interest rates on loans. When in fact the data says otherwise, speak to their success in what they've been able to do over the years and how effective they've been in shaping the discourse in places like Africa and the rest of the global south, right? The issue around debt kind of gets to a theme that you, that you highlighted, which is some of the difficulties that China has had in kind of publicizing some of its successes versus being more reactive to, you know, some of the Western narratives that are out there about Chinese debt.

And as we've seen, you know, scholars like Deborah routing them has long been saying that this debt story isn't true. And then you all's newsletter. You've been saying it for the longest time that, you know, there's this, this really isn't lining up with the data, but you're right, that China hasn't really been able to get out in front of this. It's more of kind of a reactive stance. And we've seen China in recent years, trying to be more entrepreneurial with creating narrative shaping narratives, putting out narratives in a more proactive way versus being more reactive, but they're still still kind of shaping the strategy still kind of in this more reactive camp.

Two of the tactics that I focus on in the report involve using international friends for international propaganda. That's one of the pillars and then barring a boat out to sea, which is a Chinese term that kind of refers to using international platforms and media, especially to spread Chinese propaganda and target environments. This includes expanding China's media footprint, conducting propaganda campaigns and leveraging its influence to gain government support for its initiatives and international forums like the UN and in terms of getting support for its initiatives and international forums, China's been relatively successful at this.

 

A lot of its agreements with countries, especially through multilateral organizations like the forum on trying to Africa cooperation, for example, a lot of the language in sort of the documents that come out of these meetings have a reaffirmation of Chinese principles, like, you know, support for the one China policy support for China's position on sheen, Jong support for principles of non-interference, which are all these issues that relate back to Chinese interests. And so China's been relatively successful in laying some of the institutional groundwork that it is hoping it's kind of a connective tissue it's hoping to build in international institutions and in the global south that create kind of a, an institutional buffer against any sort of future actions that, you know, especially Western countries might take against it, putting language about supporting the one China principle lays some of the institutional and legal groundwork for if China invades Taiwan.

 

At some point, there's this precedent, this legal, this institutional connective tissue there that establishes that a bunch of countries have already supported the idea that Taiwan isn't a sovereign country. And so isn't subject to UN laws regarding countries aggressing against sovereign countries. So this is just kind of one way that China has been successful here and turning to what's been less successful is the resonance of some of its narratives outside of the global south. And what this means is that traditionally we think of Chinese propaganda as being a little bit clumsy as being kind of cumbered by bureaucracy speak for lack of a better term.

 

And so it lacks this kind of organic residents, but in recent years, we've seen China adopting different tactics, including using actual people as opposed to bots, you know, on Twitter or on social media platforms to, you know, engage in pro China messaging using, you know, influencers to try and quote unquote debunk a sheen John narratives. So they've become more entrepreneurial as since about 2019, and we've seen limited impacts here, but there's evidence of growing kind of organic reach. So that's kind of what I would say is the more of the successes and the limitations with China strategies.

 

So Kenton, you know, some, some of these narratives, like for example, around Taiwan, we've seen, you know, there's, there's obviously decades of, of kind of narrative establishment, you know, kind of lying behind the kind of core narratives a China puts out around these issues now, but you also actually look at new narratives and, you know, like the success in implanting, you know, kind of a wholly new narrative, like for example, the one that you focus on is in your African, the African section of your report is the, the Fort Detrick narrative. The idea that that COVID-19 was, was created within the United States. So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how successful China has been to, to is to establish this kind of like from zero narrative building in the global self.

 

Yes. So the, one of the case studies that we looked at in Sub-Saharan Africa, well, we focused on South Africa specifically was China's use of content sharing agreements that it has with local media organizations to implant narratives, to implant a disinformation specifically about COVID-19 and the Fort Dietrich conspiracy theory, like you mentioned, and what this is basically is trying to plant the idea that COVID-19 did not originate in Wu Han. It originated in a bio lab in Fort Dietrich, Maryland in the United States.

 

And so what we looked at was China's content sharing agreements and how they use these content sharing agreements to spread this conspiracy theory. And so what we've, what we kind of found was that there was a kind of information laundering is what we've kind of come to term it, you have these content sharing agreements where local newspapers will kind of copy and paste Shinwa content that will then be editorialized by Shinwa to kind of say that a look here in South Africa, these newspapers are reporting that COVID-19 originated at Fort Dietrich.

 

So in terms of being successful, the idea that a China has to convince everyone that Fort Dietrich, you know, is where COVID started. Isn't really, you know, the, the metric of success here. The idea of success is injecting a degree of doubt on COVID origins, injecting a degree of distrust, or, you know, uncertainty around, you know, Western media organizations and basically moving the needle a little bit away from having Western media organizations be kind of the authoritative voice on anything related to China.

 

And this goes back to, you know, kind of it's discourse, power priorities. The idea is to move the needle away from, you know, having the west basically define the terms of China's engagement in the world and part of their official documents and academic writings on discourse power. One of the things that a continual theme is bemoaning the dominance of Western media platforms like the BBC, like, you know, wall street journal, et cetera, defining how a China is engaging in the world. China wants to define on Chinese terms, what's happening in China, China's engagements. And so part of this idea is to cast doubt are erode what they call kind of the hegemony of, you know, Western media and Western dominance of the discourse.

 

And if you'd like to get a sense of the tactics that Kenton's talking about, it's very similar to what climate skeptics have been doing in the U S and other countries by injecting just enough doubt to have it so that there's other sites, meaning, you know, these see these conversations, there's two sides to the climate debate. And it's the idea of just injecting a doubt into the conversation. Also, not only in addition to the Fort Dietrich, but the Chinese have been doing this on shin Jang as well, trying to challenge the Western narrative on genocide in Shinjuku. And Tuvia, let's come to you now and talk about the substance of that discourse. You look at what a lot of academics are talking about domestically within China at the same time, you're carefully following what Chinese propaganda and Chinese media outlets are doing in the middle east and in the global south.

 

Can you talk to us about the different narratives that are going on both domestically in China and then what they're saying internationally and specifically in developing countries? Yeah. So I'd like first to add the one point to what Kenton said about creating doubt. And this is the idea I see all the time when the Chinese scholars talk about establishing their own discourse, power, their right to speak, then they say it as shameful wholly first, you destroy it, then you establish your own. So now they're at the stage where they want to diligence itemize. They want to break the discourse, hegemony the right to speak of the west. And after everything is destroyed from the rebel, they're going to establish a new set of discourse.

 

Hopefully you'll be led by China. And this idea now pertaining to your question about how they speak about discourse, power internally and externally. And it really depends. Now who's the audience. And of course it changes a lot, whether it's domestic messaging, whether it, they try to signal, eh, the leadership, for example, eh, just sent on an idea. It spoke about that yesterday. Eh, there's very a limited amount of resources, including attention and money and positions inside the Chinese hierarchy. And people like multiple scholars in China are vying for all of these resources.

 

And one of their audiences of course, has their own bosses. And that's also something important to have in mind when we look at people that talk about this course power and they try to pair it, eh, local propaganda, international propaganda. And when it comes to foreign audiences, then you have a whole wide spectrum of messaging. So it's really hard to define it in one single line. And, but it is a very fascinating thing to look at. That's what I'm trying to uncover a bit in my newsletter. So, You know, Kenton and Tuvia, you both use discourse, power, the term discourse, power, the immune in Kenton's case, you know, it's part of the, the title of the report and Tuvia case, it's the actual name of your newsletter.

 

So I wonder if both of you maybe starting with Kenton and then Tuvia, if you could reflect a little bit about the evolution of that, like when did discourse power become such a kind of tech take on such a central kind of concept, you know, compared to all the concepts, like something like soft power, for example, you know, like, like how, like where are we in the development of the concept of discourse power, Right? Tuvia now we're discussing this yesterday. It's a bit of a nebulous concept and difficult to pin down the exact moment when it kind of entered into the Chinese vernacular in terms of, you know, a concept that helps to shape strategy.

 

But in our discussion, we kind of pinned it down to maybe around 2005, 2006, when China was really starting to think about itself more seriously. And it's, you know, relationship China in the world basically. And there was this recognition that trynna was in a soft power deficit, but where discourse power, and I would invite Tuvia his thoughts on this in my understanding kind of departs from the idea of soft power is there's this recognition that discourse power carries with it structural power. And what I mean by that is that it is a type of narrative agenda setting ability that transfers into a structural power in that it helps to order the international system.

 

And then in ordering the international system, it's creating an institutional arrangement that then distributes material goods. So what I mean by this is the Chinese. See the United States has possessing discourse power and in doing so, it's able to kind of order their international system, a U S values that go back to Western capitalism, human rights, democracy, these things structure, how issues are talked about on the international stage. They structure, how laws are written. International laws are written and they even structure how aid gets dispersed organizations like the IMF and the world bank use Western values to determine who gets what money.

 

And in turn, you know, these institutional arrangements perpetuate this idea of, you know, the legitimacy of Western values, the legitimacy of the, the power and the domination of Western values. And so that in turn helps to maintain the U S the position of the U S as the dominant, as the dominant country in the international system. And so The China really began to think about itself more, I guess, with more intent in like the mid two thousands. And we see this really accelerating after the financial crisis of 2007, 2008, when China really kind of saw an opportunity to capitalize on all of its economic gains and its growing material power and kind of the decline, what it saw as the decline of the west to really take its rightful place in the international system.

 

And then that kind of led to the natural question of, well, we have all this material power, but how do we legitimize that? And so there was this kind of concerted effort to really study how the United States was able to establish its dominance in that came. A lot of that came back to the U S discourse power. So then we see kind of a strategy of, okay, well, how do we put forward, you know, a Chinese vision of the world order. And along with that came, the recognition that the U S was putting forth this China threat theory as they call it. And China was seeing itself as you know, it's the current international order as being unable to accommodate its rise because of the clash with Western values.

 

So there's this idea that China needs to establish its legitimacy. And also there's not really space for it in the current order. The current order is kind of inimical to its rise from a values perspective. Let's get your take on it. Sure. So first it's important to say the Chinese term. I don't think we mentioned it. It's called <inaudible> and the word Chan, it has two meanings in Chinese and also illiterate literature. So first meaning is more on legal terms. Like I have a right to speak of a right to vote and so on. And then it also has a geopolitical meaning, which is power discourse power. And the two are used interchangeably inside China, the way the discuss about the, this topic of how you Chan in general.

 

And later, they also developed a high UTC as a, as a system, a discourse system, and the, just some chronology to help the uninitiated, the listener and make a bit of sense of it all. So the idea of soft power, which is a inseparable of discourse power, it started in the late eighties with a Joseph Knight and later it evolved there has different iteration. And what that basically means if you boil it down to one sentence is trying to make other countries one point you want, it's try to make them want to do what you're bidding through attraction.

 

And that's in contrast to heart power or what the people later called the sharp power and the smart power and all these different variations where a country uses its military might or through economic inducements. Eh, it tries to force other countries to do its bidding. And that is a soft power. And about the idea of soft power as a Kenton mention, it started in the mid 2000. The first mention of soft power was at the 17 party Congress by hygiene towel. He mentioned that something along the lines in this present era culture is becoming more important for national cohesion for creativity.

 

It grows insignificance, and we need to improve our soft power. Okay. So it was just a brief mention, but that was the first, and then it kind of exploded into kind of a slogan. And before I continue to more authoritative statements, there's a very interesting anecdote that is known by a Chinese researchers of one vice-president of China, because she's in pink back in 2009. And I think it's very illuminating when we discuss this topic. And if you recall, he was visiting south America, the Chinese expat expatriates, what they call the overseas, Chinese in Mexico. And there, he said, and I paraphrase from memory.

 

He says, there were some foreigners who've eaten there, Phil and I have nothing better to do or nothing else to do, which point their fingers at our affairs. You also have triphala Maisha. <inaudible> Ryan is baritone voice. Do we want <inaudible> right? And this idea is very core to understand sheeting pings a thought on soft power and this course power. And one of the things, as Kendall mentioned in the first question is very defensive. A China feels it is under attack. Okay. And because it's under attack, it has to defend. And the way it defense, it could be either through doing nothing or through retaliating, eh, with eh, countering or through attacks.

 

And we, we see all three of these reactions in Chinese propaganda over the years. Eh, just look at the case of Ukraine at first, they didn't really know what to do also in policy-wise. I mean, look, the Chinese community and the live there, and then in protect, protecting themselves by distancing themselves from Russia saying we don't have an Alliance. And then through full blown attacks, eh, by mentioning Ukraine, having American Biolabs there that try to kill all of humanity. And that's a quote from that I read. Okay. So that's very important to see this understanding of being under attack and moving on hu Jintao in 2009, he initiated a grand external propaganda strategy.

 

And that's a very important because many of these processes didn't start with CGI thing. It started with hu Jintao and that's one of them where he allocated I think, $6 million to this effort. And from there we saw big diversification and growth of Chinese media apparatus in languages, in countries. They operate also in Israel, by the way, that year they opened a China radio international in Hebrew, and moving further up to the 18th party Congress where she is elected and the road to rejuvenation. If you recall, he visited just after he was elected. He went to the museum in Beijing and talked about the Chinese dream, which is also an essential component of China's discourse power, and the way it tries to see the world.

 

And I think the most important place where she didn't think mentions discourse power is at the national propaganda and ideology war conference in Beijing. There was one in August, 2013, and that's where he started to talk about telling The China story. Well, John Howard, the local ship, and he also introduced the idea of struggle over public opinion or Yulan Bowdle. And since 2013, you can see global communication or propaganda. Then it turned to global communication or goji. Trombone has been further reprioritize in line with Xi Jinping's belt, the north initiative.

 

He puts much more emphasis on how you Chan and now back to what Kenton mentioned is the way we can define discourse power is also through its functions and you touching upon it. And I'd like to add a couple of points if that's okay, eh, how China tries to improve its discourse power could also kind of illuminate what it really means. And so, sorry, first, the, the goals, right? So the first goal, the way I see it is control. That's the name of the game control and what they want to control is the global narrative about China. And she jumped in calls, guiding international public opinion.

 

He also said a China needs to better understand the world. The world needs to better understand China. And back then in that conference, I mentioned in 2013, she drew pink, said that in order to avoid making irreversible historical blenders, we must always maintain control over the leadership management and discourse power of our ideological work. And this is something that you see evolving in the Chinese intellectual sphere in academia and diplomacy. It is all over the place. As soon as you look for it. One of the reasons I chose to focus on discourse first, because it was ubiquitous, it was everywhere. And I just really fascinated by the mention of why is it so important?

 

What does it really mean? And this is a country that sees it is rising for the first time in a very long time, returning to the center stage. And it's the first time in the 21st century that it's happening for China. And they're all nutritionists, we're new to this, they're new to this. And they're trying to figure out what's this rise going to be like, is it going to be peaceful, hopefully? And if it will be peaceful, how can we facilitate this process? How can we make it better? So the external environment, eh, be able to facilitate our own growth and development. And then back again to the idea of control. Eh, we see this in many other aspects of sheeting pink Xi Jinping is a control freak, right?

 

We have many articles talk about leading small groups and how he tries to micromanage everything. And the same thing goes for discourse, discourse and soft power is seen as a resource, as important as natural natural resources. And I think it was in 2016, there was another conference headed by Xi Jinping on social sciences and philosophy. And there, he says the exact same thing. A great country can only be great once it has control of its natural resources. At the same time, it also have to have control. It has to have control of, you know, the more spiritual resources that is philosophy and social sciences.

 

And from there, they established the idea of the three systems, which is disciplinary system, academic system, and discourse system. And they're all kind of mishmashed together. So that's one thing, a second thing. And let me know if you want to elaborate on some of the theme is set the global agendas, as Kendall mentioned to influence, to shape a values governance discussions of how the world sees Beijing, how Beijing sees the world and how people in China see their own country. And it has to be commensurate. That's the key term here. It has to be commensurate with its economic and military power because it's right now, China aspires to become a great power, but it also has to become a, not just military and economic, but also an ideological power to quote Giuliani.

 

And for example, Chinese university of Hong Kong, and a third reason that they want to have discourse power is of course, to maintain the absolute control of the CCP. It's a <inaudible> as I referenced as it in my newsletter, by way way, eh, control, control, control, it's all about control and maintaining power through discourse. Eh, here there's another expert. Kenton actually quoted him in a horror report that is forthcoming talking about philosophy and sciences. And his name is John <inaudible>. He's one of the foremost experts on discourse, power, and China. He says, we need to maintain power through discourse. So this is the ability to shape reality through your words, which is, you know, it's a very important idea.

 

It's also essential in Chinese history in general, you can see it all over it also in Judaism too. So the way you control the world through your words like Moses, the prophet, instead of heading the stone, eh, he should have talked to it, right? The same thing with the Chinese people, the same thing with the people of the world that are uneducated about China. They don't know enough, but we know because we are Chinese, we living through it and we are also able to shape a reality, create a reality. And the reality we want to shape is a community of shared future. For mankind. We want to improve global governance because as of right now, the west, isn't doing a pretty good job.

 

And a China is a build of a world, a world, peace, it contributes to global development. It's upholder of the international order and so on and so on. So this is the idea. And I think geneal, Ching, he kind of mentioned it in a very interesting article in March. I think it was, he offered, eh, the importance of China's role in global governance. And, and he, he, first of all, he mentioned something that is super important to understand. China sees that fifth of the world's population are Chinese. This means that whether you like it or not, they're going to have to have a say, eh, that's why they have to have global discourse power because they are fearful of humanity.

 

And also, as I mentioned, it needs to have a favorable external environment and external environment young, straight on, I think it was shared yesterday or two days ago by such a one who talked about China's, eh, ongoing strife and struggles with its neighbors. And to mention that the south China sea country, literal countries and India, and this is not very favorable external environment now, and I'm not even mentioning a China, us relations or China, Europe relations. And a third point then that's where I'll end is eh, where this bilateral relation, which is the most important in the world of China in the U S it reach it, it reached a rock-bottom okay.

 

It can't get any worse than it is now. Eh, then it's an opportunity for China and the us to cooperate and discourse in global governance is one part to do it. It's not necessarily a bad thing. Kenton we've spent the past half hour now kind of dissecting what the Chinese are doing. Tuvia just laid it out very clearly for us about the different motivations. Your report kind of talks about the tactics and also the motivations as well, help us put it into a slightly broader context. China is by no means exceptional in its desire to shape the discourse. The United States spends millions of dollars on public diplomacy.

 

It has its own propaganda outlets like voice of America, radio free, Asia. It, all these different outlets. I used to be the editor in chief of France 24, which received a quarter of a billion euros from the French government. That was not for charity. That was also to help shape the narrative as well. So lots of governments engage in this type of discourse, shaping exercises very quickly because we're running short on time. Can you put the Chinese in the context of where they are relative to their other major power peers? So I would say that they're still pretty far behind. If you look at the presence of voice of America, radio free Asia, all of these other kind of organs of narrative dissemination, China's reaches much more limited because they have a lot, you know, they've only fairly recently started to invest in these kinds of capabilities.

 

I think Tuvia mentioned, you know, kind of the going out campaigns in 2008, 2009. That's when we really saw China starting to invest resources and going abroad and, you know, trying to spread Chinese narratives abroad versus, you know, the United States, who's been kind of the dominant force in the international system, you know, since, you know, the end of world war II. So they do have a lot of catching up to do from their perspective, but their tactics of really infiltrating the media environments of countries in the global south. I will say that there's an intent behind this. There's a strong political will.

 

There's, you know, as Tuvia mentioned, a very, you know, centralized push that has recruited, you know, almost all of the bureaucratic machinery of the party state. So the intentions there, the investment is there. And even if currently the reach is maybe not as wide as Western media and you know, us on narratives that there's an intention there and it's growing and there are significant resources behind it. So I wouldn't, I wouldn't look at what it looks like now as a measure of in then call it a day. There's an intent and an investment there that speaks to China's seriousness about this.

 

Yeah. Like one of the, one of the really fascinating aspects of, of, of the work that you do is that, is that you kind of engaging with the real, the real work and the real kind of utterances and discourse put out by currently working Chinese intellectuals, like all of these really, really prominent academics, you, you know, and you, you kind of coach and translate them at length. So over the, over the time that you've done this work, have you seen, how, how have you seen the kind of tenor of the discourse shift? Like, like, you know, kind of way, where did we come from and where, where do you feel we going in terms of like, in terms of when you're listening to these kind of prominent Chinese academics, because from, just from my own perspective, like free community re when I read your newsletter and I see the kind of level of the kind of darkness or stridency is the wrong word, actually like the kind of the, the tenor strikes me as quite somber, quite like th th th the concepts like war come up a lot, you know?

 

So I was wondering what, like, what you make of the mood, like in, in, in Chinese intellectual circles, around these issues. Yeah. So talking about shifts and my own view is very narrow. It just a couple of years, you have to stretch it all the way back, at least to the nineties, if you want to talk about real systemic shifts in views, and there'll have been a couple of points in recent memory that I can think of that kind of really, eh, eh, deserve our attention. Eh, another thing I want, I want to just put out there, a China is a very big country, of course, and you gonna find many diverse opinions on any given topic, of course, within orthodoxy, but it is very wide range.

 

So if you were looking for an opinion about something, you probably gonna find it. And, eh, that's why, when we look at Chinese discourse about specific topics, it's important to keep that in mind, that there's always going to be a people that disagree with it in China. And there are also people that are limited to say what they think because of censorship, because of the orthodoxy that they can go out against explicitly without injuring their own career. Eh, without the mind, eh, yes. I do see a couple of shifts and especially you, since Trump came to power, and if we want to talk about this course, hegemony and power in the ugly sense of the world, then Trump is the master and the grand strategist.

 

Just every time he used Twitter, eh, half of the world, you know, rent, scrambling to see what's going to happen. And the, for China, this kind of situation was impossible because it did not control the discourse. They always have to be on the receptive side. It had to be, eh, reactive and not proactive. And that same time when you see arise of what you call the Wolf warriors, I'm not a big fan of the term, but it does exist. And you see a more combative China. And I think much credit has to be giving to John way way.

 

He's the head of a China Institute and Fudan university. And he has established himself as a pundit that is, gets a, the leadership's ear. He was done lead discussant on a study session on telling The China story, well, last year and establishing China's discourse power, and just watching his shows. I mean, you don't have to look at anything else. You just see a giant cesspool of toxicity and pernicious ideas that are absolutely racist. They are absolutely combative belligerent. They are supremacist or Han chauvinist.

 

They're chauvinist against women even. And it's not just him. He brings on guests from the cream of the crop of China's academy, some of which work with them in Fudan and not to talk bad things who done is an excellent place of great scholars now, eh, but you can see in his shows, the, this very, a toxic, really a diatribe that is spoken about the west and his idea. And he said, so himself that I always look down on the west, that's what he says. And he wants to speak to the west from a position of power, because China has been spoken to China has been scalded, but now it's time for the west to sit down and learn from China.

 

So it's a lot like the tone of Fox news in many respects, just the Chinese equivalent of it. It's different because Fox news, they don't have a, what's his name? Tucker Carlson be the main discourse and in the white house, a session on telling the voice of America welding. Yes and no. I mean, Sean Hannity was in direct contact with the white house on many occasions. Yeah. So I guess the way you put it it's and I agree it's two sides of the same ugly, disgusting gutter, eh, corn, you find in the gutter, eh, where you got two people speaking about each other and not with each other. It's a dialogue of the death is one, a European official.

 

Just describe a China in Ukraine with Europe. And this of course is not conducive to bilateral relations and to, to be fair, to China's own peaceful rise, eh, with having this condescending, eh, view of the world and trying to fight back, eh, the ugly way that the Trump administration needs to do. I don't think it does any good to anyone. Well, if you would like to understand what these are saying and what people like John way way are saying, you must subscribe to discourse, power it's at Tuvia, Gehring that sub stack.com. You can go and look at all the back archives.

 

They're searchable. It is an amazing resource. If you are a scholar, or if you're an analyst or doing what we do and trying to stay on top of what Chinese scholars are saying domestically within China, Tuvia translates everything and puts it into a context, which is absolutely invaluable. Tuvia thank you so much for joining us today as a non-resident fellow in The Atlantic Council, global China hub, and a research fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for strategy and security. Thank you so much for joining us. Two of you, thank You very much. And also Kenton Teebo is a resident China fellow at the Atlantic council's digital forensic research lab in Washington. She's the author of a fascinating report. China's discourse, power operations in the global south.

 

Again, I will put the link in the show notes for you to go directly to it. Kenton, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you both for having me Now. Kenton, are you on Twitter for people to follow what you're reading and writing? Yes, I am. I met at Kenton Thibaut. Okay. We'll put a link to that. And Tuvia you tell us where people can find you. Thank you. It's a Gehring Okay. Again, links to all of that will be in the show notes, Kenton to via have a great day. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Thank you. Cobus to vias last point there about the hardening of the discourse and that it's not something that's unique to China is really important for us to put this in the broader context. I mean, again, just the fact that I'm in Washington right now, having all these great meetings with people.

 

There's nobody that's saying anything nice about China here. So the discourse in DC is universally negative about China, and one of the data points that they will use to validate their worldview on China is some of the pew data that's come out of global north countries and their perceptions of China. And they will say that in Europe, in Australia, in New Zealand, in Japan, in basically advanced economies, the public opinion about China is miserable. And it's at record lows at the same time. What I try and remind them to say, well, that is a hundred percent true. There's no doubt that China's public standing in these countries is low and terrible and getting worse at the same time.

 

The data from Afro barometer, the data from Arab barometer, from the Eastern Covitz poll that we just referenced in our newsletter a couple of weeks ago about, I think it was something like 15 countries. They surveyed 5,000 young people. And for the first time China's public approval superseded that of the United States. There's a very different discussion that's happening in the global south and that's happening in the global north. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think one of the big reasons for that is, is that development has become such a central part of China's messaging internationally. And, you know, we, we seeing the global north trying to catch with that, with that reality, you know, kind of by, by kind of putting a lot more attention into development and into infrastructure provision, particularly, but, you know, kind of like that, that is something that I'm very interested in is, is exactly this kind of, this, this issue of development as a, as a kind of a discursive field.

 

But I wanted to ask you just in relation to, to us discourse in China and the one, one data point that, or one kind of like phrase that I've seen coming up a lot in, in, in, in us discourse about, about China is that they take increasingly labeling China as an existential threat to the U S so I was wondering what you think that actually means like, are they, are they talking nuclear war existential threat? Like, like, like China might be like bombing them, or like what, what is the actual ex existential threat that they, that they mean? Well, I think it depends. Who's doing the talking. So for example, when we've been talking about this base in equatorial, Guinea, and you and I have come to the supposition again, it's not based on fact because we don't have any facts, but that it is the supposition that the United States military is concerned that the Chinese would use the base in equatorial, Guinea in order to resupply, to be able to provide their submarines, the capacity to launch an ICBM on the Eastern seaboard, from the Atlantic ocean.

 

That is an existential threat, obviously, but when you talk to most people in the policy world, they look at China as a much more serious threat than the Soviet union was during the cold war because of China's wealth, its advancements in technology. It's a far more robust society, healthier society in many respects than the Soviet union was at the height of its power. And so also there is this sense, this brooding sense that within the next 5, 10, 15 years, nobody knows for sure precisely when the Chinese economy will supersede that of the United States will become the largest economy in the world. And there is this brooding fear that when that eventually happens to the United States will in fact be relegated to a second tier power, much the same way that when the United States surpassed the United Kingdom, the United Kingdom became a second tier power as well.

 

And so there is this real anxiety here. The interesting thing here that I'm picking up is the fact that everybody agrees that China is a threat. China is a problem, and China is a challenge yet nobody agrees on what to do about it. The think tanks have one point of view. The military has one point of view. The executive branch has one point of view that legislative branch has another point of view and civil society. Actors here have a different point of view. And it's interesting because just last week, or was it the week before, but it's about was a, what a week or two ago, Tucker Carlson, the Fox news host was in Brazil in warning of Chinese colonialism and conquering of the Western hemisphere and taking over Brazil and south American countries, much of the same rhetoric that we've heard for years about what the Chinese were doing in Africa, those fears about China conquering.

 

And, and again, so you see this discourse now becoming increasingly shrill. It's not rooted. In fact, it's more about anxieties, but it is a growing consensus, at least among policymakers and in the think tank space and in the intelligentsia that China poses an existential threat to us had Gemini maybe not an existential threat to the United States itself, but certainly to American power, it poses a very, very severe threat. That is the perception. Yeah, that, that is that, that kind of like fuzzy kind of overlap is, is, is what struck me too, is that in a way, you know, in a way that, that if, if the U S user loses this, this, you know, this kind of status as number one economy that that is in itself, a form of symbolic death, you know, not to sound too French theory about it, you know, but there is, there is this kind of like feeling that if the us isn't isn't number one, like that's, that itself is kind of massive, massive kind of defeat, you know, kind of like being number two isn't good enough.

 

Well, it depends how you define number one, because the way that Donald Trump and the mega forces defined number one is very different than the more internationalist approach taken by the Democrats and the Biden administration. So the way that the mega folks define number one is you can pull up the drawbridges become more isolationists and it becomes America first. And that is in itself a form of number one, that we're taking care of America. First, we saw what that was like in the Trump administration. We're going to probably see that in another Republican administration in 24. And, and, but again, that definition of number one is quite flexible and fluid. It depends on who's saying it and what they, what they want, but at the end of the day, what's not going to change whether it's a democratic administration or Republican administration here in Washington is the fact that China is an existential threat to its hegemony.

 

And I think there's some legitimacy to that, but at the same time, and I think Kenton was very good at pointing this out. There is the 10 foot tall monster scenario here where oftentimes people overstate Chinese power, they overstate Chinese competence, and they also overstate the effects and the success of Chinese propaganda narrative building. And Kenton was very interesting in her point where she said, they're far behind the U S and Europe still in propaganda and narrative building and shaping the discourse in the global arena, even in the global south where public opinion is more favorable to them. Yeah. You know, kind of that, that aspect is also something that, that I find really interesting, the, you know, big, because the thing is obviously the, the, the power, the messaging power that comes from Western countries comes from such a kind of a complex and multi-channel multi-platform place.

 

You know, it, it comes from a thousand different TV channels and movies, and, you know, kind of like childhood experiences for people in a kind of a curve, like a breadth of experience that one has, even as someone in the global south as far away from, from the global north that I felt kind of like from childhood kind of, you know, kind of like living with American staff or living with European, like the, the kind of the full breadth of, of kind of European or American influence. It's very different from, from the Chinese side. Right. Kind of because with the Chinese side, there is strong influence, but it's only happening on a few, a few different, you know, kind of fields like, like, like development, for example, and, you know, and, and, and so, so on the one hand, like I see that discourse quite strongly, although that, that, that, that the difference quite strongly, but on the other hand, it also seems like a lot of, you know, like if one, if one can talk about if there is even if that even makes sense to talk about a decline of Western influence, then I think a lot of it comes from the west itself.

 

Right. Kind of it comes from the west coming, like seeming like, like retreating from some of, some of it's kind of internationalist or inclusive kind of aspects, you know, kind of where, where the, where the Western culture itself is, is drawing. As it's pulling up the Drawbridge and making itself more exclusive and less accessible for, for global self people. You know, whereas China itself is already seems extremely inaccessible. You're not going to, like, China is all about central control. It's all about like this kind of a very controlled messaging, you know, kind of, you know, so, so I'm rambling a little bit, but like, but, but I was wondering whether you see that aspect of like being reflected in, in your discussions with people in DC, in DC at all, like, whether there's any kind of like awareness of the impact of decisions within the U S on what, what the U S looks like from the outside.

 

No, it's very academic for them. The discussions that at least that I've seen here in DC are very much focused about domestic us politics. A lot of the politics in the global south from the U S are oftentimes rooted in decision-making priorities that are, that are anchored firmly in domestic narratives in the United States. So there is, I don't, I don't think they're that, that effective in terms of understanding the subtleties that you're referring to. And, but just one other very quick point before we go. And again, this relates to our show that we had last week with, Shiho talking about the pushback now against the Chinese, in places like Guinea. We're seeing now a pushback, even in Zimbabwe, on The China judge, Ohio cobalt deal, obviously in the DRC, there's a very big drama that's playing out.

 

It will be interesting to see if other countries pick up on this. There's a vitality to this. I know that other global south countries are watching these pushbacks very, to see how to play them the same way that Laos and Sri Lanka and other highly indebted countries to Chinese creditors are watching what happens in Zambia. So there's a lot of movement right now in the debt space, in the resource space, in the global south that people are going to look at, and the Chinese will have a difficult challenge. I think in terms of shaping the narratives on the outcomes of some of these issues, because these are coming from global south actors, there's nothing to do with the United States. There's no involvement of the United States in Guinea. There's no involvement of the United States in the, in the TFM mine issue, as far as we can tell.

 

And at the same time, there is certainly no involvement in the United States with regards to the debt situation in Laos. So let's look at some of these, these debt issues and these resources issues coming from the global south and how they may impact China's narrative discourse going forward in the global south Cobus. We said to Kenton into Tuvia that we could have done another hour, another two hours on this. I'm desperately trying to make sure that we keep our show within, within an hour. So we're going to have to leave it there. Everybody we're going to be taking a break next week. It's our annual summer recess. We take one week off in summer and one week off in the winter. So if you don't see a show come up in your, in your feed, don't worry, we'll be back the following week.

 

I'll be in California there. So having a different perspective and talking to some of the tech companies and also talking about climate change quite a bit from California. So that will be very interesting. And then I'll be heading back to Vietnam shortly. We'll be continuing the week after. So hopefully that you'll stay tuned for some great shows that we've got planned. We've got some amazing guests lined up for you. Also, of course, we want to thank all of our Patrion supporters. It really just amazing. And now GAO is starting to put weekly video updates about everything that he's working on on the Francophone site, to our Patrion supporters. So you're getting kind of access into Zoho. We give the weekly digest as well, and there's just this great conversation.

 

Cobus and I are doing these private briefings for our Patrion supporters. So we would love to have you join us on [e-mail] slash China Africa project. Also, if you'd like to subscribe to our newsletter as Kenton and Tuvia do, and they receive it every day, just go to China, global south.com/subscribe. We've got the monthly and annual subscription, $7 a month for students and faculty, and it's $149 a year for everybody else. So very affordable, but we are very proud of the work that the entire team is doing. We've got eight analysts and editors who are every day working so hard to put this out for you. And so we'd love for you to try it out.

 

Give it a try once again, China global south.com/subscribe. So we'll see you back in two weeks after our sort of summer recess and that until then, thank you so much for listening. The discussion continues online. Tag us on Twitter at China GS project and visit [e-mail]. If you speak French, check out our full coverage at Porsche <inaudible> and Affleck shin on Twitter. That's Africa with a K and you'll also find links to our sites and social media channels in Arabic.