this is bbc news — the headlines: two british—israeli sisters killed in a shooting in the occupied west bank have been named as maya and rina dee. the sisters were killed on friday afternoon. their mother remains in critical conditions. in response to a separate incident, israel mobilised its police and army reserves following deadly attacks in tel aviv. on friday, an italian tourist was killed and the attacker was shot dead by police. in iran, local media report that dozens of girls have been poisoned in several schools across the country. this phenomenon began last november, with several reports of poisoning incidents from gases or toxic substances.

some of the girls were hospitalised. china begins three days of military excercises off the coast opposite taiwan, following president tsai ing—wen�*s trip to the united states. at 10:00 we will be here with a full round—up of the day's news. first, the media show: china and the information war. hello. welcome to this latest edition of the media show. and we're going to spend the programme talking about china's media strategy, because i'm sure you've seen tiktok�*s been in the news. its ceo was up in front of us lawmakers a couple of weeks back, taking lots of questions about whether tiktok, which is owned by a chinese company, potentially poses a security threat to the us. now, tiktok absolutely denies that. chinese state spokespeople have been saying they deny that, too, but it's raised broader questions about what china hopes to achieve with its media strategy around the world. how is it trying to create

narratives that suit its goals, how is it on occasions trying to put this information into the information ecosystem? let's start by understanding these broad ambitions of president xijinping and everyone else within the chinese state. i'm joined by howard zhang, editor of bbc news chinese, but first of all, yuan yang, europe, china correspondent for the financial times, how would you outline china's media strategy and its ambitions? yes, thanks for having me, ros. so, there's been a really big push, particularly, ithink, after the us—china trade war, since 2018, four chinese state media employee is notjust to speak to a chinese audience using the controlled media environment within china, but increasingly to reach out to an english—speaking audience and to a foreign audience more widely, including on foreign social

media platforms like twitter that are in fact censored or banned in china, and what the propaganda, i think, push has now turned towards is this idea of providing different narratives, including some might argue misinformation or misleading narratives about china's role in the world, and this comes, of course, at a time when china's global investments, and china's economic and in fact political activity across the world is increasing, and china is seeking a way of countering narratives of the fear of china's rights elsewhere in the world. and so, howard, how would you categorise the overall strategic goal? what does china want out of this beyond us seeing the world in its way? i would like to quote president xi jinping here. comrades, tell the china story and tell it well. that's what he told in front of a wide audience in cctv, the parent company of cgtn,

as well as when he visited xinhua and all the party run and state run media. that's the main message. like the soviet before, like all the autocratic governments in history, they want a narrative like you just mentioned that puts the party, the leader and the country and all the policies in good light, and to counter all the narratives that may put the country in a slightly more negative way. they don't want to see only the bbc or the likes of cnn, you know, the us and british, what they call the anglosphere media, dominating the rights to speech. so, they don't want that and they are trying to do something about that, and yuan, in the last few years, what has the chinese state done to try and seize control of the global narrative about china? for the last decade, in fact, there has been increasing investment of chinese state

media across the world, and i think china's state media partnerships in african countries is particularly notable, some of them have been quite successful, some of them have been much less successful, and china's state media incursions into europe have also been quite notable for the fact that in fact the uk has rejected the broadcasting license of cgtn, which is the main foreign facing state broadcaster in china because of its control by the communist party. now, the chinese state broadcaster continues to broadcast into europe with a french licence, but that is also something that's been discussed in france as a topic of concern. and since that investment has been escalating, howard, can we see a shift in how the money is being spent, shifting where the emphasis is on the strategy? i can see there is more emphasis on social media, for sure, and just anecdotally you see more and more pro—china and european—looking new tubers, as well as on twitter and many platforms,

more and more people who were from, let's say, uk, us, canada, australia, all of a sudden adopting a pro—china voice, and, oh, look at me, i'mjust like you, but you are not being told the full story. i'm telling you the whole story. it's not like that in xinjiang. the tibetans are really happy, and other dissidents, there is other criminal issues going on, so these messages have been amplified and pushed out by... trying to avoid being racist, but white europeans on chinese social platforms. why are you picking out those people? you say you are concerned to mention race, but then you do mention race. why are you... why are you picking out that dimension of the story? because at least from the chinese perspective they are targeting a certain audience. they are not targeting chinese audience with these people. if i can pick up on what howard

said, i think it's important to mention race because race is an important factor for the communist party in its own presentation of public relations and communications, so i was a foreign journalist, for a long time, in beijing, and it's no secret in the foreign correspondence community that when foreign journalists of chinese heritage are sent of press conferences at important political events, often the chinese government's press officers will ask you, do you have a western face that you can send us? by which they mean a white face, because they would like to see a white journalists filmed asking questions to a chinese officer. i think that's the same dynamic at play when the chinese state media broadcasters look for white american or european accented speakers in their social media videos to try and speak to what they imagine as a western audience. well, let's try and understand some of the dynamics

you are describing there. also here in the media show studio is sean haines, who worked at the chinese state news agency in xinhua, also worked at china daily, the chinese government's english—language newspaper. sean, thanks very much indeed forjoining us. just tell us your experience of working for those two media outlets. thank you, thank. you for inviting me. a lot of that was ringing true. i was trying to keep quiet, because i was nodding - and giggling a long, i but, yes, absolutely. so, the period that _ i was in china was between 2016 to about the hong kong protest in 2019, and we underwent - a huge change in those years. so, when ijoined xinhua news agency, it's the official- mouthpiece of the party, it has to be said. - all news through china goes through xinhua, i even the big other media - organisations, when it comes to political meetings, take -

their text literally from xinhua. which is why ijoined them, i because if you're going to be in china you might as wellj start centrally, at the top! did you see yourself as a journalist? oh, no, no, i had no background at all. i i mean, i studied media at university, but, no, i i worked in local government in the uk _ so, why did you do it? for love, basically. i met a girl, moved to china. she had a job there, - so i moved for a holiday, and i thought, if i'm - going to be in this place, i might as well experience the country as close - as possible. and to the point that howard and yuan were making, did you feel that your presence within a chinese media organisation like xinhua had extra currency because of the fact that you were british? 0h, of course. i'm a face. that's how we call ourselves. so, i knew i got in. because i'm english, i'm six foot, i'm white, i have a broadly- neutral accent. these things increased my pay packet - did you feel uncomfortable about that, playing that role?

i did, completely. you know, i tried to advocate . for my colleagues, saying these people had more talent. than i do, but they want, ultimately, me on camera. and at some point, did you decide, i can't do this, or you decided to move away from other reasons? well, i worked there for two, three years, and i looked - at my colleagues around me j and i felt i was slightly more politically aware than some . of them, so i thought at least by being on the inside i can nudge slightly. and tamperand taper some of the worst excesses of what i saw _ did you manage to? did you manage to nudge xinhua in one direction or another? sounds like a hard organisation to nudge! well, i got fired twice, - so that's probably the answer! well, sean, you are with us, sean haines, worked at xinhua, as we are hearing. we are also joined by howard zhang from bbc news chinese, and yuan yang from the financial times. let's also bring in joshua kurlantzick, author of beijing's global media

0ffensive, china's uneven campaign to influence asia and the world. joshua, thank you very much forjoining our discussion. i'm wondering if you can help me assess where this has worked best, because i note in the title of your book you describe china's campaign as uneven. so, where has it worked and where has it struggled? well, i think it's worked well in taking over chinese language media virtually all over the world, including in the uk, canada and many other places where there is almost no independent chinese language media left, either through chinese actual state actors buying in stakes or a local citizens of the countries buying up those chinese language properties in the us, australia, the uk, canada, and many places in southeast asia where there are a lot of chinese language readers and listeners, and changing the content almost exclusively pro—beijing and firing

basically all the independent reporters and coverage, so that's been very successful. i think that cgtn and china radio international, the two big state media outlets, have not been successful, in fact i have an extensive range of gallup polling that i obtain showing that they have minimal audience share... and just to explain, before you carry on, cgtn is the tv, the primary tv network that the chinese run. right. and that doesn't even include places like the united states and britain and australia, which actually being under extensive limitations on those outlets. however, i do think that xinhua has the possibility to be incredibly influential, and that is because xinhua is a news wire, and so as a result audiences consume passively rather than saying, oh,

i'm going to turn on cgtn, or i'm going to turn on china radio international. so, as a result, xinhua has signed content sharing agreements with news outlets all over the world, including very good news outlets in developing countries, and even some in wealthy countries like italy. xinhua, i should also say, is cheaper than bloomberg, reuters, the associated press, and is often made free to certain developing countries, and so xinhua is getting picked up as copy in quality publications, like in thailand, every quality publication could now uses xinhua as copy. it is often unattributed or it is attributed with a line at the end of it, and so xinhua is increasingly getting picked up and used, even though it's a chinese state

propaganda channel, essentially. and, yuan, when we are talking about chinese efforts to control narratives in local media, regional media, global media, do we need to see this in terms ofjust that, a desire to control the narrative, or does any further than that? does it turn into disinformation by the chinese are, via various sources, pumping clearly incorrect information into the information ecosystem? i think the answer to this question properly depends on where you sit, and not to be relativistic about that, but for me, with the values i hold as a journalist, i'd say some of that is clearly disinformation. now, a xinhua journalist might disagree with that, but the conception of journalism and in fact of whatjournalism is meant to do according to the chinese state media is very different from our conception

ofjournalism in an anglo—saxon or in a british context. sean, just before we go on to some other areas, i want to ask all of you about, you know, we heard there an allusion from yuan yang that she has concerns about the content coming out of xinhua, but some people who work and they disagree. when you were there, with everyone quite open about the fact that this was notjournalism as some people might expect it, whether others who said, no, we are, we are doing proper work here, and this criticism is not justified ? oh, yeah, there is an- awareness, but really i think you got to look at the staff who work there. _ so, again, it's not really a media organisation, . its a government organisation. a lot of them have never been abroad, so they haven't - had that wider scope, _ and, yeah, we had a shorthand, so i would hang pieces back that i would feel would be i overly propaganda and would not j be swallowed by the wider world| and so we would say, - oh, too north korea, and so we scaled it back slightly. yeah, in my experience, kind

of experienced and critical minded xinhua state media journalists know very well the nature of the game that they are in. they know how to pitch to their editors to get the right line that will please the political superiors of those editors, they know how to tread the line, they know how to produce a package very professionally, and while i was in beijing, i met some extremely competent and very good journalists who came through the state media machine, but had very few other outlets in which they could do their work, because independent journalism in china is highly, highly restricted. as a chinese national it's very difficult to join foreign media and to progress in foreign media, although we are starting to see that happen in different media organisations, so you have to consider what is the alternative for somebody who wants to producejournalism and is born in china? very useful, thank you very much indeed. now, we are going to have to talk about tiktok in a minute, of course, because there's been so much attention particularly after that congressional hearing where the ceo of tiktok appeared in front of us

lawmakers, but before we get to that, a couple of you have alluded to russia as our conversation has gone on, and i wonder, as you observe china's efforts to shape media narratives versus russia's efforts, where you see the differences, howard ? i will start to say, the chinese learned their trade from the russians, from the soviet era. that's just a known fact. all the chinese communist propaganda theorists, and their original model, came from the soviet period, and a study that carefully. how do you flood information field, how do you brainwash people? all these are theoretical, and of course... to those theories go back quite a few years now? a hundred—some years, yeah. so, they are going to be out of date in some ways, if not... 0h, they do adapt, they do modify, adapt, as we, you know, progress... is china learning, is china's communist party learning from russia today rather than russia's soviet past? you mentioned russia today, i think that's a model...

i didn't mean to, but you picked me up on it! i have to say, i had many conversations in private with colleagues, people who work in chinese state media, they do raise, with envy, the example of russia today. they all say... do they? yeah. we really wish, look at them, they spend a fraction of the money we do, somehow they can reach so much wider and audience. so, i want to understand thatjealousy. joshua, if i can bring you in, why do you think that these chinese people who howard is speaking to are jealous of what the russians are achieving with russia today, or rt as it has been rebranded? i actually have to i disagree a little bit. i do think they are learning . from russian disinformation, but i think china could never have a channel as effective i as russia today or aljazeera, which are the two obvious - models of authoritarian state media outlets, other- than xinhua, which i leave - aside, that have been affected. one, russia today at its peak was great at encouraging wild conspiracy theories, that it injected intol

the public bloodstream all over the world. - china cannot do that, - because its media outlets are too top—down, too turgid and too propagandistic, - other than xinhua. yuan, what is your analysis of how china and russia's approaches compare? i think china's quite a way behind russia. as other guests have said, when it comes to disinformation. that is because of the difference, i would argue, between state propaganda, on the one hand, which the chinese state media machine is set up to do, and disinformation, where state propaganda is where you have the platform, you have the whole stage, you have the microphone, you are telling everyone through loudspeakers what you want people to believe and all you can do, all you need to do is repeat that many times. disinformation is a bit harder in some ways, because you need to enter into a pre—existing conversation. so, in the case that joshua is giving, you need

to understand, the role of us commentators and the role of conspiracy theories on the far—right, and where this might play to an overlap with your own interests. and then you can inject something into that existing discourse. in chinese state media, and i would love to hear from sean on this, from my understanding, all the kpis, all the targets that you are meant to achieve in the state media are set up to please the big bosses back at home in beijing, rather than people abroad or even have any kind of reflection on the real impact, the ability to go viral or influence these debates abroad. yes, absolutely nailed it. your audience isn't the audience. it is party members. it is your bosses. and on the issue of disinformation and the use of bots to sometimes push dinformation, what we were talking about before we started the programme, you were saying that you are seeing a huge rise in chinese bots. yes, on twitter, on youtube... facebook and even instagram and many... wechat, forget about wechat, it is full of disinformation.

wechat is a social media platform inside china. exactly. and i can give one example, when the ukraine war happened, when everyone was paying attention to russian invasion, when they were losing the argument internationally about ukraine, all of a sudden, there was this train crash in the us, a chemical train derailed... all of a sudden, you got thousands of the platform, thousands of people commenting, you fake news, bbc. you guys, how come you are not attacking the us for not reporting this news? and that wouldn't have happened a few years ago? not that i know of. but all of a sudden, you just see this wave of comments and people posting, saying you are not reporting on the real tragedy but you somehow focus on... you are biased. well, we have come this far without really getting into tiktok. we can't go any further because of course it is one of the reasons that everyone has been focused on china

and us relations with regards to the media. there was this congressional hearing, the ceo of tiktok appeared, he got a grilling from both democrats and republicans, and the chinese state had repeatedly pushed back, saying, this is one of many quotes i could use the us provided no evidence or proof that tiktok threatens us national security, but we very much heard those concerns in that congressional hearing. broadly, should we see the tiktok story is part of the broader story we have been discussing for the last few minutes? or is it something quite separate? i think it is quite separate and i think it is separate because of the relationship between the chinese state and bytedance, the owner of tiktok, is nowhere near as close as the relationship between the chinese state which directly controls state media xinhua, and so on. so i think there is an analogy there between chinese control of state media, the phrase there being the party's media belonging to the party's family. so really, it is tight—knit, it is the same thing. and control over an essentially

private company like bytedance, and i think it is a bit of a red herring that leads to intergenerational rift and disconnect between the users of tiktok who are predominantly gen z and millennial is, and the politicians who are discussing that tiktok ban, who are as you pointed out, much older and not on tiktok themselves and don't see what is on the platform. and howard, i'm sure you are sitting here in new broadcasting house or old broadcasting house with your bbc news chinese colleagues watching that congressional hearing. what are you making of it, what were you making of the level of concern from the americans? yeah, for me, the trojan horse argument, eventually in an eventual state of hostility, there may be some truth to it. but other than that, i totally agree that this is a different argument compared to the state media and propaganda campaign. but if there is no more trust between two countries, and having that much data held by another country's company, that is the potential threat all the time. it has been a pleasure having you taking me

and everyone else through this. i will finish the programme by asking you to get your crystal balls out. we have been talking about the chinese media strategy over the last five or ten years. but i wonder what we think is coming next? becausejoshua, i was looking that at one estimate that the chinese have been spending $10 billion a year. is that sustainable? and if it is sustainable, what do you think they would be spending the money on? it is broadly in soft power but i think they will spend money on making sure xinhua is a competitive news wire. maybe not in the times of london but in many parts of the world where xinhua becomes the copy of that is first picked up. i think they spent a tonne of money improving the disinformation. i think they're going spend a tonne of money trying to influence universities and civil societies, i think they will spend a tonne of money on their model of a walled garden internet which is something we haven't got into here, but something they've been

promoting to a lot of countries, and one that has become increasingly popular among authoritarian regimes. you're right, since the discussions i've seen the last couple of weeks, the idea of the internet splitting into different global zones has become more and more high profile as a possible outcome of this media battle that we have been discussing. yuan, how do you see this evolving? how do you think chinese will want to spend the money the most? i think a really interesting thing to watch as the interplay between state media in china and commercial or more independent self made media and social media in china. one of the reasons we have discussed, chinese state is very rigid, very top—down, produces packages that speak to people like my grandparents�* generation, doesn't speak to my generational gend z, so how they managed the independent producers who bring the snappy headlines will be

interesting to watch. sean, when you are in beijing, did you have a sense that you're right in the middle of one of the most important chinese institutions in terms of how it sees itself, because if you listen to yuan orjoshua, clearly that is where it is heading. put it this way, we had an army regiment on the office, - we knew it was lunchtime when they sang there - patriotically songs. i was fully aware. that is i will have to leave it, many thanks to all of our guests. thanks to you for watching wherever you are and we will be back very soon here on the media show on bbc

news. hello there, good evening. it's been a beautiful day of weather for most of the uk with lots of blue sky and sunshine, as captured by our weather watcher here in derbyshire, but a bit more cloud towards eastern coastal areas. still even, here, some sunny spells breaking through, and it's more or less the same again tomorrow — in fact, it could feel a little warmer for most, but there will be some rain later on in the day out towards the north and the west. most of us won't be seeing that rain until early on bank holiday monday morning. but overnight tonight, it's set to stay dry. lots of clear spells, especially through the central swathe of the country.

0ut towards eastern coastal areas, some cloud, cloud thickening, too, across northern ireland. more cloud and a bit more of a southerly breeze, so frost—free without so much mist and fog as we start off sunday morning. so, easter sunday, lots of sunshine around for the vast majority of us. it will be quite cloudy towards eastern coastal areas — again, the cloud just coming in from the north sea, but that should break up, especially through the afternoon, so a sunnier day here. cool underneath the cloud across aberdeenshire, outbreaks of rain moving into northern ireland from our weather front, approaching western scotland by the end of the day. temperatures slightly higher, between 15—17 celsius quite widely. if we see 18 celsius — always possible, especially across central, southern england — it will be the warmest day of the year so far. but of course, it's not set to last, the dry, warm weather, because we've got outbreaks of rain from these weather fronts, sweeping eastwards from sunday night into bank holiday monday morning. it's a much milder start to the day on bank holiday monday, outbreaks of rain clearing the east anglian coast as we head through the morning. there will be some bright

and sunny spells behind, but also some rather hefty showers, and raining for much of the day — longer spells of rain towards the south coast, especially across the channel islands. temperatures gradually dropping throughout the day. this is how we'll end the afternoon, between about 10—14 celsius, so obviously not as warm with all that wet weather around, and it's staying unsettled as we head through much of the rest of next week. a deep area of low pressure swinging across england and wales, into scotland as we head through tuesday night and into wednesday. some strong gusty winds potentially on this and some outbreaks of rain. here's the outlook for our capital cities as we head through next week. as you can see, it is going to be really very unsettled, wet and windy, especially towards the northwest, and also feeling a lot cooler.

this is bbc news. two british—israeli sisters killed in a shooting in the occupied west bank have been named as maya and rina dee. in a separate incident, an italian man died — and three british citizens are among the wounded after a car ploughed in to tourists near a beach in tel aviv. in iran, local media report that dozens of girls have been poisoned in several schools across the country. the taiwanese president's visit to the us sparks three days of military exercises from china. the king and queen consort have invited hundreds of volunteers and charity workers to next month's coronation.