voice-over: this is bbc news. we'll have the headlines and all the main news stories for you at the top of the hour, straight after this programme. hello, welcome to this latest edition of the media show, and we will spend the programme talking about china's media strategy. i'm sure you have seen tiktok has been in the news. its ceo was in front of us lawmakers 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 as well. but it has 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 disinformation into the information ecosystem? let's start by understanding these broad ambitions of president xijinping and everyone else within the chinese state. i am joined by howard zhang, editor of bbc news chinese. but first, yuan yang, how would you outline china's media strategy and its ambitions? yes, thanks for having me on. there has been a really big push, particularly after the us—china trade war in 2018, for chinese state media employees not only 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 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. this comes, of course, at a time when china's global investments and global partnerships have become active across the world and are increasing. china is seeking a way of countering narratives of fear of chinese companies elsewhere in the world. so how would you categorise the overall strategic goal? what does china want out of this, beyond us seeing the world in this way? i would like to quote president xi jinping here.

"comrades, tell the china story, and tell it well." that's what he said in front of a wide audience on cctv, the parent company of cgtn, as well as when he visited all of the party—run and state—run media. that is the main message. like the soviets before, like all the autocratic governments in history, they want a narrative that puts the party, the leader, the country and all the policies in a 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 the bbc or the likes of cnn, the us and british, what they call the anglosphere media, dominating the right to speech. so they don't want that and they're 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 there have been increasing investments of the chinese state media across the world, and i think china's state media partnerships in african countries are particularly notable. some of them have been quite successful, some of them have been much less successful. and chinese state media incursions into europe have also been quite notable for the fact that in fact the uk has rejected the broadcasting licence of cgtn, which is the main foreign—facing state broadcaster in china, because it is controlled by the chinese communist party. now, the chinese state broadcaster continues to broadcast into europe with a french licence, but that is also something that has been discussed as a topic of concern. and since that investment has been escalating, howard, could we see a shift in where the money is being spent and where the emphasis is in this strategy? i can see there is more emphasis on social media,

for sure. just anecdotally, you see more and more pro—china and european—looking youtubers, as well as on twitter and many platforms. more and more people who are from, let's say, the uk, us, canada, australia, all of a sudden adopting a pro—china voice, as though look at me, i'm just like you. but you're 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 all the dissidents — there's other things going on. these messages are being amplified and pushed up by — i'll try to avoid being racist, but white europeans on chinese social platforms. why are you picking out those people? you say you're concerned to mention race, but then you do mention race.

why are you picking out that aspect of the story? because at least from the chinese perspective, they're targeting a certain audience. they're not targeting a chinese audience with these people. if i can pick up on what howard said, 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. as a foreignjournalist for a long time in beijing, it's no secret in the foreign correspondents community that when foreign journalists of chinese heritage are sent to press conferences at important political events, often the chinese government press officers would 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 journalist 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 to speak to what they imagine as a western audience.

well, let's try and understand some of the dynamics you're describing here, and also in the studio is sean haines, who worked at the chinese state news agency and 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 along, but yes, absolutely. so the period that i was in china was between 2016 to about the hong kong protests, about 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. everything through china goes through xinhua.

even the other big media organisations, when it comes to political meetings, take the text literally from xinhua, which is why ijoined them. because if you're going to be in china, you might as well start essentially at the top. did you see yourself as a journalist? no, i had no background at all. i mean, istudied media at university, but no, i worked in local government in the uk. so why did you do it? for love, basically. i met a girl and moved to china. she had a job there and 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 in a chinese media organisation like xinhua had extra currency because of the fact that you're british? 0h, of course. i'm a face, that's what we call ourselves. so i knew i got in because i'm from england, i'm six foot and white, and i have

a broadly neutral accent. that has increased my pay packet. did you feel uncomfortable about that, playing that role? i did, completely, and i tried to advocate for my colleagues and say these people have more talent than i do. but they want, ultimately, me on camera. and at some point did you decide you can't do this, or you decided to move away for other reasons? well, so i worked there for two or three years. i looked at my colleagues around me and ifelt i was slightly more politically aware that some of them. so i thought, at least if i'm on the inside, i can nudge slightly and temper some of the worst excesses of what i saw. did you manage to? did you manage to nudge xinhua in one direction or another? it sounds like a hard organisation to nudge. well, i got fired twice, so that's probably the answer. well, sean haines, you have joined us, and we're also joined by howard zhang

and yuan yang. let's also bring injoshua kurlantzick, the author of beijing's global media offensive: china's uneven campaign to influence asia and the world. thank you very much indeed forjoining our discussion. i'm wondering if you can help me assess where this has worked best, because i note that in the title of your book you say china's campaign is uneven. so where has it worked and where has it struggled? well, i think it has 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 local citizens of the countries buying up those chinese—language properties in the us, australia, the uk,

canada and many places in south—east asia where there are a lot of chinese—language listeners and changing the content to 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, two state media outlets, have not been successful. there is an extensive range of gallup polling showing they have minimal audience share. to explain, before you go on, cgtn is the primary tv network that the chinese run. and that doesn't even include places like the united states and britain and australia, which have actually banned or put extensive limitations on those outlets.

however, i do think that xinhua has the possibility to be incredibly influential, and that's because xinhua is a newswire. and so, as a result, audiences consume it passively rather than saying i'm going to turn on cgtn or i'm going to turn on china radio international. as a result, xinhua has 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 also made free to certain developing countries. and so xinhua is getting picked up as copy in quality publications, like in thailand, every quality publication now uses xinhua as copy.

it's often not attributed, or it's attributed with a line at the end of it. and so xinhua is getting picked up and used, even though it's a chinese state propaganda channel, essentially. and yuan, when we're talking about chinese efforts to control narratives in local media, regional global media, do we need to see this in terms ofjust that — a desire to control a narrative — or does it go further than that? does it turn into disinformation, where the chinese are via various sources pumping clearly incorrect information into the information ecosystem? i think the answer to this question probably depends on where you sit, not to be relativistic about that. but for me, with the values that i hold as a journalist, i say that some of it is clearly disinformation. now, a xinhua journalist might disagree with that. but the conception of journalism, and in fact whatjournalism is meant to do

according to the chinese state media, is very different to our conception ofjournalism in the anglo—saxon or british context. and just before we go on to some other areas that i want to ask all of you about, we heard from yuan yang that she has concerns about the content coming out of xinhua, but some people who work there may disagree. when you were there, was everyone quite open about the fact that this wasn't journalism as some people might expect it, or were there others who said no, we're doing proper work here and this is justified? yes, there is an awareness, but really, i think you've got to look at the staff who work there. again, it's not really a media organisation. it's a government organisation. they haven't had that wider scope of... yes, we had a shorthand. i would hand pieces back that i would feel would be overly propaganda and wouldn't be swallowed by the wider world,

so we'd say "too north korea," so let's scale it back slightly. yes, in my experience, the critical—minded journalists know very well the nature of the game they're in. they know how to get the right line that will please their political superiors and editors. they know how to produce a package very professionally. and while i was in beijing, i met some really competent and very good journalists who came to the state media machine but had very few other outlets in which they could do theirwork, because independent journalism in china is highly, highly restricted. as a chinese national, it's very difficult to join foreign media or to progress in foreign media, although we're starting to see that happen in different media organisations. so you have to consider what is the alternative for somebody who wants to produce journalism and is born in china. very useful, thank you very much indeed. now, we're going to have to talk about tiktok, of course, because there has been so much attention given

to that american hearing where the ceo of tiktok appeared before lawmakers. but before we get to that, a couple of you have alluded to russia, 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 they study that carefully. how do you flood information field. how do you brainwash people. all these are theoretical... but those theories go back quite a few years now... 100 some years. so they're going to be out of date in some ways. 0h, they do adapt, they do modify and adapt... but is china's communist party learning from russia today rather than russia's soviet past?

you mentioned russia today. i think that is a model... i didn't mean to you but you picked me up on it. laughter. i have to say i had many conversations in private with colleagues or people who work in chinese state media. they do raise, with envy, the example of russia today. they always say, "we really wish. "look at them, they spend a fraction of the money we do. "somehow they can reach so much wider an audience." so i want to understand thatjealousy. joshua, if i can bring you in, why do you think that these chinese people who howard's speaking to are jealous of what the russians are achieving with russia today or with rt as it's been rebranded? sure, i actually have to disagree a little bit. i do think they're learning from russia and disinformation but i think china could n ever have a channel as effective as russia today or aljazeera which are the obvious viles of authoritarian state media outlets, other than xinhua which i leave aside, that have been affective. russia today at its peak was great at encouraging wild conspiracy theories

that are then injected into the public bloodstream all over the world. china can't do that because its media outlets are too top—down, too turgid and too propagandistic, other than xinhua. yuen, what is your analysis of how china and russia's compare? i think russia is quite a lot behind russia when it comes to disinformation. and that's because of the difference, i would argue, between state propaganda on 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'ave the whole stage, the microphone, you're telling everyone through the loudspeakers what you want people to believe and all you need to do is to 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 thatjoshua is giving, you need to understand the role of the us commentators and the role of conspiracy

theories on the far right and where this might play into an overlap with your own interests, and then you can inject something into that discourse. in chinese state media, from my understanding, all the kpis, all the targets 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 and ability to go viral or to influence debates abroad. yeah, absolutely nailed it. laughter. your audience isn't the audience, it's party members. it's your bosses. and on the issue of disinformation and the use of bots to sometimes push disinformation, howard, we were talking before we started the programme and you are saying you're seeing a huge rise in chinese bots. on twitter, on youtube, facebook and many, even instagram and many... forget about wechat, it's just

full of disinformation. and that is at platform inside china? 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 a train crash in the us, a chemical derailed and all of a sudden you got thousands, on our platform, thousands of people commenting, 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 as i know of, but all of a sudden you see this wave of comments and people posting somehow saying you are not reporting on the real tragedy but you somehow focus on — you are biased... we have come this far without really getting into tiktok and we can't go any further because of because it's one of the reasons everyone has

been focused on china and us relations with regards to the media. there was this congressional hearing and the ceo of tiktok appeared and got a grilling from both democrats and republicans and the chinese state has repeatedly pushed back saying, this is one of many quotes i could use, "the us side has provided no evidence or proof that tiktok threatens us national security", but we very much heard those concerns in that congressional hearing. but yuen, more broadly, should we see the tiktok story as part of the broader story we've been discussing for the last few minutes or is it something quite separate? i think it's quite separate and that's because the relationship between 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. i don't think there's an analogy there between chinese control and state media. the phrase they're being the party's media belonging to the party's family. so it is tightknit, the same thing. and control over an essentially private company like bytedance. i think it is a bit of a red herring that leads to this interesting generational rift and disconnect between the users of tiktok who are predominantly gen z

and millennials and the politicians who are discussing the tiktok ban who, as you pointed out, are much older, and are not on tiktok themselves and don't see what's actually on the platform. and howard, i'm sure you were sitting here in new v—— i see you are sitting in new broadcasting house or old broadcasting house with your bbc news chinese colleagues watching that congressional hearing. what were you making of the level of concern from the americans? for me, the trojan horse argument eventually in an eventual state of potential hostility, then it may have some truth to it. but other than that i totally agree, this is a different argument compared to the state media and the propaganda but if there's no more trust between two countries, having that much data held by another country's company, that's the potential threat all the time. it's been a pleasure having all four of you taking me and taking everyone listening through this. i'm going to finish the programme by asking

you to get your crystal balls at a little. we've been talking about the chinese media strategy of the last 5—10 years but i wonder what we think is coming next. i was looking at one estimate that the chinese have been spending $10 billion a year. is it sustainable? if it is sustainable, what do you think they will be spending that money on? it's broadly on soft power but i think they're going to end up spending money on making xinhua a globally—competitive newswire. maybe not in, you know, the times of london but in many parts of the world where xinhua becomes the copy that is first picked up and sets the news agenda. i think they're going to spend a ton money improving their disinformation, i think they are going to spend a ton of money on trying to influence universities in civil societies in developing countries and i think they are going to spend a ton of money in promoting their model of walled garden internet

which is something we haven't gotten into here but it is something they have been promoting to a lot of countries and one that has become increasingly popular among authoritarian regimes. yes, you're right, since the discussions i've been seeing in the last couple of weeks, this idea of the internet splitting into different global zones has become more and more high profile as a possible outcome of this media battle we have been discussing. yuen, how do you see this at evolving, where do you think the chinese will want to spend the money the most? i think a really interesting thing to watch as the interplay between the state media in china and commercial or more independent self—made media and social media in china. for all the reasons we've discussed, chinese state media is very rigid, very top—down and produces packages that speak to people like in my grandparents' generation

who liked the predictability of the seven o'clock news and what comes first and second and third. it does not speak to my generation, the post—90s generation or to gen z. and that will be an increasing challenge for state media to really speak to younger audience, notjust china, but around the world. so how they manage to co—opt or work with the independence content generators who produce much more, by all means, much more snappy headlines, will be an interesting interplay to watch. and before i ask you howard, sean, i want to ask you, when you were in xinhua in beijing, did you have a sense that you are right in the middle of one of the most important chinese institutions in terms of how it positions itself in the world? because if you listen to yuan and joshua and others, clearly, that is where it is heading. put it this way, we had an army regiment on the office campuses. did you? we did! we knew it was lunchtime when they sang their patriotic songs. so you were fully aware. i was fully aware. that is where we have to leave it. many thanks to all

of our guests. thanks for watching wherever you are and will be back very soon on the media show on bbc news. hello there. storm noa has been bringing problems to transport, with road, rail, ferries and airports affected. meanwhile, out to sea, some wild weather in cornwall, with these large, mountainous waves pummeling the coastline. some of the waves were thought to be about eight metres high. that's the same height as two double decker buses stacked on top of each other. storm noa, then, has certainly been making its impact felt. it's this swirl of cloud you can see here on the satellite picture. and the top wind speed was recorded, as it often is in such storms, at the needles on the isle

of wight , a very exposed site — at 96 miles an hour. elsewhere, well into the 70s. even across inland parts of southern england, we had gusts into the 60s of miles an hour and that was strong enough to blow over a few trees. now, over the next few hours, those very strong winds are starting to calm down. it's still quite windy, though, for wales and south—west england. temperatures coming down to between 3 and 6 celsius, very similar to what we've seen over recent nights. now, heading into thursday, it should be a fine start to the day for many for england and wales. there'll be showers across northern england, showers for scotland and northern ireland. and i think through the day, there is a chance that some of these showers, particularly for southern and eastern scotland, into eastern areas of england, well, they could merge together to give some longer spells of rain. and some of the rain heavy with some hail and thunder mixed in and temperatures still below par. but when the sunshine comes out, out of the breeze, probably not feeling too bad. probably not feeling too good on friday across southern parts of england and wales,

with another area of low pressure moving in, bringing outbreaks of rain widely. some of that's going to be quite heavy as well, whereas the further north you are, you will see showers and thunderstorms, some of them, again, merging together to give some longer spells of rain, so staying very unsettled and pretty cool again for april. highs only reaching around 12 or 13 degrees at best. however, as we get into the weekend, things start to cheer up. the south—westerly winds start to blow away some of that cooler air and the high pressure starts to flex its muscles. now, on saturday, there'll still be a few showers around, maybe a few morning mist and fog patches to clear, but there'll be some bright or sunny spells and, overall, it's a better kind of day weather—wise. temperatures climbing. we're looking at highs of 15 in glasgow, 15 in norwich and for london as well. and that's just the start of things, because through sunday and into next week, it gets even warmer. indeed, next week, for the first time this year, we should see highs hit 20.

live from washington, this is bbc news. welcome to viewers on pbs in america. the person behind a massive leak of us classified documents may have worked on a military base. that's according to an investigation by the washington post. we'll speak to one of the journalists who broke the story. and twitter�*s ceo, elon musk, sits down with the bbc for an exclusive interview. it has been quite painful, but it has been quite painful, but i think at the end of the day, it should have been done. were there many mistakes made along there many mistakes made along the way? of course. hello, i'm sumi somaskanda. we're going to start

with the leaked us intelligence documents, and a new report about who the source of those