The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is using new propaganda campaigns to obscure its human rights abuses against Tibetans and Uyghurs.
The PRC recently invited foreign bloggers to Xinjiang in northwest China, home to millions of Uyghurs, a mostly Muslim ethnic minority. It also inaugurated a communication center to produce content spreading PRC-favored information about Tibet, which has been under Chinese rule for more than 70 years.
Nations and human rights organizations worldwide have condemned Beijing for detaining up to 1 million Uyghurs, subjecting hundreds of thousands of Uyghur women to forced abortion or sterilization, and forcing Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang to labor in factories, which prompted the United States to enact the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in 2021.
Meanwhile, human rights organizations and nations including the U.S. have accused the Chinese Communist Party of attempting to erase the Tibetan language and culture, including through compulsory Chinese language education for children and forced relocation of hundreds of thousands of rural Tibetans to urban areas.
In July 2024, U.S. President Joe Biden signed a resolution affirming the nation’s commitment to advancing Tibetans’ human rights and supporting efforts to preserve their linguistic, cultural and religious heritage. It urged the PRC to resume negotiations on Tibet’s future.
The PRC has been recruiting online influencers in Taiwan to visit Xinjiang and promote a positive narrative about the region, Taiwan officials said.
Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, which oversees cross-strait exchanges, said it is reviewing a surge of Xinjiang-related content produced by influencers in the self-governed island and urged them not to violate an anti-infiltration law by accepting payment from Beijing.
Experts say Chinese authorities impose tight control over foreigners visiting Xinjiang to ensure any content they produce aligns with Beijing’s propaganda, which seeks to obscure reports of mass internment, forced labor and other abuses.
“Beijing believes this is an effective strategy if they are indirectly controlling the types of pictures that are exported out of Xinjiang,” said Timothy Grose, a professor of China studies at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in the U.S.
By flooding social media platforms with content produced by foreign influencers, Grose said, Beijing is trying to influence casual viewers, especially younger audiences.
“These casual viewers don’t have expertise in China, so they won’t know where to find signs of oppression in the videos since they are unfamiliar with the Uyghur culture or China’s ethnic policy,” he said.
In early September 2024, local and central Chinese government agencies inaugurated the communication center in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa. Analysts say the center could serve to coordinate Beijing’s propaganda about Tibet.
“While Tibet and Xinjiang are their priorities, the tactics that the Chinese propaganda apparatus deploys are similar, including spreading disinformation through fake accounts, restricting foreign journalists’ access to certain places and suppressing information that contradicts their preferred narrative,” said Sarah Cook, an independent researcher on China and former China research director at the nonprofit Freedom House.
Cook said it’s important for individuals concerned about human rights abuses in Tibet and Xinjiang to work with research groups to expose PRC propaganda.
“They can try to produce short videos informing people of Beijing’s tactics,” she said.
