China’s International Social Media Presence

The internet revolution has transformed all facets of communication worldwide, not only by quickening the pace at which information is shared, but also by expanding the sheer volume of news sources within and across national borders. As a result, today’s media environment is highly diversified, from the number of official digital news outlets to the proliferation of social media platforms.

Nowhere has this digitization trend been more swift and more pronounced than China. In 2019, China had more than 854 million internet users, up from 384 million a decade prior. Despite Beijing’s omnipresent Great Firewall and censors who block and filter the information accessible for China’s domestic internet users, Chinese social media platforms have taken off. Renren, the Chinese equivalent of Facebook, launched in 2005, followed by microblogging platform Sina Weibo in 2009 and WeChat in 2011. Domestically, Chinese authorities have increasingly embraced social media, both as a means of disseminating information as well as a source of information gathering.

Over the last several years, this trend has gone international. Reports have found that Chinese actors are using the openness of the internet abroad for propaganda purposes, though disinformation and discord sowing is typically carried out by bots and fake accounts. Moreover, these influence operations target a distinctly different audience than the work of diplomats. For example, ProPublica found that most tweets from China-backed accounts were in Chinese, aimed at shaping the opinions of the millions of ethnic Chinese who live outside of the mainland. Meanwhile, Chinese officials tend to engage in much more commonplace public diplomacy directed toward foreign audiences.

Chinese diplomats and diplomatic missions are expanding their online social media presence on platforms such as Twitter. Some blue checkmark-wielding Chinese officials have gained notoriety, getting into spats with former foreign diplomats or fueling conspiracies related to the origins of the coronavirus. But how many Chinese officials are on international social media platforms, like Twitter, and how active are they?

The recent turn to Twitter by Chinese diplomats echoes Xi Jinping’s call to tell China’s story to the world. At a 2015 event, Xi urged the “use [of] methods that overseas readers enjoy and accept, and language that they can understand, to explain the China story, [and] transmit China’s voice.” As part of that effort, China’s state-backed media outlets have been growing their social media footprints. CGTN (China Global Television Network), the international arm of CCTV, now claims a 14 million-strong following, with Xinhua, People’s Daily, and China Daily counting 12.6 million, 7.1 million, and 4.3 million followers respectively. While the diplomatic accounts may pale in comparison in their number of followers and the degree of engagement, they occupy a distinct place in constructing and supporting China’s external image.

I collected data on more than 100 official Chinese diplomatic accounts on Twitter. Of these, only 30 missions and diplomats had joined the platform before 2019. Nearly twice that number – 57 new accounts – were created in 2019 alone, with another 20 added in the first four months of 2020.

Moreover, nearly 60 percent of these accounts operate as an official information disseminator representing a Chinese embassy, consulate, or foreign mission to international and regional organizations, rather than projecting the voice of individual diplomats. These types of accounts commonly retweet state-backed media stories, statements by China’s Minister of Foreign Affairs (MFA), and MFA spokespeople.

Scholars Zhao Alexander Huang and Rui Wang conducted a content and network analysis of 14 Chinese diplomatic Twitter accounts, published in the International Journal of Communications in 2019. Huang and Wang found that the officials used their platforms in multiple ways: to connect with other users, to communicate and interact with foreign audiences promoting China, and lastly, to release information. Moreover, while journalists and analysts tend to assess commentary from individual tweets, the basic functions of the platform create a virtual communication network – via original tweets, retweets, mentions, and hashtags – that incorporates a “polyphonic” storytelling network.

Recently, efforts related to coronavirus relief and assistance have dominated Chinese diplomatic feeds. For example, in a month’s time, Chen Bo, the Chinese ambassador to Serbia, has grown a following of more than 9,000. Her first tweet in March of this year said: “I am proud to represent my country among friends,” accompanied by emojis of a heart and the Chinese and Serbian flags. Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai, who has been active on Twitter for under a year,  has also taken an approach espousing China’s solidarity with those combating the virus. One sample tweet reads: “The peak of #COVID19 in #China may have passed, but we won't leave our friends & partners behind. That's why we're working closely with the US and other countries, contributing our knowledge and experience to secure a victory vs. #COVID19 and a more prosperous shared future.”

Other diplomats have pivoted to paint China as an active participant in a global response, chiding (albeit indirectly) the United States’ recent stance on the World Health Organization (WHO). Liu Xiaoming, China’s ambassador to the U.K., tweeted, “At the critical moment when the world is combating #COVID19, the international community should uphold multilateralism, maintain solidarity and firmly support the WHO.”

Others still opt for a more emphatic approach to voice contempt for criticisms of China’s own handling of the virus. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the more confrontational accounts are not those of diplomats posted abroad, but instead are spokespeople for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. For example, recent tweets from spokesperson Hua Chunying mince no words about stoking U.S.-China tensions: “Right decisions can only be built on Facts. Some people in the US should know that their enemy is the virus, not China.” Her colleague Zhao Lijian’s banner photo says “This is the time for facts, not fear. This is the time for science, not rumors. This is the time for solidarity, not stigma.” Both are clear signals of Beijing pushing frames that portray the United States and other critics of China as unnecessarily politicizing the public health crisis. The MFA’s Zhao and Hua also boast followings of 588,500 and 380,000 respectively, the largest of any Chinese officials on Twitter.

Zhao’s case is of special note. While his use of Twitter remains atypical among Chinese diplomats, he is perhaps the most famous example, thanks to his bombastic rhetoric. Most recently, he gained international prominence by suggesting on Twitter that COVID-19 actually originated in the United States, and was brought to China by U.S. soldiers. Zhao’s stance was, however, indirectly chided by Ambassador Cui later in a rare media interview.

Even as a handful of diplomatic Twitter accounts have grown influential, pushing Beijing’s hardline position on Hong Kong protests and Taiwan, propagating conspiracies, and framing China’s international role as one of responsibility and solidarity, this approach to Twitter may not be widespread… yet. Of the diplomatic accounts monitored, only a third have tweeted more than 1,000 times, and a little more than 25 percent have built followings of more than 10,000 accounts. Still, the medium appears to be an increasingly popular tool for China to repackage how it presents itself, not only on a unitary international stage, but across disaggregated regional international audiences and in their native languages. Transnational crises, including the coronavirus pandemic, expose the diversity of new and growing Chinese voices on Twitter and present opportunities to test when to push the gas on a more assertive, aggressive tone, and when there may be more to gain from striking a conciliatory tone.