How does Beijing use information and public diplomacy to win the narrative?

By Samantha Custer
23 January 2025

How can we better understand Beijing’s playbook for engaging with foreign leaders and publics through information influence and public diplomacy? Asked this question earlier this month, I reflected on a decade’s worth of AidData research to provide three pieces of strategic context to decode how the People’s Republic of China (PRC) approaches public diplomacy.

There is a strategic imperative that informs China’s public diplomacy: a desire to “win the narrative.”

China has the financial means and political will to employ a formidable public diplomacy and broadcasting toolkit to wage this narrative competition.

China seeks synergies between public diplomacy, information influence, and economic cooperation as a force multiplier to amplify its narratives.
A strategic imperative: China’s approach to public diplomacy is informed by a desire to “win the narrative”

We live in a world of contested narratives.

Is China using economic power to coerce countries to do things not in their interest? Or is it working towards their mutual benefit?

Is the U.S. promoting a free, open, secure, and prosperous world? Or is it a neocolonial bully, curbing the rise of other nations in a bid to maintain its dominance?

Chinese and U.S. leaders each have their preferred answers to these questions. More than empty words, these narratives jockey for position within traditional and social media, in public and private discourse, between great powers, and within third countries.

In an era of intensified geopolitical competition, economic and military might is insufficient for a great power—be that China or the United States—to get the outcomes it wants without cooperation with other countries.

The target audience of interest here is not limited to advanced economies or historical military allies but an expanded set of low- and middle-income countries. These players have more options to guard their strategic autonomy and navigate great power competition by playing both sides in pursuit of better deals.

Chinese leaders have internalized this critical lesson. Winning the narrative is not merely about warm and fuzzy reputation management but about accumulating invaluable currency to weaken rivals, win friends and allies, and shore up power at home.

Beijing has multiple objectives for its narrative competition.

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