The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has employed various strategies in attempts to influence and control narratives about its human rights violatio

Turkish Journalists are Now ‘Telling the Xinjiang Story Well’ for Beijing

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2024-10-16 18:00:06

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has employed various strategies in attempts to influence and control narratives about its human rights violations in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). These include inviting foreign journalists and social media influencers to the region to present a more favorable image of Xinjiang. This is intended to “break Western discourse hegemony (打破西方话语霸权),” creating a favorable international media environment for “Chinese modernization (中国式现代化建设).”

In July, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan visited the PRC (FMPRC, July 26). There, he met with senior officials, including Director of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Foreign Affairs Commission and Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅). He also visited the XUAR. Shortly after Fidan’s trip, the PRC invited 11 journalists from major Turkish media outlets on a carefully curated tour of the region. This is part of Beijing’s strategy to use foreign media to “Tell the Xinjiang story well (讲好新疆故事),”—one facet of the broader CCP project to “tell China’s story well.” In the words of PRC President Xi Jinping, this means describing Xinjiang as “stable” and its people as “very happy and content.” The promotion of this narrative is aimed at countering the widespread allegations of human rights abuses and cultural destruction that have drawn international condemnation (Xinhua, September 2, 2023).

The invited journalists were part of a dubiously named program titled “Media Trip in Xinjiang: Always More to Discover (最是新疆看不够),” cohosted by the Xinjiang Cyberspace Affairs Commission and state-owned media organization Guangming Online (Guangmingwang, August 8; altxw.com, August 8). The program consisted of a nine-day tour across several cities, including Urumqi, Ili, Aksu, and Kashgar. These tours, conducted under the close supervision of the PRC authorities, were designed to “vividly showcase a beautiful Xinjiang” marked by “unity, harmony, prosperity, progress, security, and ecological well-being.”