ABSTRACT
China is increasingly asserting its influence throughout the Asia-Pacific media in ways which are deleterious to press freedom. Beijing’s ultimate aim is to build ‘discourse power’ overseas, and to this end it is buying advertorial coverage in regional papers, overtly and covertly injecting state-approved propaganda into the Asian news ecosystem and setting up journalistic joint ventures across the region, sometimes through proxies. China is also investing in training individual Asian journalists as part of its public diplomacy programme to build a cadre of supporters sympathetic to its policy positions. Thus, Beijing is slowly and steadily reshaping the Asian media ecosystem through investments in media producers, media outlets and media communication technologies. This strategy has the effect of narrowing media diversity by choking off venues carrying independent voices critical of Beijing. At the same time, state-run newspapers are beginning to play a more aggressive role targeting vocal critics of Beijing.
