Why Chinese Propaganda Loves Foreign Travel Influencers
Spend some time browsing YouTube or Instagram and you might come across a growing new genre: China travel vlogs.
There’s the American who made a four-hour “vlogumentary” about eating dumplings in Shanghai. There’s the German traveler marveling at how quickly China’s bullet trains accelerate. There’s a British couple admiring colorful traditional clothing in the far western region of Xinjiang. All have hundreds of thousands of views.
The videos are even more popular on Chinese social media. YouTube and Instagram are banned in China, but Chinese users have found ways to reshare them to Chinese sites, to avid followings. The bloggers have been interviewed by Chinese state media and their experiences promoted with trending hashtags such as “Foreign tourists have become our internet spokespeople.”
The emergence of these videos reflects the return of foreign travelers to China after the country isolated itself for three years during the Covid pandemic. The government has introduced a slew of visa-free policies to attract more tourists. Travel bloggers have leaped at the chance to see a country to which they previously had limited access.
But for China, the videos do more than help stimulate its economy. They are a chance for Beijing to hit back at what it calls an anti-China narrative in the West. China in recent years has encouraged locals to treat foreigners as potential spies; expanded its surveillance state; and expelled or arrested journalists at Chinese and foreign media outlets. But it points to the carefree travel videos as proof — from Westerners — that criticisms about those issues are manufactured.
“Overseas audiences find that through these videos, they see a real, fast-developing China that differs from the one under the mainstream narrative in the West,” said one article in The Global Times, a Communist Party-controlled tabloid.
The bloggers themselves sometimes feed the official Chinese argument, with video titles such as “The Media Lied to EVERYONE about China? We Share the TRUTH.”
“This is considered as one of the most controversial areas in China if you rely on the Western media,” the British couple, Libby Collins and Tauseef Ahmed, said in their video about traveling to Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang region. Western countries and human rights groups have accused China of abuses in the region, including the mass detention and surveillance of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities. China says tight security measures are needed to root out terrorism.
“The Uyghur people, everyone seemed fine,” Mr. Ahmed said.
The influencers have denied any ties to the government. Many of the videos in the genre appear authentic, without the typical hallmarks of state involvement, said Fang Kecheng, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong who studies Chinese propaganda. The market for the videos — in the West as well as China — points to a real hunger for more diverse, human-oriented stories about China, Professor Fang said.
“It actually reflects that the mainstream media do have their problems in terms of China coverage,” he said. “They do tend to focus more on geopolitics.”
But he cautioned that the travel videos, in making sweeping statements about the “real China,” risked being equally one-dimensional. “It’s also another kind of not respecting the agency or autonomy of people actually living in this country.”
In interviews, Western influencers who were featured in Chinese media said they had not set out with the goal of disproving any narrative. They had merely wanted to experience for themselves a country they had heard so much about in daily headlines.
Mac Candee, who posted the four-hour Shanghai video on YouTube, said he had been anxious before his six-day trip, having heard that he would not be allowed to film. That was not an issue: He documented dancing with retirees in a park, sampling dumplings and getting a massage.
“I don’t pay as much attention from the concern of the country’s politics, religion, all these types of more general things,” Mr. Candee, 31, said. “I want to meet the individuals.”
But the videos do not avoid those questions altogether. Many contrast their travel shots with dramatic clips from Western news shows. Some ask locals about freedom of speech or religion, as apparent proof that restrictions do not exist.
Those seeming contradictions are especially central to the videos about Xinjiang.
In the British couple’s video, they watch women in traditional dress give a dance performance. They point out mosques. At one point, strolling past a security checkpoint to enter a market, the woman, Ms. Collins, says, “They can control who comes in and out. Makes it nice and safe for everybody.”
Then they pass an armored vehicle parked on the street. They note how a guard suddenly appears from inside. “It’s like Jack in the Box,” Mr. Ahmed notes with a laugh.
In an interview, Mr. Ahmed said he did not worry about how their content was used by Chinese propaganda or others. “At the end of the day, people can give it any narrative they want. It’s just two people going around and recording their travel adventures,” he said. “From our end, we were happy with what we saw.”
The couple also acknowledge that their perspective, as short-term visitors, may have been limited. Journalists living in China are followed constantly when they are in Xinjiang and people they speak to are harassed.
Cheng Lei, an Australian journalist who was recently released after serving three years in prison in China on charges of endangering national security, has described China as a “locked paradise” where prosperity and technological prowess help whitewash the abuses of authoritarianism.
“If you are a visitor, you can have a great time biking around the alleys, trying the food, talking to locals, taking the high-speed train,” she wrote this month. “You forget that you are on a massive movie set, seeing a facade of freedom.”
Inevitably, though, as China has allowed in more foreign visitors — and cameras — it becomes harder to shape the narrative that emerges. Some bloggers have shared experiences that the government is less eager to promote.
An Australian blogger who posts to YouTube under the handle “josie lifts things” recently traveled to Tibet, which is only open to foreigners by permit, on a trip paid for by a state-owned tour company. The blogger had previously been featured on the Shanghai government website for her video about her travels there.
In the Tibet video, she praised the scenery and temples. But, she added, “While I try to travel without the bias that the media might have shown me in the past, it was hard to ignore some of the obvious signs of confirmation that were before me,” while showing footage of her seventh security checkpoint that day.
Another traveler, Sara Qiu, a Spanish cyclist who has been riding through western China, shared exuberant posts on Facebook and Instagram about her journey: being invited by strangers to join their son’s wedding or to eat dinner at their homes. Her travels have expanded her understanding of the country her parents immigrated from, Ms. Qiu, 32, said in an interview.
But she has also shared stories about being tailed by police cars, especially while in Xinjiang, and being turned away from hotels because she is foreign.
When she shared a video of her experience booking a room — a hotel employee said he had to make a call before he could accept her and the police later visited her — some commenters who appeared to be Chinese accused her of smearing China.
“They say why are you posting this, what is the meaning,” she recalled. “I just wanted to reflect the situation.”
Siyi Zhao contributed research.
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