Friendly foreign influencers win growing following in China

With 26mn followers across China, Jerry Kowal, a Shanghai-based American video blogger, or vlogger, knows well what messages cut through to a Chinese audience.

It is a knack Kowal demonstrated in early 2021 as the coronavirus pandemic raged around the world. Flying in from San Francisco, Kowal — who speaks fluent but accented Mandarin Chinese — berated the US response to Covid-19 while lavishing praise on China’s strict pandemic lockdown.

“I’m happy. I feel a sense of freedom,” Kowal said as he arrived in Shanghai in a video that went viral on Chinese social media. “This is the most organised Covid prevention in the world.”

Kowal is one of a growing cohort of more than 120 foreign online influencers whom China appears to be “cultivating” to speak up for the governing Communist party and to defend the country against critical overseas narratives, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a think-tank based in Canberra.

In a new report, ASPI said influencers were part of a Chinese strategy of “market-enabled propaganda production” that was “likely to have significant implications for the global information landscape”.

“The growing use of foreign influencers will make it increasingly difficult for social media platforms, foreign governments and individuals to distinguish between genuine . . . content and propaganda,” the report said.

The rise of foreign influencers in China has coincided over the past three years with Beijing’s move to expel some foreign journalists from the mainstream international media and to restrict accreditations for others. 

Contacted by email, Kowal said he had never been cultivated in China and that his 2021 video about Covid controls was not propaganda. He added that he stood by all the points he made and said: “If the US adopted some of China’s Covid control measures more Americans would be alive.”

Andy Boreham, a New Zealander with 1.8mn followers across Chinese social media platforms, says on his YouTube account that he is “countering the western anti-China narrative”.

Boreham is one of several foreign influencers who are vocal about Xinjiang, a region of north-west China where the US said in 2021 that Beijing was perpetrating a “genocide” against members of the Uyghur ethnic group. 

Boreham called such accusations over Xinjiang a “hideous trope” that had been “debunked thousands of times”. Reached by email, Boreham said he could not comment on the ASPI report, which he had not seen.

Scores of videos posted by foreign influencers reveal a consistent pattern. Almost anything Chinese — food, culture, society, infrastructure, government policies — is held up for praise. Sharp criticism is reserved for the western media, western society and even some western products.

Bart Baker, a US influencer who has more than 20mn followers in China, recorded a video in which he smashes his Apple iPhone after buying a smartphone made by Chinese rival Huawei. “This thing is broken,” he says, picking up the iPhone he has just stamped on. “I love Huawei.”

The report did not detail any specific official cultivation of Baker, who could not be reached for comment.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has exhorted the country’s huge propaganda apparatus to “tell China’s story well” in order to enhance Beijing’s “international discourse power”.

Most of the foreign influencers mentioned in the ASPI report provide content for both domestic and overseas social media platforms. But the systems that China deploys to encourage social media stars are complex and sometimes subtle.

Foreign influencers are mostly not given detailed instructions on what to produce by China’s state media apparatus. Their creativity is instead shaped by a mix of incentives and controls, according to the ASPI report and Chinese media executives who manage foreign influencers.

“There are certain restrictions on speech and there will be regular political training on what can and cannot be said,” said one senior manager at a Shanghai-based media company. 

The manager, who declined to be identified by name, cited foreigners’ different “upbringing and values” which meant they needed “some fine-tuning” on how to handle sensitive topics.

“If they don’t say good things about China or how they enjoy being here, these foreign influencers will not be able to gain popularity in China. Nor will they gain any commercial value,” the manager added. “This is true even for beauty bloggers or lifestyle bloggers, unless they are already very famous when they enter the Chinese market.”

The ASPI report said competitions hosted by official bodies or state-run media companies were one common way of motivating some foreign influencers, with prize money worth tens of thousands of renminbi. Such competitions often had themes such as Xi’s call to promote traditional Chinese culture or more narrow goals such as assisting development of a region.

In addition to cash prizes, the praise of Chinese officials can help influencers turbo-charge follower numbers and win lucrative sponsorship deals, the ASPI report said.

After Kowal’s video on Covid went viral on Chinese social media video platforms — gaining more than 5mn views on Bilibili, 1.7mn on Xigua and nearly 1mn “likes” on Douyin as of May 2023 — Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying hailed the American’s work.

“Truthful, objective and fair stories always shine,” said Hua in a tweet that promoted Kowal’s vlog.

The enthusiasm of foreign influencers for Chinese policies and products is not always shared by local citizens. Xi’s tough “zero-Covid” policies prompted widespread protests last year before they were abruptly scrapped.

And some in China say overseas audiences will also be hard to influence.

“The actual effect of leveraging the foreign influencers for propaganda has always been questionable, especially on key issues such as Covid, Hong Kong and Xinjiang,” said one recently retired Chinese propaganda official who declined to be further identified.

“Over the years, these issues have been reported by overseas media, which have given overseas audiences a relatively complete and profound understanding,” he added. “It is extremely difficult to change the dynamic.”