did you feel uncomfortable about that, playing that role? i did, completely. you know, i tried to advocate . for my colleagues, saying these people had more talent than i do, but they want. ultimately, me on camera. and at some point, did you decide, i can t do this, or you decided to move away from other reasons? well, i worked there for two, three years, and i looked - at my colleagues around me j and i felt i was slightly more politically aware than some of them, so i thought at least by being on the inside i cannot - slightly and tamper and taper some of the worst excesses of what i saw. did you manage to? did you manage to nudge xinhua in one direction or another? sounds like a hard organisation to nudge! well, i got fired twice, - so that s probably the answer! well, sean, you are with us, sean haines, worked at xinhua, as we are hearing. we are also joined by howard zhang from bbc news chinese, and yuan yang from the financial times.
they are not targeting chinese audience with these people. if i can pick up on what howard said, i think it s important to mention race because race is an important factor for the communist party in its own presentation of public relations and communications, so i was a foreign journalist, for a long time, in beijing, and it s no secret in the foreign correspondence community that when foreign journalists of chinese heritage are sent of press conferences at important political events, often the chinese government s press officers will ask you, do you have a western face that you can send us? by which they mean a white face, because they would like to see a white journalists filmed asking questions to a chinese officer. i think that s the same dynamic at play when the chinese state media broadcasters look for white american or european accented speakers in their social media videos to try and speak to what they imagine as a western audience. well, let s try and understand
of tiktok appeared in front of us lawmakers, but before we get to that, a couple of you have alluded to russia as our conversation has gone on, and i wonder, as you observe china s efforts to shape media narratives versus russia s efforts, where you see the differences, howard? i will start to say, the chinese learned their trade from the russians, from the soviet era. that s just a known fact. all the chinese communist propaganda theorists, and their original model, came from the soviet period, and a study that carefully. how do you flood information field, how do you brainwash people? all these are theoretical, and of course. to those theories go back quite a few years now? a hundred some years, yeah. so, they are going to be out of date in some ways, if not. 0h, they do adapt, they do modify, adapt, as we, you know, progress. is china learning, is china s communist party learning from russia today rather than russia s soviet past? you mentioned russia today,
i think that s a model. i didn t mean to, but you picked me up on it! i have to say, i had many conversations in private with colleagues, people who work in chinese state media, they do raise, with envy, the example of russia today. they all say. do they? yeah. we really wish, look at them, they spend a fraction of the money we do, somehow they can reach so much wider and audience. so, i want to understand thatjealousy. joshua, if i can bring you in, why do you think that these chinese people who howard is speaking to are jealous of what the russians are achieving with russia today, or rt as it has been rebranded? i actually have to i disagree a little bit. i do think they are learning . from russian disinformation, but i think china could never have a channel as effective i as russia today or aljazeera, - which are the two obvious models of authoritarian state media outlets, other than xinhua,| which i leave aside, - that have been affected. one, russia today at its peak
xinhua. which is why ijoined them, i because if you re going to be in china you might as well start centrally, at the top! did you see yourself as a journalist? oh, no, no, i had no background at all. i i mean, i studied media at university, but, no, i i worked in local government in the uk so, why did you do it? for love, basically. i met a girl, moved to china. she had a job there, - so i moved for a holiday, and i thought, if i m going to be in this place, i might as well- experience the country as close as possible. . and to the point that howard and yuan were making, did you feel that your presence within a chinese media organisation like xinhua had extra currency because of the fact that you were british? 0h, of course. i m a face. that s how we call ourselves. so, i knew i got in. because i m english, i m six foot, i white, i have a broadly neutral accents. these things increased my pay packet -