Excerpts from "The Hundred-Year Marathon" book Part 4

Ms. Lee [a Chinese defector] detailed a secret unit at the top of the Chinese leadership that controlled the media carefully to ensure that only the “right” messages got out about China. The key, she said, was to shape messages to foreign nations, and especially the United States, by first disseminating them in domestic channels.
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Ms. Lee explained that the Chinese have for years divided foreign countries’ policymakers into various categories according to the degree to which the Chinese believe they will promote Beijing’s preferred messaging. Major Chinese embassies formed “friendship committees” to track these individuals, evaluating key politicians, business leaders, and media figures in each national capital and situating them on a spectrum ranging from friendly to hostile. The Chinese refer to those considered sympathetic as China’s “dear friends.” In the United States, the list includes a plethora of academics and current and former government officials, including a large number of American national security policy advisers from both political parties.
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A recent study by the Center for International Media Assistance finds that “China’s media restrictions have begun to seriously affect the reportage and operations of international organizations.” Specifically, the report highlighted four main strategies that the Chinese utilize to influence or manipulate the Western media. As reported by the Business Insider on November 5, 2013, they include:

• Direct action by Chinese diplomats, local officials, security forces, and regulators, both inside and outside China. These measures obstruct news gathering, prevent the publication of undesirable content, and punish overseas media outlets that fail to heed restrictions.

• Employing economic carrots and sticks to induce self-censorship among media owners and their outlets located outside mainland China.

• Applying indirect pressure via proxies—including advertisers, satellite firms, and foreign governments—who take action to prevent or punish the publication of content critical of Beijing.

• Conducting cyberattacks and physical assaults that are not conclusively traceable to the central Chinese authorities but serve the Party’s aims.

Many foreign journalists in China assume that everything they say and write, their phone calls, and their e-mails are monitored by Chinese authorities.

Source: The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower (2015) by Michael Pillsbury.