CGTN and its influencer studios
Sleeper accounts. Evading Facebook advertising rules. University lectures on how to be a KOL. China's flagship propaganda arm adapts to a social media future.
This article is part of an ongoing series looking at the rise of Chinese state media’s influencer ‘studios’. Home page <here>. Plenty more to come.
In many ways, Gisela Wang is like most other influencers, albeit quite a big one.
Her TikTok has 1.8 million followers, has amassed nearly 40 million likes. While her YouTube boasts 1.6 million followers and 423 million views. At 575,000 followers, her Instagram is practically modest by comparison.
The vast majority of her content is typical social media slurry. Lip-synching. Mocking fashion. Failing to make coffee. Or guacamole. She’s a goofball.
Her bio, too, is pretty normal. “❤️Hello friends, I live in China, and I enjoy learning Spanish. Hugs ♥️”. But scratch deeper, and there are clues not everything is as it seems.
“I would like to share with you a movie I just saw,” Gisela opens one video in August. Before hard-selling Dead to Rights, a blockbuster film funded by the CPC Central Publicity Department about the Nanjing Massacre.
“What hurts me most is, today, some parts of Japan refuse to acknowledge these facts,” she laments over graphic images from the film — decapitations, bayoneting. She cries. A young boy cries, too.
Or take her video posted on Aug 1.
“Friends, Xinjiang is very dangerous…” Gisele warns to camera, a gloomy filter, a soundtrack of horror strings. Before: rug pull! Colours brighten, jaunty music kicks in, and the reveal Xinjiang is dangerous because all its ‘tasty food’. “So scary!” she says, stuffing her face.
See. There is one way Gisela is different. Her real name is Wang Xiaochuan. She’s a journalist for CGTN Español. And her content is produced under the CGTN ‘Silin Studio’.
And she isn’t the only one, either.
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Who are CMG?
To see headquarters of the China Media Group, is to know of the firm’s importance to China. The $900 million lopsided, penrose cube-shaped building simply defies logic.
Of all the Beijing-based state media, CMG employ perhaps the most commercially savvy, and pays the fattest salaries. If Xinhua is the mouth of the Party, CMG is its swagger.
The group was formed thanks to a mega-merger in 2018 of most of China’s largest propaganda outlets — CCTV (domestic TV), CGTN (overseas TV news), China Radio International and more. Management say they see it as a rival “against CNN and the BBC”. Viewing figures suggest otherwise. Also different, is that CGTN is funded by, and reports wholly to the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China. Its workers are essentially Party employees, regularly tested on Xi Thought, and are designated as “foreign missions” by the US.
Further, CMG’s Editor-in-Chief Shen Haixiong doubles as the Deputy Minister of the Central Propaganda Department; in 2022 he was elected to the CPC’s Central Committee at the 20th National Congress. In short, when Shen speaks about the direction of China’s propaganda efforts: you should listen. His words are de facto national policy.
On 1 June 2021, Xi Jinping gave a now seminal speech, calling for China’s propaganda apparatus to “strengthen its ability to guide international public opinion”.
So it’s notable that just two days later, Shen gave his own talk, clarifying exactly how CMG, under his watch, would implement that:
We should use multilingual internet celebrity studios as a breakthrough point to further promote the "dissemination of goodwill". We should give full play to the important role of internet celebrities in headline projects and major theme reports, strengthen the training of internet celebrity commentators in key languages in important regions.
Shen Haixiong, Deputy Minister Publicity Department
and Editor-in-Chief of China Media Group
Media studios, eh?
For how this new policy came about, we need to flip back a year further. It’s hard to overstate the panic, frustration that rippled through Beijing’s state media during summer 2020.
On 4 June 2020, Facebook announced it would start labelling the accounts of state media who lacked “editorial independence”. Twitter did the same on August 6. This move ultimately saw a collapse in engagement for Chinese state media. Overnight, the backbone of CMG’s online strategy had been wiped out.
CMG needed a new tactic. It chose stealth.
Digitally, CGTN began to decentralise. Facebook Pages were launched for its foreign-facing TV hosts, like: Liu Xin, Tian Wei, and Wang Guan. These were backed by advertising spend to artificially boost followers and views.
As these, too, attracted “state media” labels, other pages suddenly rebranded, personalised, to disguise their origins — “CGTN Tech It Out” renamed itself to “Tech It Out with Yang Zhou”.
On 22 June 2020, just days after the new Facebook restrictions hit the brand’s main accounts, CGTN launched a Facebook page for one of its small multimedia journalists, Yang Xinmeng, soon named to “itsAbby”. No corporate branding. The bio today reads simply:
👋🏻It’s Abby⬇️ 📸Story teller 🌿Nature lover ⛷️Adventure goer Welcome to my world❣️
It opened the floodgates. Two days later, it was the turn of Li Jingjing: “A Chinese traveler & journalist.” Then in July, Jessica Zang: “I am here to present you with “Reasons to be in #China”. :)”. Many more would follow across multiple genres or languages, mostly in a flurry of twee emojis.
Outwardly their links to the Chinese state were blurred, but inwardly, these studios had full corporate support.
It’s these we look at now~
“Cat and mouse”
“I’m tired of seeing my own culture and country being misrepresented, so I’ve decided to use my own social networks,” writes Li Jingjing in her YouTube bio.
Well. She has enough networks. The question is whether they’re actually hers.
If you miss her on YouTube (94,000 subscribers; 11 million views) you can also find her on her own website, X, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Reddit, and, yes, right here on Substack too.
Each is very carefully worded. She describes herself simply as a “Chinese journalist”. And for good reason. By day, Li Jingjing is a Multimedia Reporter at CGTN Digital, formerly of Global Times. She still regularly pops up on the TV news channel as a traditional reporter, but her main occupation is running the Li Jingjing Studio. While she isn’t the organisation’s biggest star, she is perhaps its most prevalent, and a key cog in CMG’s external influence efforts.
Her ruse didn’t last long. In 2021, outlets including The New York Times and Associated Press discussed her role as a state media employee. The attention forced her to go public with her own video: “Who is Li Jingjing?”
“I started this channel in 2012,” she claims in the rebuttal1, emphasising its her own personal account. Yet a cursory glance shows all content has been wiped prior to 2016, the year Li Jingjing joined CGTN.
Across the video’s seven-and-a-half minutes, she mentions CGTN precisely once. Listen close, because it’s the last she’ll mention them. Further, Li doesn’t just play down her employer: she actively hides it.
Videos that appear on the CGTN channel or website later reappear almost exactly the same on her own channels scrubbed of identifiers, and rebranded.
Occasionally, though, the channel slips. On Nov 12, Li interviewed the American streamer Hasan Piker. Presumably, in a haste to get the video online, her YouTube uploaded CGTN’s version. On 18 Nov, it was quietly replaced with the watermarks removed, fonts changed, and now stamped with the “Jingjing” logo.
By far her biggest platform is Facebook, with over 3.5 million followers. One recent post showing PLA soldiers marching hit 66,000 likes and 3,300 comments.
Some readers may be surprised the clout Facebook still has. Its userbase has actually doubled since 2016, now at 3 billion monthly active users — the same as TikTok, X and Reddit combined. Growth is particularly strong in the developing world, a key China influence market. But there’s another reason why state media like it: it’s one of the easiest platforms to buy.
Despite restrictions, CGTN are aggressive ad spenders. At least 18 advert campaigns have pushed Li’s Facebook page: the largest hitting up to a million impressions. But it’s also a game of ‘cat and mouse’.
Meta says it strictly regulates foreign interference, and requires all advertisers to file a disclosure on any ads relating to “social issues, elections or politics”. It’s an issue the US has been seeking to close via bills like the Honest Ads act.
To evade this, Li and other CMG studios sometimes use proxies, listing third-party PR firms as the “payer” and “beneficiary”. Firms include Meetsocial or the Powerwin Media Group. This is nothing new. State media has long outsourced ad buys to digital marketers.
Why “at least 18 adverts”? Simple. Meta’s database is incomplete.
On Sep 3, Li’s page ran an advert publicizing her video at China’s military parade. The messaging fit a Beijing-issued directive for state media to portray the military parade as a ‘show of peace’ [covered previously].
Within hours, however, the post was deleted and the ad removed from Meta’s Ad Library.
It is unknown why the ad was deleted, nor how many others were deleted like this. Though study in 2022 tracking Chinese state media Facebook ads about the Ukraine invasion observed 88 percent removed in a similar way.
Perhaps it was a step too far. In October, every single one of Li Jingjing’s adverts were “disabled for not following Meta’s Advertising Standards”. All prior adverts now have their information hidden [a few interesting ones I’ve archived].
However, on October 14, the page was back advertising. The team had found a loophole. This time both the Payer and Beneficiary are listed as “Tech It Out with Yang Zhou” — a completely different CGTN studio with “a million” followers on Facebook.
Thanks perhaps to an early rebranding, Yang Zhou’s Facebook page — one of CGTN’s oldest — is one of the few to have escaped being labelled as state media.
Perhaps it’s for his neutral tone? After all, in a 2021, Yang told a tech salon that the aim of his work is to: “help foreign viewers gain a more positive perception of Chinese technological progress”.
Or perhaps not. A recent post reads: “Awesome! The PLA turned a Soviet-era fighter jet into a drone that could be used to swarm Taiwan!”2
Numerous more CMG studios exist on Facebook. Above is just a small sample.
What’s curious is most pages, despite being labelled as “China state-controlled media”, still go to extreme lengths to hide their identities. Rebranding content; cropping videos to omit the CGTN logo; never posting state media content; mirroring the image to make it harder to read ID badges, microphones, banners, signs or other Party identifiers — but not on other videos; and plenty more observed behaviour.
Erroneous mentions are cleaned too; an early post accidentally gave Yang Xinmeng’s real name on the itsAbby Facebook page — that’s now been deleted.
So if they’re labelled, why all these efforts to hide? Maybe because the tags, outside of algorithm restrictions, are practically ineffective.
Take this typical post from CGTN Arabic reporter Fayha Wang. The warning represents just 0.3 percent of the post’s screen space. It is an irritant, not a barrier. Posts are deliberately large and image or video based — mostly this is for engagement, but it has the helpful by-product of distracting from the label, washing it out. Most users, even those who engage, will never spot it. Studios rely on this ignorance.
“To address the personalized, niche communication characteristics of Generation Z, we have created multilingual influencer studios, continuously exploring personalized, social, and private communication methods. CGTN's 100 multilingual influencer studios have already attracted over 60 million followers worldwide.”
Ma Jing, CGTN Editor-in-Chief
“You might be the next one to appear on our shows!”
This page is “Pro China” and any “discreditation against China or its developments may result in a ban”, warns the rules to NewsWithJingjing, a Reddit board with 37,000 weekly visitors.
In a recent update, an admin (one of three) doubled down, writing: “[we have] solidified ourselves as definitly [sic] communists”.
Another rule is “No Spamming”, though this hasn’t stopped Li’s account from regularly pushing her own content across the Reddit platform — 4,600 posts, since 2021. Each new video is typically cross-posted to ~10 different boards.
Where “Li” posts is interesting. Names include: InformedTankie, GreenAndEXTREME, EndlessWar, and sendinthetanks. It’s ironic that the Chinese state, so prohibitive of divergent voices at home, so actively targets and encourages the political fringes overseas.
Where Li stands apart from other CGTN studios (and partly why this article predominantly follows her) is she isn’t passive, or focused solely on content. She’s also used as a conduit for CGTN’s physical engagement efforts.
Her studio acts a landing spot for “alternative” online voices like Hasan Piker, Ben Norton, or Brian Berletic. Plus more once institutional figures who have drifted toward Beijing’s pocket: Yanis Varoufakis, Mick Wallace, George Galloway, Erik Solheim, etc. Or, as Li describes them: “People that some mainstream Western media outlets would never invite, and they express views that are not endorsed by these media outlets.”
Her recruitment of China-friendly voices continues further down the scale too.
In March, Li launched the “Initiative on Youth development: Together for a Shared Future” a scheme to recruit young people — primarily students — to appear on camera and debunk “misunderstandings” about China.
“You might be the next one to appear on our shows!” the sign-up form exults. Which TV channel? It forgets to say.
Or take the “Looking at China Together — A Trip to Xinjiang” media tour, a 2024 CGTN collaboration with local Publicity Department. Over 26 media from 24 (predominantly Muslim) countries were involved. Li Jingjing hosted, and the intent was clear: to create a “credible, lovely, and respectable image of China”. After a manicured all-expenses-paid-trip, the outlet got the quotes it wanted:
“Mohammed, a journalist from Mauritania’s Al-Hara, stated that Xinjiang’s ethnic diversity, respect for minority cultures, and respect for Islam demonstrate that Western media reports are completely contrary to the facts.”
But reliance on “foreign mouths” only takes China’s storytelling so far. As mentioned before, the state is frustrated at staff’s ability to “tell stories well”. The Party recognises it needs new blood, new studios, new influencers. CMG has that covered, too.
“Cultivate young talent… to amplify China’s voice”
In October 2023, CGTN’s stars went on tour. The “China Through My Eyes” media campus campaign involved nine of China’s top universities, with the aim of “cultivating young talents with strong foreign language skills, familiarity with new media communication, and the ability to tell China’s story”.
“Speak out boldly… actively convey China’s voice!” Li Jingjing told one audience of students.
Sometimes, studio heads teach pupils directly, such as in May 2022, when CGTN host Wang Xin, face of the Arabic-language “Fiha” studio gave a lecture at the Nanjing University of Communication. “Social media influencer marketing is showing enormous potential,” ran a poster for the event.
Wang, who at the time had 1.5 million followers and over 100 million views, promised to share her “new techniques and methods” for connecting with foreign audiences and ways to “improve China’s international communication work”. As a sweetener, students were offered 0.5 credits toward their degrees if they attended.
A reasonable question to ask: is this not just media professionals, passing on key skills? Well. To a point.
On 2 June 2023, 16 students from Tsinghua University School of Journalism met CGTN management, hosts, and staff for a Party Day activity. After a tour of the TV studios, the group got down to business.
“How can we transform the rich connotations of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era into a discourse system with international communication and circulation power?” asked one student in the Q&A.
One needs to identify commonalities between Chinese and global issues, and portray the Communist Party of China’s achievements as “wisdom for the world”, replied Zhang Shilei, Director of CGTN’s New Media Department, while drawing on, quote: “specific communication practices”.
Also there, was Sun Xueying, face of CGTN Español’s Teresa Studio. She suggested “employing a soft, positive communication strategy to cultivate a “celebrity persona”, to gradually showcase the Chinese lifestyle and philosophy of life.”
Catch that? Combine the three, and you have the whole rationale for these studios.
Wang just described 90 percent of CGTN studio content — soft, cultural. In isolation, is it a problem? No. Probably, not. Yet what is concealed from public view, and why its progenitors are so keen to avoid identification, is this theoretical grounding underpins all its work. Simply: their content is innocuous. Until it isn’t.
Also. These studios can be ‘activated’.
“We cleverly used the special functions of the social platform to break through the social blockade and explain to netizens the rationality and legitimacy of China’s countermeasures.” CGTN
“Leveraged social networks”
In 2022, US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in a highly politically-charged event between the US and China.
It was also the first major test for CGTN’s new media studios. In the aftermath, CGTN put out an article revelling in how it had “actively leveraged” its ‘Light Calvary’ on social media to sway public opinion.
“CGTN actively speaks out with nearly 30 Internet celebrity video anchors” and “reached over 200 million overseas”, it records.
Through the mass action, studios also found novel ways to evade western platform constraints.
“On the evening of August 2, in response to the incident, CGTN Internet celebrity anchors made full use of the “Quick Story” function of their personal accounts on Facebook, IG and other platforms, and used the platform’s traffic weighting mechanism for such special functions, to create explanatory short videos that break through the current limit. Within 24 hours, it received nearly 27,000 overseas views and 5,832 interactions.”
According to CGTN, one French studio found that by livestreaming, their page was able to circumvent Facebook’s restrictions on their page, “spread reached 3.1 times the average post”.
It also found that by leveraging anti-American sentiment — a popular position in some Arab nations — it could energise users to join in.
“Interaction hit 81 percent,” the report notes, adding: “Viewers changed to understanding and empathy, supporting the Chinese position, supporting the one-China principle, and working with the anchor to oppose American hegemonism and expose its sinister intentions.”
What is unusual, is the vast majority of these platforms weren’t overtly political before, many publishing almost wholly lifestyle content.
“CGTN actively leveraged its loyal social networks and super fan base to voice its message.” CGTN
This, then, is the two sides of CGTN’s media studios. On the one hand, you have the likes of Li Jingjing — obvious, abrasive, political. A modern agitprop. Her aim is to bolster the confidence of the Western fringes, sow discord, build a communications infrastructure.
The second is the “friends”. Large accounts, gentle, mostly undetected. Their aim is burrow under foreign user’s skins, building personal rapport, lowering defences, until flashpoint political moments, when they’re instructed to deliver Party messages.
Watch the content, and you’ll quickly see CGTN is still no master. But it is pushing. Probing. And the entrepreneurial nature of its media studios is encouraging experimentation. Pair this with determined political resolve, deep resources, and the introduction of a more media-savvy Gen Z, and you start to understand the potential.
In short. If the Party can get out the way of itself, CGTN could learn. Fast.
In a rebuttal article, CGTN huffed: “The New York Times selected several videos of Li Jingjing in their report, but deliberately avoided videos of her visiting mosques … because these videos would completely expose the lies they fabricated about Xinjiang.” Hmm. Not quite. Yes Li extensively works the minority line, but she often unwittingly shows more than she thinks. Take this post, part of a Twitter thread extolling Xinjiang’s religious harmony:
First, this is the Tacheng Hui Nationality Mosque, meaning the men are not Uyghur but Hui — a Muslim minority that largely escaped the Party’s Xinjiang round-up campaign. It’s interesting she reaches for a different minority.
Next, Baidu satellite images show the mosque had its large minaret domes removed after 2016. This coincides with the CPC’s push to de-Islamify architecture nationwide.
The front of the mosque is emblazoned with a large red banner, quoting President Xi.
The young Imam, she says, graduated from China Islamic Institute. She omits this organisation is overseen by the United Front Work Department, part of the Communist Party of China. A way to bring religion under the of state sway. On the CII’s website today, all five top stories are about President Xi. It recently de-Islamified its logo.
A sharper content creator may have cropped some — or any — of this out.
CGTN must’ve liked this story. An almost identically shot video [except it was uploaded sideways], was recorded by itsAbby for her channels. Talk about ‘involution’.
CGTN is really a good case about disinformation soft tactics. Its creating relatable, fun content that feels harmless but quietly builds trust.
These influencer studios hide their state media ties, mixing lifestyle clips with subtle, positive portrayals of China to shape opinions without raising alarms.
This approach exploits social media algorithms and user trust—making disinformation feel authentic and less likely to be questioned.
The so what is that disinformation isn’t always loud and obvious; sometimes it’s a slow, gentle nudge using charm and credibility.
Nice work on the article!
I don’t mean to dismiss the investigative work here, but I’m slightly interested in hearing your case as to the normative reason re why it all *matters*.
I run a YouTube channel about Chinese food and take great pains to remain independent - to not even have the appearance of impropriety (CFA training, hah). But during my years living in Thailand, none of our Thailand-based compatriots had to take any of the same precautions. They were completely free to cooperate with local tourism boards, government organizations, etc. Thailand wants to promote tourism abroad, influencers get access, win-win. Countless other countries do the same - most notably the UAE, where they give golden visas out to influencers like they’re candy.
I understand that there’s a textural difference when someone is otherwise explicitly within the system, but some of these witch hunts make me a bit uncomfortable (especially when their reach is not that big? 1.6m views on YouTube is nothing). If I had said yes to cooperating with a local tourism board, would I also be implicated in the conspiracy?