China's new PR strategy: positivity and confidence

Wolf Warriorism proved a disaster last time. So for Trump 2.0, China's leadership is trying the reverse tactic. Early signs show it seems to be working.

This is largely a follow up to “Wolf Warriorism: China's disastrous attempt at aggressive discourse is over”.

Since 2019, China has had a bruising time.

Externally, the triumvirate of Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and Covid — a holy trinity of largely self-inflicted woes — put the CPC firmly on the wrong side of world public opinion. Rumblings over Taiwan, the South China Sea, and a quiet but sizeable support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine also dragged down global perceptions.

All this would’ve dogged any global leader. The fact China responded by aping Trump’s abrasive style via “Wolf Warriorism” served only to inflame tensions. Things weren’t helped by the CPC’s clod-footed attempts: chest thumping ambassadors, leaden state media satire, and social media posts mocking Indian Covid cremations.

It was an unmitigated disaster. For some, it confirmed all their worst preconceptions of ‘autocratic China’. For others, the Chinese dragon roared too early.

But the bigger problem has been home.

The Chinese economy has grown — but far slower than the debt poured into it. Local governments are trying to plug the gaping hole where land sales used to be. Domestic infrastructure spend is reaching its natural end. While the Belt & Road project — the supposed phase two of China’s building-as-growth plans — is today more lip service than poured concrete.

Credit: China Power

Consumption, too, was supposed to be a magic bullet. The term “dual circulation economy” was launched to great fanfare in 2020, dubbed by some as Xinomics. The plan: rely less on the outside world, and more on China’s massive domestic market.

The problem is China’s middle classes didn’t spend. So worried were they by being locked in their homes during the pandemic, falling house prices, stock market wobbles and savings wiped out. Chinese consumer confidence crashed negative in Spring 2022 and has remained there ever since. Despite higher salaries, and multiple voucher giveaways, consumption as a share of GDP is exactly where it was when the policy launched. You don’t hear “dual circulation” much these days.

“Power without a nation's confidence is nothing,” once quipped Catherine the Great.

For the CPC, a revolutionary party that took power by gun, and governs without elections, this could not be more true. Nothing scares the CPC more than public discontent. Not for nothing does it spend $30 billion annually on “public security”, 1.5 times what it does on education.

China isn’t collapsing, no. But in many ways, it is gasping. And, at a time of record low overseas opinion, it’s ironically more reliant on the outside world than ever thanks to record exports.

China needed a new plan.

China needed to go positive.

‘Tone shift’

While every New Year presidential speech is essentially a victory lap — this year’s by Xi on Dec 31, was especially triumphant. Five minutes were devoted to achievements from space stations, to AI, to Antarctic drilling. Even the Huaniu apples, he deemed, were “big and red”.

Take his almost giddy sign-off: “Splendor adorns our motherland, and starlight graces every home. Let us greet the new year with hope. May our great country enjoy harmony and prosperity! May all your dreams come true! May you all have a new year of happiness and peace!”

Compare that to 2022, when his speech was almost sullen. “To realize the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation will be no easy task like a walk in the park,” he warned. “There is still a long way to go.”

And last year, ears pricked as Xi admitted: “Some enterprises [have] had a tough time. Some people had difficulty finding jobs and meeting basic needs.” A shocking rare mea culpa as you’ll ever find from the CPC.

If you picked up on Xi Dada’s tone shift, what followed next might not have been so surprising.

January and February were filled by wall-to-wall tech breakthroughs that shook Western confidence, while greatly emboldening China’s own.

Xiaohongshu, rebranded to REDNote, went global, topping app charts across the world as #TikTokRefugees looked for a new place to land. Deepseek, a Chinese AI firm, showed it could keep up with western rivals, at a fraction of the cost — wiping a trillion dollars off global markets in a day. A Chinese lab pushed the bounds of nuclear fusion “fueling western fears it has lost the race to the energy holy grail”, as the Telegraph put it. The Spring Festival TV Gala unveiled a trope of dancing robots. And Ne Zha 2 became the biggest animated film in world cinema history.

These splashes came so frequently, some netizens joked: “China, take a week off”.

However, scratch deeper, and nearly every story comes with an asterisk.

The $6 million dollars Deepseek spent on development could’ve actually topped $1 billion, and had laughable censorship. The great TikTokRefugee movement soon evaporated, today REDNote resides well outside the top 200 in app charts. While Ne Zhe 2 is a blip rather than a trend. Last year’s Chinese box office was down by a quarter — it’s worst year since 2015.

The robots too. At Xinhua, I was excited to cover the annual Robotics convention, held in Beijing. My cameraman, less so: “Same shit, every year,” he muttered, switching his equipment off to “save battery”. I now see his point.

Compare the tottering basic functions of the Unitree H1 used in the Gala to the literal backflips a robot by Boston Dynamics was doing seven years ago. Viewers weren’t exactly enamored with the optics either. Some compared the performance to Terminator. Others, a reminder of their future work replacements. Perhaps that’s why the Spring Gala official account soon deleted it.

All year, these stories have followed the exact same pattern. Massive splashes in the Chinese press. Worried overseas discourse. And before context is added, and truth dissected, the next story drops.

…Perhaps, then, that’s exactly the point?

‘Tell China’s Story Well”

Senior management of CMG conduct a “constitutional oath-taking ceremony” on 14 Feb 2025.

This phrase, first instructed by Xi in 2013, is so ubiquitous across western reporting of China as to become a cliché. What’s less reported is the state-led activity going on behind the scenes to make this objective happen.

As befitting a communist state, the CPC is mobalising all aspects of Chinese life toward Party goals: government, media, academia, business, technology and civil life.

It goes far beyond media heads taking public oaths to the Party. It includes:

• Academia and think tanks running research on the effectiveness of eternal propaganda.

• Local government propaganda budgets uniting with top-level state media expertise via new International Communication Centers.

• State media-run vloggers running lectures to other media workers on the keys to their success.

• Tech firms honing AI for content creation, censorship, analytics, and spammification.

• PR firms creating bot farms, accounts to artificially boost engagement figures, plus acting as proxies for the state.

Each one of these could have a deep-dive themselves. But the upshot is that, slowly, steadily, some very lowly media skills are being upgraded, delivery systems honed, and content impact improved.

Perhaps the biggest resource, though, is the Chinese people themselves. Smartphones have turned the Party’s 90 million members into content creators, cheerleaders and commentariat.

The sheer depth and breadth of propaganda production is simply stunning, and the tail extremely long. Take this video was uploaded to a Xinjiang village WeChat feed, and filmed at a Party-run dating ice-breaker between youths. I was its first view. You are now its second.

In a country of 1.4 billion people, plus a few borrowed mouths, that’s a lot of stories. The best can go viral. A few: international.

To Western eyes, this rush of “good news” stories may feel ubiquitous, unending — but they are simply the tip. Winners selected to be “Messages of the week”. Some filtered up via China’s massive and increasingly important social media ecosystem, others chosen by a few editors in Beijing. Those that fit the Party’s narratives and goals get the big push, from an increasingly well-oiled publicity machine.

Foreigners aren’t just the targets, they’re often the conduits too. Especially under this more positive era. Business, technology, culture and tourism have become proxies.

Good looking foreign students studying in China are actively scouted and foisted into propaganda videos — bonus points if they’re from BRICS, SCO, or Global South. While China’s United Front have become extremely active in tapping foreign content creators — including myself. (More soon.)

YouTube is today flooded with suspiciously near-identical, travel vlogs to China — whether Chongqing “the megacity you’ve never heard of” or “the Xinjiang the West DOESN’T want you to see”. Same streets, same squares, same lines.

As an example, and how disparate the targets, YouTuber JayEmm recently lifted the lid.

Last month, Jaecoo, a car firm ultimately owned by the Chinese government, approached James and many others via a UK-based PR firm. The firm offered a negotiated fee, plus £5,000 to artificially boost his channel’s views. While advertorials are nothing new, James said he felt the prescribed terms were so egregious and one-sided that he felt the need to go public. Several YouTubers did do the campaign, none mentioned their funding.

These methods and numbers are in line with other pro-China content I’ve heard from the industry, included tech, travel and politics.

However, this emphasis on softer, non-political topics, projecting China as a rapidly developing nation has found some traction overseas.

If the tonal shift has caught out anyone, it’s the small band of “borrowed mouths” state media often turned to and promoted during the Covid/Wolf Warrior years.

When REDnote went viral, and thousands of American TikTokers (briefly) filled the app, one state media hanger-on tweeted to another, “We’ve been made redundant, my friend.” He was joking. But not completely. It’s noticeable how little these voices are used by the state these days.

However, positive propaganda is nothing new — veterans will note China has tried this approach for decades, mostly without success… so what else has changed?

Enter a failing West.

‘The big orange elephant in the room’

As countless have pointed out, no person is greater helping the CPC cause right now more than President Trump.

In just four weeks of office, Trump’s demonstrated his abilities as a ‘patriotic strongman’, mostly by turning round and punching his allies in the face. Tariffs on US’s closest neighbours, with the EU next. Territorial claims on Greenland, Panama, and Canada. Hiving off Ukraine territory. Abolishing USAID. Goodwill is burning fast. “Do we have any friends,” quipped Jon Stewart recently on the Daily Show.

As mentioned last time: Beijing are delighted. Not that they’re showing it. “Never interrupt your enemy while he's making a mistake,” runs the old adage.

China too, has been caught in the melee, hit with 10 percent tariffs — but note Beijing’s distinct lack of fuss. No explosive missives, or threatening state commentaries this time around. Just a press release quietly stating a complaint has been filed to the WTO, and a series of tit-for-tat tariff retaliations that were largely symbolic. US crude oil makes up just 2 percent of China’s oil imports, while how many American pickup trucks do you see on Chinese streets?

Xinhua commentaries directed at the US has dried up since Trump took power.

So, why so muted?

The larger prize is to allow Trump, a toddler by all accounts, to think he is winning, stay off his radar, while China focusses on the bigger aim: gathering support, boosting self-confidence, keep exports strong, and overturn years of damaging PR.

China’s played this Trump game before. It’s reaction via Wolf Warriorism the first time painfully blew up in CPC faces. The world wasn't ready for bullish China. It came off as defensive, scary. Public perception of China took a nosedive.

There appears an active effort by Beijing for de-escalation. A flurry of diplomatic meetings. Greater diplomacy with India, and pullback on the border. Meeting Syria’s new leaders, awkward given Beijing’s prominently backed Assad.

All around, the message is clear: China is willing to talk.

When US Vice President JD Vance spoke at the Munich Conference last week, his words left shock and ire from Europe’s leaders.

When Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yi spoke, he preached of four tenets: “equal treatment”, “respect international rule of law”, “multilateralism” and “openness”. Critics will find plenty of examples of the CPC not heeding these beliefs, but in terms of rhetoric, they were a balm to Vance’s fire.

“Do nothing. Win.” runs a popular meme online since 2022, called ‘Chad Xi Jinping’. Under this context, it’s not wrong.

In truth, Wang’s words were no different than top-level Chinese leaders have said for years. Wolf Warriorism tended to be delegated down: ambassadors, tabloids, netizens. At a cabinet level, Beijing has always been very good at telling the world what it wants to hear; repeating Western, liberal, globalist ideals back to it. It’s in practice where the CPC often struggles.

The key difference now is the world is fracturing. The US attacking democratic institutions it helped build. Wealthy countries, unable to provide.

China’s words aren’t changing — but audiences are.

China’s potent message

Since returning to my native Britain, I’ve found myself kicking the tyres of a stagnant society. Wages have been flat here since 2008 — and it shows.

Much of the west is happy to exist. China is looking to progress. This is a very potent message, and it’s starting to reach disillusioned ears.

A poll last month shows more than half of UK Gen Z’s would prefer a strong leader “who does not have to bother with parliament and elections”. A third want the army in charge. Polls show similar trends across much of the West.

As is typical in the decades following a global financial crash — as the world did in 2009 — politics lurched to radical answers and autocrats thrived. Orban. Duterte. Milleu. And now Trump, again.

If key Western fundamentals — i.e. democracy good — are being torn down, one of the CPC’s biggest roadblocks vaporizes.

With Europe browbeaten and pre-occupied by war, and a rusting US in full self-sabotage mode, China smells blood. “Profound changes unseen for a century,” as the CPC often quotes these days.

Yet, China has learned its lessons from last time.

I’d be greatly surprised if we see too many hectoring commentaries, MoFA lectures, or Chinese ambassadors starting online flame wars.

Instead, a drip, drip, drip of quiet self-confidence; a theme of advancement, of China’s “modern socialist society in all respects”; big bridges and twirling minorities; a projection China’s international friendships focusing on reliable partners. Samoa, Honduras, Solomon Islands — they don’t have to be big: they all count equally in the UN.

Content doesn’t need to be the whole truth. The millions of rural and working poor can be shuffled out of sight. Protests over lost pensions, or working conditions censored. It just needs to be true enough to lift spirits at home, and put lingering doubts in oversea minds.

Is it a mask? Projection? Tacit admission of a weakened state? Or a quell, before the Taiwan storm?

Honestly, I don’t think it matters. As the alternative is fire and fury, and the world has enough of that. If the CPC are prioritising positivity and quiet diplomacy, it should be welcomed.

There’s nothing the CPC crave more than acceptance. Good behaviour should be rewarded. And a spurned China, is a dangerous China.