China has been a media darling for the past few decades. In the past, it’s been the destination of choice for multinationals looking to set up factories due to its low-cost labor and access to 1.4 billion potential customers. And today, it’s a global manufacturing powerhouse that has a limited dependence on exports and a high dependence on consumption. It’s also a country with an economy bigger than any other country in the world. But all is not well in China. The country is facing numerous challenges from political instability to pollution, from corruption to environmental degradation, from intellectual property theft to financial market volatility, from social tensions to income inequality, from regional tensions to ethnic strife. In this blog post we discuss PR Crisis and Fake News: China’s Lessons to the World.
China’s PR Crisis
China is facing a series of challenges, the most significant of which are domestic in nature. These include an ongoing battle with pollution, corruption, intellectual property theft, financial market volatility, social tensions and ethnic strife. The country also faces an ongoing crisis in public relations that stems from its perceived lack of transparency and its reluctance to address certain issues.
Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have become important avenues for people to express dissent about China’s policies and to criticize the Chinese government’s actions. True or not, these platforms can be used as tools by Western countries seeking to undermine China’s legitimacy through misinformation campaigns. The result is that China has found itself fighting a PR battle on two fronts: domestically against critics at home who question the party’s legitimacy; internationally against efforts by Western countries to undermine China’s credibility by spreading misinformation.
China’s Lessons From The Past
The first lesson China has for the world is how to deal with a public relations crisis.
China’s first and most serious public relations crisis was the Tangshan earthquake in 1976 that killed 240,000 people. The event was so severe that it caused a major shake-up in Chinese society as well as the country’s politics. However, the government managed to dodge all responsibility for this disaster and instead blamed it on natural causes such as an earthquake.
A few years later, another PR crisis reared its head: the death of hundreds of thousands of children from tainted milk powder. This time, China’s central government took responsibility and tried to make amends with its citizens by offering compensation and apologies.
China was able to recover from these PR crises and moved on relatively unscathed thanks to its quick thinking and decisive action. It succeeded where others failed because of one thing: transparency.
Fake News In China
China is not immune to the phenomenon of fake news. In fact, it has emerged as a key battleground for both American and Chinese companies seeking to shape public opinion in China.
In China, the two most prominent Western players are Facebook and Twitter. And they’ve been actively trying to enter the Chinese market for years. Both have failed miserably because of censorship laws that require all online content providers to partner with a domestic company that will censor all content before publication on a website based outside of China
The Future Of Fake News In China
Fake news is a phenomenon that has been prevalent in China. For example, an incident occurred in 2005 where a Chinese man was set on fire by a group of people who doctored photos to make it look as if he had been sexually assaulting two young girls. In 2008, the Chinese government was accused of broadcasting footage from the 2008 Sichuan earthquake that showed the area before the quake and then later broadcast footage from after the quake. One Beijing-based TV station even aired video clips of soldiers firing live rounds at civilians during skirmishes in Tibet.
Conclusion
The recent crisis faced by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the country’s subsequent lessons from the past offers a valuable insight into how other countries could learn from China’s experience in order to better protect themselves from a potential PR crisis.
In the wake of the fake news phenomenon, China has become a leader in the fight against misinformation. In a bid to establish a tighter grip on online content, the Chinese government has taken a strict stance on fake news, increased censorship and increased regulation on social media platforms.
The result, thus far, has been a decreased number of fake news stories popping up on China’s social media platforms.
China’s recent experience proves that when it comes to fake news, it pays to be proactive.
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