-by International Campaign for Tibet 

In the latest escalation of China’s efforts to control the narrative on Tibet, a new propaganda center called the “Tibet International Communication Center” was launched in Lhasa on September 2, 2024. This development marks a significant step in China’s ongoing campaign to reshape international public opinion on Tibet.

The establishment of the Tibet International Communication Center is another step in the incremental growth of China’s propaganda on Tibet as previously analyzed in the International Campaign for Tibet’s (ICT) report, China’s external propaganda on Tibet: Erasing Tibet to ‘tell a good Chinese story,’ released early this year. ICT expects further escalation by China in the future in an attempt to dominate the global conversation with China’s propagandistic narrative and storytelling.

Telling China’s story

The latest propaganda center was established during the “Roundtable Meeting on Building an Effective International Communication System for Tibet,” which was jointly organized by the Propaganda Department of the Tibet Autonomous Region Party Committee and the China Foreign Language Bureau. This center is an outcome of the group study session of the Political Bureau of the CCP Central Committee in May 2021. The immediate outcome of the Politburo CCP Central Committee appears to be the party-state’s push to replace the internationally recognized country name “Tibet” with the sinicized term “Xizang” in global conversation. This renaming policy, discreetly initiated in fall 2021 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, aligns with CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping’s decade-old vision to “tell a good Chinese story” on the global stage.

Following the establishment of the new propaganda center, the CCP’s top leader in the Tibet Autonomous Region emphasized increased external propaganda on Tibet. The state media Tibet Daily reported TAR Party Secretary Wang Junzheng stressing on the ideological guidance in stating that “external propaganda is an important part of the cause of the Party and the country. We must adhere to the guidance of Xi Jinping’s cultural thought, thoroughly implement General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important expositions on external propaganda, fully and accurately implement General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important instructions on Tibet work and the Party’s Tibet governance strategy in the new era.” Specific instructions were also transmitted to the CCP committees at all levels to prioritize the external propaganda work. Wang instructed resource integration and optimization of the external propaganda system and mechanisms to “build a foreign discourse system and narrative system related to Tibet” in accordance with the CCP central leadership’s order. Click here to read more.