Amid the spread of the Omicron virus which is one of the variants of the Wuhan virus, China has hired an army of western social media influencers who have hundreds of thousands of followers on TikTok, Instagram, or Twitch to spread positive stories about China as it hosts the Winter Olympics.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is under a lot of pressure as there is an international backlash against the Beijing Games as many Western countries have announced diplomatic boycotts, and this has prompted Xi Jinping to hire western PR professionals to spread an alternative narrative through social media.
Last month, President Joe Biden announced his administration would stage a diplomatic boycott of the Winter Olympics, and several US allies, including the UK and Australia, joined to show solidarity with the Uyghur Muslims who are under constant threat by the Chinese government and many are languishing in concentration camps.
According to Open Secrets, an organisation based in Washington DC that tracks money in American politics, for more than a decade, China has been spending a lot of money overseas messaging efforts through state-sponsored media outlets.
It is estimated that China spent nearly $60 million in the US in 2020 and the funding included money for the state broadcaster CCTV’s US branch and the China Daily newspaper.
Some of the fortune 500 companies like Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Intel, and other companies like Airbnb and Visa, are among the 13 top partners of the forthcoming Games. Other sponsors include Japanese carmaker Toyota, German financial services firm Allianz, and French information technology consultancy Atos.
In November, human rights organisations accused western companies who are sponsors of such events “squandering the opportunity” to pressure China to address its “appalling human rights record”.
“Businesses need to know that under the UN guiding principles on business and human rights, they have a responsibility to identity and mitigate human rights risks, and that helping [the] Chinese government’s reputation laundering is risking being complicit in those abuses,” said Wang Yaqiu, a senior researcher on China at Human Rights Watch.
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