Title in Chinese: 国务院新闻办公室 (guówùyuàn xīnwén bàngōngshì)
Established: 1991
Headquarters: 225 Chaoyangmennei Avenue, Dongcheng District, Beijing, China
Website: scio.gov.cn (archive 2019)
The Chinese communist system has always accepted that information must be managed and that people must be indoctrinated. In China, “propaganda” is not a derogatory term. Its efforts to maintain its grip on information – both inside and outside China – are highly sophisticated, and the institutional nerve centre of this operation is the State Council Information Office (SCIO), also known as the CCP Central Office of Foreign Propaganda (OFP).
SCIO is an administrative office under the State Council, Beijing’s chief administrative body. It is the main propaganda office of the Chinese government, forming part of a broader propaganda apparatus. SCIO coordinates various propaganda efforts, boasting a large staff, giant budget, and a great deal of bureaucratic clout. Its is a key censor and media watchdog. Located in a Soviet-style building in central Beijing, it is reminiscent of the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s dystopia Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Headquarters of the SCIO in Beijing
A key responsibility is to promote Chinese media nationally and internationally, introduce China’s domestic and foreign policies, economic and social development, history, technology, education, culture and other developments. It controls the access of foreign reporters to interviews inside in China, and guides overseas media to promote the Chinese government’s objectives.
SCIO issues guidelines for China’s external propaganda work, covering exhibitions, publications, media activities, exchange programs, festivals abroad, and other activities. These guidelines constitute an important element of China’s soft-power strategy. It describes its purpose as to “promote communication, understanding and mutual trust and cooperation” between China and other countries through the organisation of news reports, “in order to maintain world peace and stability and play an active and constructive role in the cause of human progress”.
The SCIO defines ideas to be propagated abroad and much of its propaganda targets Taiwan, Hong Kong, and overseas Chinese communities, all high-priority audiences for Beijing. In this respect it is intimately connected with the activity of “qiaowu”, the management of overseas Chinese, as demonstrated by its support of initiatives such as the China Overseas Tibetan Association (COTA).
In 2011 the SCIO announced transfer of its offices which regulated the internet to a new subordinate agency, the State Internet Information Office (SIIO) which would be responsible for regulating the internet in the China. The SIIO is the world’s most centralised censorship office. It is in charge of approving the content circulating on the Internet in China. It also supervises the online dissemination of information coming from the Communist Party and the government. This propaganda may be disseminated by means of official blogs or by the so-called “50 Cent Army”, bloggers who are recruited and paid the sum of 50 cents for every post carrying pro-government information or promoting the Party line. The SIIO also performs a regulatory function, which includes supervising the allocation of IP addresses, registration of websites and Internet Service Providers.
China’s provinces are subject to varying levels Internet censorship. In Tibet, filtering and surveillance software has been installed in all public places and companies with Internet connections. The Party boss in Tibet, Chen Quanguo, announced in November 2013 that the government would do its utmost to ensure that “only its voice is heard”.
