The project will research the CCP’s and the PRC’s relations with foreign traditional and new media in the German speaking European region in order to disseminate CCP/PRC positions and favorable messages. The project also analyzes the current structure,  with a focus on the (external) propaganda (publicity) system and its recent restructuring. Ultimately, this subproject aims to disentangle the channels of information going from China to Europe. To take the recent shifts of the propaganda system into account, the time period analyzed will range from the 19th Party Congress in October 2017 (including a five-year program on the revision of central party regulation released in 2018, which prioritizes the promulgation of Rules on Propaganda Work (宣传工作条例)) to the 20th Party Congress in October-November 2022.

To understand how the PRC’s communication apparatus engages European media, the subproject’s research questions are: How does the CCP’s external propaganda system and other relevant actors disseminate their messages to European media entities? What are strategies and actors involved in this dissemination processes? To find answers to these questions, the project combines institutional analysis of the relevant (political) party structures in Beijing with media analysis of European media of the German region and  thus attempts to find relevant intermediaries which contribute to message dissemination.