China Uses Intimidation to Silence Journalists in Pursuit of ‘New World Media Order’: Report

The Chinese regime’s campaign to export its state-controlled media model has expanded to include targeting independent journalists abroad, according to a new report.

The report, published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) on Sept. 21, warns of Beijing’s continued push for a “new world media order,” a goal Chinese leader Xi Jinping has pursued since 2013. The Chinese model, which treats media as state mouthpieces, has spread across five continents through its global propaganda apparatus, according to the report.

“China is trying to establish its own norms and its own model of journalism—one in which the media respond only to the regime and are considered a tool of propaganda and control, not an independent pillar of democracy,” Anne Bocandé and Aleksandra Bielakowska, RSF’s editorial director and Asia-Pacific advocacy manager, respectively, said in a statement.

“We hope that this report will shed more light on these tactics and equip our democracies with a shield to protect our information space—before it is too late.”

The new report emphasizes that China has not relied on a single method but adapted its tactics to the media ecosystems of the targeted countries, with the goal of amplifying its narratives and marginalizing “information that runs counter to the regime’s interests.”

Transnational Repression

The transnational repression campaign directed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) involves targeting exiled and foreign journalists and using tactics the report describes as intended to “intimidate, silence, and coerce.”

“Since 2020, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many Chinese journalists have been forced to flee to new countries in search of safety and eventual relocation,” the report reads.

“Even when they are finally abroad, these journalists continue to face pressure and intimidation from the Chinese regime.”

According to the new report, in October 2024, four Chinese law enforcement agents were seen waiting for him at a Thai immigration office, after which he went into hiding when he was unable to renew his visa or retrieve his passport.

The report also quotes Tahir Imin, an exiled Uyghur journalist and founder of online news site Uyghur Post, as saying that he had “endured years of hacking attempts, online threats, and surveillance” because of his reporting.

Moreover, two French journalists were “targeted by a massive, ongoing cyber harassment campaign amplified by Chinese state propaganda outlets” in 2025, according to the report. The journalists had worked on a television program that exposed a French sportswear company’s contracts with a Chinese company accused by the U.S. Congress and the United Nations of using forced Uyghur labor.

“Journalists are now at higher risk of unlawful prosecution and transnational repression in the name of ‘undermining ethnic unity,’ underscoring the lengths to which the CCP will go to justify instilling fear among its opposition,” the report reads.

To address the challenge posed by the CCP’s transnational repression, RSF offered several recommendations, including training law enforcement to recognize its various forms so that crimes against journalists are reported consistently.

New Stage of Information Control 

The increasing popularity of generative artificial intelligence has led to a “new stage in China’s approach to information control and propaganda,” RSF said.

Chinese large language models, including DeepSeek, Ernie, and Qwen, have added “political censorship mechanisms and state-approved narratives into their responses,” it stated, based on its testing.

For instance, when asked why Chinese citizen journalist Zhang Zhan was imprisoned, DeepSeek repeated China’s “official talking points,” the report notes. Zhang, who was first imprisoned in 2020 before being sentenced to another four-year term in 2025, is known for her early reporting on the COVID-19 outbreak in China.

Beijing’s propaganda has infiltrated Western large language models, the report notes, citing joint research from several U.S. universities, including the University of Oregon, Purdue University, and the University of California–San Diego.

The research, published in the journal Nature in May, examined content from Common Crawl, a nonprofit repository that collects webpages from across the internet and whose data has been used to train large language models.

Using a Chinese-language dataset from Common Crawl, the researchers found that 3.1 million documents substantially overlapped with two sources of Chinese state-coordinated media, accounting for 1.64 percent of the dataset, according to an article published by the University of Oregon about the research. Among documents mentioning Chinese political leaders or institutions, the share rose to as high as 23 percent.

Hannah Waight, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and co-leader of the research, told RSF that the findings point to “unintended consequences”—companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic may use what they consider a “neutral repository” of online information for training, only to produce models that generate outputs more aligned with Beijing’s preferred narratives.

As such, Waight said the research results “highlight a worrying possibility” of what authoritarian regimes, particularly China, could do, given their control over Chinese-language information.

“It gives them another reason to coordinate their information environment because, by doing so, they can not only shape what their own citizens perceive, but also shape the models that are now playing an increasingly important role in our broader information environment,” Waight said.

Influence Operation in US

The former mayor’s case “is far from isolated,” RSF said.

Wang Yaqiu, a U.S.-based researcher focusing on human rights and democracy, was quoted in the report as saying that “striking similarities in the editorial lines of some Chinese diaspora outlets” in the United States point to the possibility of broader, behind-the-scenes networks seeking to shape their coverage.

According to the report, Wang Yaqiu’s ongoing research has found that “Beijing has shifted its focus toward local [U.S.] politics, seeking to influence members of the Chinese diaspora to vote as a bloc in support of particular candidates or to ‘steer away voters from others who are pro-Hong Kong or pro-Taiwan.’”

The CCP’s influence operation has also included “heavy investment” in local and community Chinese-language outlets in the United States, including struggling U.S. media, the report notes, quoting U.S.-based Chinese journalist Vivian Wu.

“China spent 30 billion RMB building this network to buy local outlets,” Wu told RSF, noting that independent diaspora media had been “fighting a giant with limited resources.”

The report urges democratic governments to strengthen the financial sustainability of media in exile by providing long-term funding, expediting visas for journalists fleeing persecution, and making it easier for exiled journalists to obtain residence and work permits.

Correction: A previous version of this article misspelled citizen journalist Zhang Zhan’s name. The Epoch Times regrets the error.