Beijing uses digital media to push propaganda to the millennials
The Communist Party in China is making propaganda just for the millennials with millions invested in hip-hop songs, animated videos and TED-style talks. It is looking to promote the party and President Xi Jinping in a way that resonates with China's increasingly digitally savvy millennials and is pushing to master the tools of digital media to do so. It is churning out videos that cast the president as a compassionate champion of Chinese workers, as well as TED-style talks rallying against what it calls Western imperialism and songs warning about the USA's efforts to topple the Beijing government.

“If the government wants to reach this audience they have to use new media to do it,” said Anne-Marie Brady, an expert in Chinese propaganda at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, adding that many young people have grown accustomed to bypassing official censorship.

Mr. Xi is trying to increase confidence in the party as it contends with a slowing economy. The campaign also underscores his determination to shore up China’s image abroad as it moves to capitalize on political discord in the West and win new allies. Top party officials have called on news outlets to embrace digital media to help “spread Chinese voices” around the globe.

Inside the offices of People’s Daily, the party’s flagship newspaper since 1946, editors are turning to video and animation to enliven stories about government policies and appeal to foreign audiences. When Mr. Xi visited the United States in 2015, for example, they produced a video in which foreign students in China offered fawning assessments of his performance. (“Xi Dada, so cute,” an Austrian student said, invoking a popular nickname for Mr. Xi.)

Ye Zhenzhen, 40, who oversees “new media” for the newspaper group and prefers not to use the word propaganda to describe his work, said the videos were aimed at helping foreigners get beyond clichés about political oppression and corruption in China. But he added that finding new ways to talk about China was also a business necessity.