The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) convened a hearing entitled "Discourse Power: The CCP's Strategy to Shape the Global Information Space" on November 30. This session included witnesses such as John Garnaut, senior fellow with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and founder of Garnaut Global; Dr. Miles Yu, senior fellow and director of the China Center at the Hudson Institute; and Yaqiu Wang, Research Director for China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan at Freedom House.
During his opening address, Representative Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), Chairman of the House Select Committee on the CCP, emphasized that General Secretary Xi Jinping sees "your mind" as "the most important battlefield". He underlined that Xi’s CCP is engaged in "cognitive domain warfare," using discourse, news, and social media to craft global perceptions about China.
In her testimony, Wang mentioned her reliance on years of Freedom House's investigation into the CCP's global influence initiatives. She acknowledged that recent polls indicated other countries’ largely unfavorable views of China could correlate with its ongoing repression, including human rights violations in Xinjiang. However, she highlighted that Beijing continues to enhance its disinformation efforts.
Wang noted in her testimony that due to their extensive reach and user engagement capabilities encouraging viral content generation, social media platforms pose considerable risk for CCP influence. She called attention to WeChat (owned by Tencent), X (formerly Twitter), and TikTok as platforms warranting special scrutiny due to their censorship practices and data usage.
Wang suggested Congress should impose transparency requirements on all social media platforms and fund initiatives tracking Beijing's foreign media influence activities. Additionally she recommended holding a hearing examining Tencent's data and content practices relating to U.S.-based WeChat users.
Garnaut testified about democratic governments' efforts to address Beijing's foreign interference operations but raised questions over whether they have managed to keep up with China’s pace. He spotlighted Xi's strategic support for authoritarian states and exporting new surveillance and control technologies.
Dr. Yu categorized the CCP's large-scale overseas propaganda campaigns to achieve discourse dominance into four categories: disinformation, elite capture, coerced self-censorship, and brainwashing. He underscored how social media has made Beijing's disinformation efforts more systemic, sophisticated, and alarmingly effective.
According to Dr. Yu’s testimony, "elite capture," or China's United Front Work campaign involves manipulating language and leveraging American business, government, and academic leaders to echo its messaging. Hollywood and the NBA were cited as primary examples of American institutions practicing self-censorship due to fear of the CCP.
Yu labeled brainwashing as the most extreme form of communist propaganda, which manifests itself in the U.S. through Confucius Institutes in American classrooms, where young people are exposed to the CCP's narratives.
