China’s influence over Latin American media and its journalists is expanding. To promote its interests and shape public opinion, China employs various strategies to spread its narrative and suppress criticism.
In April, Chinese publishing group Caixin Media sponsored a summit organized by Brazilian economic newspaper Valor in Shanghai, Valor Brasil-China 2025, illustrating how Beijing uses this type of journalistic initiative to advance its political and economic agenda. According to Valor, the forum was not only “an immersion into economic issues but also proved to be a conducive environment for expanding existing agreements and new opportunities.” During the meeting, Caixin Media also highlighted the possibility of new collaborations with Brazilian media outlets.
China also funds training programs for Latin American journalists in China. These courses often include visits to locations strategically important to China’s interests, alongside tourist sites. The purpose of these trips is to exert greater control over how China is portrayed in the media and to encourage favorable narratives. narratives. This strategy was evident in April, with an exchange program in which 247 journalists from 23 Latin American and Caribbean countries traveled to China and toured, among other sites, the Shaolin Temple and BYD’s Zhengzhou plant in Henan province, leading to the publication of pro-China articles and videos.
According to Washington-based think tank Freedom House, the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), has established partnerships with newspapers in Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, and Brazil. In 2024, the People’s Daily organized the 2024 China-Latin America and Caribbean Media Cooperation Forum in Rio de Janeiro. Events like this serve Beijing to co-opt local media and journalists and to portray China as a reliable partner for the region’s economic development.
“For Beijing, the role of the media is to support and promote constructive bilateral relations. This is often done in the context of ‘friendship,’ one of the Chinese Communist Party’s favorite words. However, this friendship involves pandering to China’s interests and also avoiding criticism of its actions,” David Bandurski, executive director of the China Media Project, an independent research center based in the United States specializing in the study of the Chinese media landscape, told Diálogo.
Events such as the one in Rio de Janeiro are often accompanied by Chinese diplomatic communications, which amplify issues of interest to Beijing on social media. On the same days as the journalism forum in Rio de Janeiro, the Chinese Embassy in Brazil posted via X photos of the ongoing meeting in Beijing with Brazilian politicians “to discuss the deepening of strategic cooperation between the two countries,” it said.
Recently, Chinese Consul in Rio de Janeiro Tian Min also used the pages of Brazilian newspaper Monitor Mercantil, one of the local organizers of the 2024 China-Latin America and Caribbean Media Cooperation Forum, for a long editorial against tariffs. According to a recent report by Graphika, a New York-based disinformation analysis center, China has also mounted a widespread spamouflage campaign with videos and cartoons about tariffs. Spamouflage is a tactic Beijing uses through networks of fake social media or hijacked accounts to amplify pro-China propaganda across multiple platforms.
Newspaper collaboration
In Latin America, Beijing is also reinforcing its so-called “borrow a boat to go out to sea” strategy, that is the dissemination of government content in foreign media, both openly and covertly. In November 2024, two Peruvian media outlets, América TV and daily El Comercio, signed a cooperation agreement with China Media Group (CMG), the main Chinese state media group, whose Latin American subsidiary is based in Brazil. The agreement involves the joint production of content for audiences in both countries.
“One of the main risks is the long-term impact on the integrity of media coverage of China and its role in the region. Beijing’s unilateral involvement with the media, during which professional values and truth are set aside in favor of simple reassuring exchanges that highlight only the positive without any nuance, can be corrosive,” says Bandurski. According to the expert, China’s influence “helps neutralize local media on issues related to Beijing and devalues professional journalistic values more broadly, conveying the message that the relationship with the media is purely transactional.”
Disinformation strategy
Beijing also uses strategies to conceal its influence. According to an investigation by the New York Times (NYT), the CCP is behind the international network of media outlets and research centers run by Indian-born businessman Neville Roy Singham, who lives in Shanghai. Its network, the NYT says, funds, among others, the Brazilian news site Brasil de Fato, which features articles with headlines praising China, such as “China fights desertification to ensure food security and air quality” and “China has grown and eradicated poverty because it has done the opposite of what neoliberals preach.”
The Paperwall campaign, exposed by Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, Canada, also brought to light a covert digital influence operation attributed to the Chinese public relations company Shenzhen Haimai Yunxiang Media Co., also known as Haimai. Spanning more than 30 nations in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, this network of at least 123 websites mimics local newspapers to promote a pro-Beijing narrative. This operation includes attacks against CCP critics, camouflaging the content with numerous commercial press releases to make it harder for readers to discern genuine news from disinformation.
Chinese influencers who speak Spanish or Portuguese are also part of Beijing’s propaganda machine. They talk about their life in Latin America or praise Chinese life and, in many cases, teach the language. Some Latin American influencers also often share these posts.
According to Washington-based Digital Democracy Institute of the Americas (DDIA), “Latin American profiles such as Filosóraptor recently shared a viral campaign against U.S. tariffs.” On TikTok, self-proclaimed Chinese entrepreneurs falsely show how many luxury items sold by famous global brands are produced in China at very low costs, as yet another example of disinformation serving Beijing’s economic agenda.
