Located outside Washington, D.C.,
WCRW radio made no mention of China’s provocative island project.
Instead, an analyst explained that tensions in the region were due to
unnamed “external forces” trying “to insert themselves into this part of
the world using false claims.”
Behind WCRW’s
coverage is a fact that’s never broadcast: The Chinese government
controls much of what airs on the station, which can be heard on Capitol
Hill and at the White House.
WCRW is just one
of a growing number of stations across the world through which Beijing
is broadcasting China-friendly news and programming.
A
Reuters investigation spanning four continents has identified at least
33 radio stations in 14 countries that are part of a global radio web
structured in a way that obscures its majority shareholder: state-run
China Radio International, or CRI.
Many of
these stations primarily broadcast content created or supplied by CRI or
by media companies it controls in the United States, Australia and
Europe. Three Chinese expatriate businessmen, who are CRI’s local
partners, run the companies and in some cases own a stake in the
stations. The network reaches from Finland to Nepal to Australia, and
from Philadelphia to San Francisco.
At WCRW,
Beijing holds a direct financial interest in the Washington station’s
broadcasts. Corporate records in the United States and China show a
Beijing-based subsidiary of the Chinese state-owned radio broadcaster
owns 60 percent of an American company that leases almost all of the
station’s airtime.
China has a number of
state-run media properties, such as the Xinhua news agency, that are
well-known around the world. But American officials charged with
monitoring foreign media ownership and propaganda said they were unaware
of the Chinese-controlled radio operation inside the United States
until contacted by Reuters. A half-dozen former senior U.S. officials
said federal authorities should investigate whether the arrangement
violates laws governing foreign media and agents in the United States.
"SERIOUS INQUIRY"
A
U.S. law enforced by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)
prohibits foreign governments or their representatives from holding a
radio license for a U.S. broadcast station. Under the Communications
Act, foreign individuals, governments and corporations are permitted to
hold up to 20 percent ownership directly in a station and up to 25
percent in the U.S. parent corporation of a station.
CRI
itself doesn’t hold ownership stakes in U.S. stations, but it does have
a majority share via a subsidiary in the company that leases WCRW in
Washington and a Philadelphia station with a similarly high-powered
signal.
Said former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt:
“If there were allegations made about de facto Chinese government
ownership of radio stations, then I’m sure the FCC would investigate.”
U.S.
law also requires anyone inside the United States seeking to influence
American policy or public opinion on behalf of a foreign government or
group to register with the Department of Justice. Public records show
that CRI’s U.S. Chinese-American business partner and his companies
haven’t registered as foreign agents under the law, called the Foreign
Agents Registration Act, or FARA.
“I would make
a serious inquiry under FARA into a company rebroadcasting Chinese
government propaganda inside the United States without revealing that it
is acting on behalf of, or it’s owned or controlled by China,” said
D.E. “Ed” Wilson Jr., a former senior White House and Treasury
Department official.
CRI headquarters in
Beijing and the Chinese embassy in Washington declined to make officials
available for interviews or to comment on the findings of this article.
Justice Department national security spokesman Marc Raimondi and FCC spokesman Neil Grace declined to comment.
Other
officials at the FCC said the agency receives so many license
applications that it only launches a probe if it receives a complaint.
People familiar with the matter said no such complaint has been lodged
with the FCC about the CRI-backed network in the United States.
BUILDING “SOFT POWER”
Chinese
President Xi Jinping, who has chafed at a world order he sees as
dominated by the United States and its allies, is aware that China
struggles to project its views in the international arena.
“We
should increase China’s soft power, give a good Chinese narrative and
better communicate China’s message to the world,” Xi said in a policy
address in November last year, according to Xinhua.
CRI
head Wang Gengnian has described Beijing’s messaging effort as the
“borrowed boat” strategy - using existing media outlets in foreign
nations to carry Chinese propaganda.
The 33
radio stations backed by CRI broadcast in English, Chinese or local
languages, offering a mix of news, music and cultural programs.
Newscasts are peppered with stories highlighting China’s development,
such as its space program, and its contribution to humanitarian causes,
including earthquake relief in Nepal.
“We are
not the evil empire that some Western media portray us to be,” said a
person close to the Communist Party leadership in Beijing who is
familiar with the CRI network. “Western media reports about China are
too negative. We just want to improve our international image. It’s
self-protection.”
In some ways, the CRI-backed
radio stations fulfill a similar advocacy role to that of the U.S.-run
Voice of America. But there is a fundamental difference: VOA openly
publishes the fact that it receives U.S. government funding. CRI is
using front companies that cloak its role.
A
few of the programs broadcast in the United States cite reports from
CRI, but most don’t. One program, The Beijing Hour, says it is “brought
to you by China Radio International.”
Some
shows are slick, others lack polish. While many segments are
indistinguishable from mainstream American radio shows, some include
announcers speaking English with noticeable Chinese accents.
The
production values vary because the broadcasts are appealing to three
distinct audiences: first-generation Chinese immigrants with limited
English skills; second-generation Chinese curious about their ancestral
homeland; and non-Chinese listeners whom Beijing hopes to influence.
One
thing the programs have in common: They generally ignore criticism of
China and steer clear of anything that casts Beijing in a negative
light.
A top-of-the-hour morning newscast on
Oct. 15, broadcast in Washington and other U.S. cities, was identified
only as “City News.” It reported that U.S. officials were concerned
about cyber attacks, including one in which the personal information of
about 20 million American government workers was allegedly stolen. The
broadcast left out a key element: It has been widely reported that U.S.
officials believe China was behind that hack.
Last
year, as thousands of protesters demanding free elections paralyzed
Hong Kong for weeks, the news on CRI-backed stations in the United
States presented China’s point of view. A report the day after the
protests ended did not explain why residents were on the streets and
carried no comments from protest leaders. The demonstrations, a report
said, had “failed without the support of the people in Hong Kong.”
Many of these stations do not run ads and so do not appear to be commercially motivated.
THREE SURROGATES
Around
the world, corporate records show, CRI’s surrogates use the same
business structure. The three Chinese businessmen in partnership with
Beijing have each created a domestic media company that is 60 percent
owned by a Beijing-based group called Guoguang Century Media
Consultancy. Guoguang, in turn, is wholly owned by a subsidiary of CRI,
according to Chinese company filings.
The three companies span the globe:
•
In Europe, GBTimes of Tampere, Finland, has an ownership stake in or
provides content to at least nine stations, according to interviews and
an examination of company filings.
• In
Asia-Pacific, Global CAMG Media Group of Melbourne, Australia, has an
ownership stake in or supplies programming to at least eight stations,
according to corporate records.
• And in North
America, G&E Studio Inc, near Los Angeles, California, broadcasts
content nearly full time on at least 15 U.S. stations. A station in
Vancouver also broadcasts G&E content. In addition to distributing
CRI programming, G&E produces and distributes original
Beijing-friendly shows from its California studios.
In
a Sept. 16 interview at his offices near Los Angeles, G&E president
and CEO James Su confirmed that CRI subsidiary Guoguang Century Media
holds a majority stake in his company and that he has a contract with
the Chinese broadcaster. He said that a non-disclosure agreement bars
him from divulging details.
Su said he
complies with U.S. laws. G&E doesn’t own stations, but rather leases
the airtime on them. “It’s like a management company that manages a
condominium,” he said.
Su added that he is a
businessman, not an agent for China. “Our U.S. audience and our U.S.
public has the choice,” Su said. “They can choose to listen or not
listen. I think this is an American value.”
GBTimes
CEO Zhao Yinong, who spearheads the European arm of the expatriate
radio operation, confirmed that he receives several million euros a year
from CRI. In an interview in Beijing, Zhao said he was "not interested
in creating a false China" and he had “nothing to hide.”
Tommy
Jiang, the head of CAMG, the Australian-based company that owns and
operates stations in the Asia-Pacific region, declined to comment.
BORN IN A CAVE
CRI
has grown remarkably since its founding in 1941. According to its
English-language website, its first broadcast was aired from a cave, and
the news reader had to frighten away wolves with a flashlight. Today,
CRI says it broadcasts worldwide in more than 60 languages and Chinese
dialects.
CRI content is carefully scripted,
with the treatment of sensitive topics such as the banned Falun Gong
spiritual group adhering strictly to the government line. Those
restrictions might make China’s soft-power push an uphill battle with
audiences in places like Houston, Rome or Auckland.
A staff member works on the computer inside the studio of Capital FM 92.4 in Kathmandu September 22, 2014.Navesh Chitrakar
A staff member works on the computer inside the studio of Capital FM 92.4 in Kathmandu September 22, 2014.Navesh Chitrakar
But
CRI does have something to offer station owners. Since 2010, CRI’s
broadcast partner in the United States has struck deals that bailed out
struggling community radio stations, either by purchasing them outright
or paying tens of thousands of dollars a month to lease virtually all
their airtime. The latter is known as “time-brokering” and is the method
G&E used to take to the air in Washington.
The
195-foot towers broadcasting Beijing’s agenda throughout the Washington
region are located in suburban Loudoun County, Virginia, near Dulles
International Airport. They pump out a 50,000-watt signal, the maximum
for an AM station in the United States.
The
towers went live in 2011. In the previous five decades, before the
Chinese got involved, the station was known as WAGE, and it used smaller
equipment and broadcast mostly local news and talk.
At
just 5,000 watts, the signal didn’t carry far. This didn’t matter much
until the 1990s, when Loudoun County boomed into a bedroom community for
Washington. Commuters would lose the signal halfway to the capital.
In
2005, an American company called Potomac Radio LLC purchased the
station and added some nationally syndicated programming. Potomac Radio
president Alan Pendleton said his company had a history of leasing time
to ethnic programmers, including an hour a day to CRI on another
station. Revenue at WAGE continued to fall, however, and in 2009, it
went off the air.
“It was a painful, painful experience,” said Pendleton. “We were losing millions of dollars a year down the drain.”
LOUDOUN COUNTY'S "LAST HOPE"
Saying
they hoped to resurrect the station, other Potomac Radio executives
asked Loudoun County in 2009 for permission to erect three broadcast
towers on land owned by a county utility, records show. The new towers
would boost the station’s signal tenfold to 50,000 watts, reaching into
Washington.
In their application, Potomac
Radio executives argued that the new towers offered the “last hope to
retain Loudoun County’s only” radio station. The paperwork made no
mention of plans to lease airtime to Su and CRI.
Potomac
Radio also invoked the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a day when the
station provided “critical information to county businesses and parents”
as mobile phone service became overloaded. The new towers would
contribute to public safety, proponents said.
The
county Board of Supervisors approved the towers. In the days before the
station came back on air in April 2011, Potomac Radio sought FCC
permission to change the name to WCRW.
Asked
about the initials, Pendleton confirmed that they stand for China Radio
Washington. The change was his idea, not CRI’s, he said.
Loudoun
County officials were surprised when the amped-up station returned as
WCRW and began broadcasting G&E and CRI content about China.
“It
was all very deceptive,” said Kelly Burk, a county supervisor at the
time. “They presented it as all about being about local radio, and never
let on what they were really up to.”
Potomac
Radio’s Pendleton said there was no deception. His company was
approached by CRI several months after the county approved the towers,
he said.
Pendleton
said he didn’t know that G&E was 60 percent owned by a subsidiary
of the Chinese government until Reuters informed him. But the
arrangement complies with FCC law, he said, because G&E leases the
airwaves instead of owning the station.
In any
event, he said, CRI is open about its goals: to present a window into
Chinese culture and offer Chinese points of view on international
affairs.
“If you listen to other
state-sponsored broadcasters,” especially Russia’s, “they’re really
insidious,” Pendleton said. “CRI’s not like that at all.”
Pendleton
said he has no input in WCRW content: He simply rebroadcasts whatever
programs arrive from CRI’s man in America, G&E founder James Su.
CHINA’S “PROXY”
James
Yantao Su was born in Shanghai in 1970, the year China launched its
first satellite. He moved to the United States in 1989, he said,
ultimately settling in West Covina, a suburb of Los Angeles, and became a
U.S. citizen.
By the early 2000s, Su was a
moderately successful media entrepreneur. But after his 2009 deal to
create G&E, in which the Chinese state-owned subsidiary has a
majority stake, his fortunes rose.
Today, the
44-year-old owns or co-owns real estate and radio stations worth more
than $15 million, according to a Reuters analysis of U.S. corporate,
property, tax and FCC records. His projects include English and
Chinese-language stations, a magazine, a newspaper, four apartment
buildings, condos at the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, a film
festival and a charity that last year donated $230,000 to an orphanage
in China.
Two of his primary companies are
G&E Studio and EDI Media Inc. G&E dedicated a page on its
website to showcase CRI as a "close” partner, but it recently deleted
the page after Reuters made inquiries. EDI’s site says it has become
“China’s outward media and advertising proxy” in the United States.
In 2013, the Chinese government presented Su with a special contribution award at a media event for Chinese broadcasters.
Other
ties are not as visible: The key disclosure that G&E is 60 percent
owned by Guoguang Century - the Beijing firm that’s 100 percent owned by
CRI - is contained in a footnote in a lengthy FCC filing made on behalf
of another Su company, Golden City Broadcast, LLC.
Su
declined to discuss his business career in detail. An early highlight,
though, was a speech he gave in 2003, when he was in his early thirties.
Covered by China’s state-run media, the
speech laid out Su’s vision for a business that could be profitable and
also help China project its message in the United States. The business
would need to be structured to comply with U.S. ownership laws and would
“endorse China’s ideology,” Su was quoted as saying.
In
the same speech, he spoke of his fellow expats’ affinity for China.
“The sense of belonging to China among countrymen residing abroad and
their endorsement of China’s current policies grow with each day,” Su
said, according to Xinhua.
In 2008, Su gave an address in which he criticized U.S. media for focusing their China coverage on issues such as human rights.
The
media were misleading “the American masses’ objective understanding of
China, even engendering hostile emotions,” Su said, according to a China
National Radio report.
It was in 2009 that Su’s vision really began to take shape. That year, records show, Su created G&E Studio. "UNFILTERED REAL NEWS"
G&E
now broadcasts in English and Chinese on at least 15 U.S. stations,
including Salt Lake City, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Houston, Honolulu and
Portland, Oregon.
The content is largely the same on each station, produced either by CRI from Beijing or by G&E from California.
A
typical hour on most stations begins with a short newscast that can
toggle between China news and stories about violent crimes in the United
States. Besides the overtly political coverage, topics range from
global currency fluctuations and Chinese trade missions to celebrity
wardrobe analysis and modern parenting challenges.
While
Su owns a minority share of G&E, he has structured his radio
station holdings in various ways. According to the most recent FCC
records, he is the majority owner of at least six stations, such as the
one in Atlanta, which he purchased for $2.1 million in 2013.
In
other cases he leases airtime. In Washington, for instance, he leases
virtually all the time on WCRW for more than $720,000 a year through
G&E. A Philadelphia station is leased under a similar arrangement
for at least $600,000 a year.
A spokeswoman for Su said Reuters’ description of the extent of his network is “generally correct.”
Su
declined to describe how he makes money when most of the U.S. stations
air virtually no commercials. He also declined to say how he got the
money to finance his radio leases and acquisitions.
His
stations, Su said, offer the American public an alternative viewpoint
on Chinese culture and politics. He has “no way to control” what CRI
broadcasts on the stations, he said, nor is he part of any plan to
spread Chinese propaganda.
“We are only telling the unfiltered real news to our audience,” he said.
On
Oct. 29, WCRW carried a program called “The Hourly News.” Among the top
stories: Senior Chinese and U.S. naval commanders planned to speak by
video after a U.S. Navy ship passed close by China’s new artificial
islands in the South China Sea.
Washington
and its allies see the island-building program as a ploy to grab control
of strategic sea lanes, and the Navy sail-by was meant to counter
China’s territorial claims.
WCRW omitted that side of the story.
The admirals are holding the talks, the announcer said, “amid the tension the U.S. created this week.” 
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