Why Chinese Propaganda Loves Foreign Travel Bloggers

Spend some time browsing YouTube or Instagram and you might come across a growing new genre: China travel vlogs.

There’s the American who made a four-hour “vlogumentary” about eating dumplings in Shanghai. There’s the German traveler marveling at how quickly China’s bullet trains accelerate. There’s a British couple admiring colorful traditional clothing in the far western region of Xinjiang. All have hundreds of thousands of views.

The videos are even more popular on Chinese social media. YouTube and Instagram are banned in China, but Chinese users have found ways to reshare them to Chinese sites, to avid followings. The bloggers have been interviewed by Chinese state media and their experiences promoted with trending hashtags such as “Foreign tourists have become our internet spokespeople.”

The emergence of these videos reflects the return of foreign travelers to China after the country isolated itself for three years during the Covid pandemic. The government has introduced a slew of visa-free policies to attract more tourists. Travel bloggers have leaped at the chance to see a country to which they previously had limited access.

But for China, the videos do more than help stimulate its economy. They are a chance for Beijing to hit back at what it calls an anti-China narrative in the West. China in recent years has encouraged locals to treat foreigners as potential spies; expanded its surveillance state; and expelled or arrested journalists at Chinese and foreign media outlets. But it points to the carefree travel videos as proof — from Westerners — that criticisms about those issues are manufactured.

“Overseas audiences find that through these videos, they see a real, fast-developing China that differs from the one under the mainstream narrative in the West,” said one article in The Global Times, a Communist Party-controlled tabloid.