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Videos of influencers documenting their travels have been widely promoted in Chinese media, if they tell a safe story.
By Vivian Wang
Report from Beijing
Spend some time scrolling through YouTube or Instagram and you’ll possibly notice a new and burgeoning genre: vlogging in China.
There is an American who made a four-hour “vlog” about eating dumplings in Shanghai. There is the German traveler who marvels at how Chinese high-speed trains temporarily accelerate. There is a British couple admiring the colorful classic clothing in the western region of Xinjiang. All of them have thousands of visits.
The videos are even more popular on Chinese social media. YouTube and Instagram are banned in China, but Chinese users have discovered tactics to share them on Chinese sites and attract avid followers. The bloggers were interviewed through Chinese state media and their reports were promoted with trending hashtags such as “Foreign tourists have our spokespersons on the Internet. “
The appearance of these videos reflects the return of foreign travelers to China after the country was isolated for three years by the Covid pandemic. The government has implemented a number of visa-free policies to attract more tourists. Travel bloggers jumped at the chance to delight in a country to which they had limited access in the past.
But for China, videos do more than help breathe life into its economy. This is an opportunity for Beijing to retaliate against what it calls anti-China rhetoric in the West. In recent years, China has encouraged its citizens to treat foreigners as potential spies. ; expanded its surveillance state; and expelled or arrested Chinese and foreign media journalists. But he cites unconcern videos as evidence (from Westerners) that complaints about such problems are fabricated.
“Foreign audiences realize that through these videos they see a real and emerging China, different from the dominant discourse in the West,” reads an article in the Global Times, a tabloid controlled by the Communist Party.
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