The Thank You That Never Was: China’s Covid-19 Propaganda in Italy

Clizia Sala is a reporter and broadcast journalist currently based in London, who specializes in Chinese politics. In a guest article for IranWire as part of our ongoing disinformation series, she analyses Chinese media operations and soft power in Italy in the early weeks of the coronavirus pandemic.   

 

 

Thank You, China!

In mid-March, at the height of the coronavirus outbreak in Italy, a video of the country in lockdown circulated on social media. Right at the end, a voice can be heard thanking the Chinese for donating medical aids to Italy: “Thank you, China!”

From a balcony in Rome, the camera pans over high-rise residential buildings, chock-full of residents told to stay at home because of Covid-19. In the background, the Chinese national anthem is playing.

The problem is that this never happened. The original video had shown Italians cheering for healthcare personnel at a flash mob that took place in Rome on March 14th.

The doctored version of the video was first published and shared by Chinese Twitter accounts, including that of Hua Chunying, spokeswoman for the Chinese embassy in Rome. “With the Chinese anthem playing out in Rome,” she wrote, “Italians chanted, ‘Grazie, Cina!’. In this community with a shared future, we share in weal and woe together.”

The video was later transmitted to the masses via China Global Television Network’s Facebook page. It was even reposted by Zhao Lijian, the Peoples Republic’s current deputy director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

As an unprecedented public health crisis engulfed Italy, Chinese state-sponsored media and diplomats went into overdrive, striving to counter the narrative that China had been responsible for the spread of the virus in Europe and across the globe. But how successful have they been in Italy?

 

An Opportunity Seized

An analysis of key dates indicates that China’s Covid-19 media “strategy” in Italy seems to have been more the product of chance than a premeditated effort.

Italy was the first European country to be badly hit by coronavirus. By March 17, some 27,980 cases and 2,158 deaths had been reported in the country. The known death toll has now reached more than 35,000. China is an important business partner for Italy and with this in mind, as well as China’s prior experience in containing the virus, it became Italy’s country of choice for the purchase of emergency medical equipment during the pandemic.

The first consignment of medical gear was not supposed to be a donation but a paid-for order. Despite this, on March 12, the Chinese Red Cross sent a cargo plane loaded with gifted medical equipment and medical personnel to Italy.

It was with this move that China’s Covid-19 public relations policy was born. After Italy’s first purchase and the subsequent donation by the Chinese Red Cross, China realized it could use both its doctors’ expertise and governance practices gained during the first wave of the pandemic as a means of exerting of soft power abroad.

In effect, this turned Italy into a testing ground for China’s efforts to reposition itself not as the source of a global pandemic, but as a world champion of solidarity.

“The campaign was undoubtedly useful in breaking the association between China and the virus”, says Francesca Ghiretti, a researcher at the Rome-based Institute of International Affairs (IAI). “Let’s not forget that during the very first months of the pandemic the reactions of Italians towards Asian communities and businesses in general was extremely negative. It was quite visceral.”  At first, there were several reports of racist attacks directed at Asian communities in the country. Some Italians had gone so far as to call for a boycott of businesses run by people of Asian ethnicity.

This all changed after China’s gifted medical aid landed on Italian soil. “China’s act of ‘generosity’ undoubtedly overturned the initial perception. The idea that our current situation stems from China doesn’t exist anymore”, says Francesca Ghiretti. Images of the cargo’s arrival at Rome’s Fiumicino Airport received extensive media coverage, while Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio live-streamed the event.

By comparison the paid-for shipment to Italy, which had cost almost €210 million, barely made a ripple in the Italian media. Then, several more shipments of medical aid came to Italy in the following weeks: some containing donated supplies, some goods that Italy had purchased. But there is no official record of the donations-orders ratio during these crucial few weeks.

 

Spreading the Word on Social Media

An important part of China’s Covid-19 media strategy has been playing up the scale and importance of these donations on social media. A study by the IAI  shows that the Chinese embassy in Italy’s Twitter activity noticeably intensified during this period, going from an average of 2.35 posts per day in December 2019 to 3.74 in March 2020. Twitter users responded positively, with likes and shares increasing public engagement with posts from this account.

Amplifying the news around these donations has not been the only form of Chinese propaganda deployed in Italy during Covid-19. Active disinformation has played a part, too. Automated social media accounts, colloquially known as “bots”, have been used to spread pro-China content at the height of the COVID-19 crisis in Italy. These can be considered a type of disinformation because they give a false idea of the level and uniformity of public support for Chinese policy.

An intelligence report by the Italian data lab Alkemy notes that between March 11 and 23, automated accounts published 46.3 percent, or almost half, of all posts linked to the hashtag #forzacinaeitalia (“Italy and China go”), together with 37.1 percent of posts linked to the hashtag #graziecina (“Thank you China”).

At the core of this narrative is the idea of solidarity between the two countries and the concept that the world’s nations are “all in this together” – and that amid this togetherness, China is at the forefront of a selfless crusade fostering international cooperation and solidarity.

 

EU Reticence Gives More Power to China

China’s PR campaigns were sown on fertile ground in Italy due to the European Union’s initially erratic support for the country during Covid-19. The EU’s response to the pandemic had been negligible after the first cases of coronavirus were confirmed in China, and on March 6, Germany and France had blocked the export of surgical masks and medical equipment to other EU member states. Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte had to overcome the hostility of Germany and the Netherlands before reaching an agreement on financial aids and on a bond purchase programme that would push down Italy’s borrowing costs. It was therefore easy for China to assert it had been more supportive towards Italy than its neighbouring EU countries during the crisis.

This in turn fuelled anti-European feeling among the Italian public, which manifested online in March with social media hashtags such as #Italexit: calling for Italy to quiet the EU. This, too, improved Beijing’s chances of benefiting from an incipient European rift.

 

Has Any of This Worked?

The question is: has China’s public diplomacy worked in Italy? Research published in May by IAI and the University of Siena indicates that the answer is yes – or at least, partially: “China is seen as successful both in the way it has managed the crisis and in the way it has shown solidarity towards Italy, but at the same time it’s pointed to as the main culprit of the pandemic itself".

One element of the narrative that seems to have brought many Italians onside is Beijing’s apparent success in dealing with the domestic spread of the virus. Sixty-three percent of Italians believe China should be viewed as exemplary for the way it managed the pandemic.

In times of crisis, Francesca Geretti says, believing in the organisation or person that shows the most strength and resolution is “embedded in the DNA of Italians”. “This is not the first time,” she adds, “that we responded to a critical situation by denying the efficiency of the  democratic system. An example is the migrant crisis, where far-right politician Matteo Salvini gained the approval of a lot of people because he showed he was in control”.  For this reason, Beijing’s resolve to contain the spread of the virus through an instant, comprehensive lockdown promoted a positive image of the centralised Chinese regime in Italy.

The donations triggered a major shift in public opinion. The vast majority of Italians surveyed, a total of 77 percent, said they appreciated the way China had showed solidarity with Italy through these deliveries. In addition, the study found, 73 percent of Italians have developed “a certain disenchantment towards liberal democracies, which are seen as unable and unqualified to manage great emergencies”.

Nevertheless, more than half of the Italians surveyed – a total of 52 percent – also believed that the deliveries of medical aid to Italy had aimed to enhance China’s political influence. The language that the Chinese embassy in Rome used to publicize the donations on social media was overtly propagandistic, and it may be that Italians picked up on this.

 

A Nonexistent Political Response

Italy’s political response to Chinese support has been consistent with the allegiances it already had in place before the pandemic. Last year, Italy made headlines for becoming the first G7 country to sign up to the China’s controversial global infrastructure investment project, known as the Belt and Road Initiative. Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio has also publicly endorsed the partnership, which is expected to pay the country millions of euros in dividends.

Curiously, during the coronavirus crisis, Chinese state-owned enterprises such as China Merchants Port Holdings, China Communication Construction Company (CCCC) and the China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO) made substantial donations to dock workers in the port of Trieste and to the administration of the city of Genoa. These two cities are at the centre of the bold infrastructure projects at the heart of the BRI.

Di Maio, a Eurosceptic, has been keen to show that positive interactions between China and Italy are a direct consequence of Italy’s signing up to a Memorandum of Understanding on the BRI. Italian politicians are by no means unanimous on this, however, and even Di Maio’s allies in the government have warned him against becoming too close to on China.

 

A Trigger for Media Debate

As it stands, the Italian government has made no move to mitigate China’s public narratives around Covid-19. But the Italian media has, with some outlets such as the centrist newspaper Il Foglio offering in-depth analysis of key dates and events.  Headlines published on this newspaper’s website from  March 12 onwards included “Those coming from China are not medical aids to fight the virus, it’s all stuff we buy” and “To China, humanitarian aid serves to open up diplomatic channels”.

The average Italian has precious little knowledge of China or the Chinese Communist Party. “Few perceive it as a superpower that could take the reins of the global economy. To many, it is more of a faraway, fascinating country,” says Francesca Ghiretti.

For this reason, most Italian media have in the past presented China largely in terms of economic opportunity, and have only seriously covered two principal China-related events in the past year: Italy’s sign-up to the BRI and the donation of medical equipment. But this is rapidly changing now. China’s recent propaganda campaign in Italy has fast-tracked the media debate surrounding China’s overseas influence, and the preliminary results of a new study by the IAI indicate that the number of Italian newspapers covering China, and hiring experts on China-related issues, has increased exponentially in the past few months.

Italian media organizations appear to have realised China needs to occupy a central position in domestic public debate. “As the quality of the debate regarding the relationship between Italy and China rises,” says Ghiretti, “things will change. More and more news outlets are covering China in a deeper way.” And one might hope, this more in-depth contextual analysis by the Italian media will in turn raise awareness and inform the Italian public about the Chinese propaganda impacting on their lives.

 

 

Read other articles in this series:

Missing Data, Mud-Slinging and “Miracle Cures”: Why Disinformation Is Bad For Your Health

China's Campaign to Protect President Xi against Coronavirus Criticism

Chinese Embassies Work Overtime to Diffuse International Fury Over Coronavirus

Beijing's New "Factsheet" Claims to Debunk Myths on Covid-19 and Hong Kong

Fresh Evidence Devastates China's Claim that Wuhan Lockdown was Prompt