China’s foreign social media influencers test people’s patience
“I love China!” a Russian social media influencer shouts as he parades in front of the camera wearing traditional Han Chinese clothing.
The man, known as Fulafu on Chinese social media platforms – real name Vladislav Yuryevich Kokolevskiy – is one of the leading names in a growing army of foreign influencers who the Chinese Communist Party has been cultivating to promote its nationalistic agenda online.
Fulafu, who is now a household name in China with some 29 million followers, rose to fame by making hundreds of videos flattering many aspects of Chinese society, from its cuisine to Huawei-made phones and the country’s electronic payment systems.
A new report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) says that the regime considers this network of social media personalities to be valuable assets, amplifying a positive narrative about China’s achievements and defending its position on sensitive topics such as territorial disputes and human rights.
“As one party-state media worker put it, the aim is to ‘help cultivate a group of “foreign mouths”, “foreign pens”, and “foreign brains” who can stand up and speak for China at critical moments’,” the report states.
As well as Russia, the influencers hail from countries including Britain and the United States – such as the British video blogger Jason Lightfoot, who has about two million followers on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.
But while ostentatious displays of affection for China are popular with a large chunk of the country’s population, they are also being met with scepticism and ridicule by others.
In a video posted in January, Lightfoot walks with exaggerated starry-eyed wonder around Shenzhen, a city of 17.5 million in south-eastern China, that he lauds as a “futuristic utopia”.
Pointing to its gleaming skyscrapers and spotless streets, while running images of homelessness in the United States compared with Shenzhen’s empty roads, he exclaims: “If you went to New York City and you looked down a street like this it’s just going to be tent by tent by tent of homeless people.
“It’s kind of embarrassing for America. If China can solve its homeless problem, why can’t America?”
The response comes in the frank comments below the video.
“We also have homeless people,” says one, pointing out that they are not permitted to sleep on the streets.
“There are no tents! That’s because no tents are allowed there!” says another viewer.
The term “wealth password” has emerged in Chinese internet slang to describe influencers, both foreign and domestic, who create overly effusive content about China as a shortcut to internet fame and fortune. The term can often be seen in comments on Fulafu’s videos.
“The money is not easy to earn in your home country, but easy to earn in China,” said one viewer of the “I love China” video.
“People find it insulting to see how obvious the pandering is,” explained Fergus Ryan, a China researcher at ASPI. “It’s so over the top that it really does border on insulting the intelligence of the audience.”
‘The password is correct’
In October, Fulafu released a video on Douyin to mark the 74th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
It shows him waking up before dawn to prepare a long flagpole that he then uses to dutifully raise the Chinese flag in his backyard. “Happy birthday, China!” he yells at the end.
The video was praised by some users as showing his real love for China. Others commented dryly that “the password is correct”.
Mr Ryan said: “The less subtle the pandering, the more likely the backlash from it with a certain part of the audience.”.
But he argued that “even when there is a lot of this criticism, it doesn’t necessarily dent the popularity of some of these influencers”.
The ASPI report argues that when peddled through foreign influencers, Chinese state propaganda can be insidious and effective, even on Western social media platforms, and that better labelling is needed to counter this.
