U.S. Cities Are Awash in Chinese Propaganda. Why Do We Put Up with It?

They’ve become such an ordinary part of the streetscape in midtown Manhattan, downtown D.C., and a few other American cities that we’ve forgotten just how unusual this is: China has placed communist propaganda newspaper boxes on dozens of streetcorners.

I pointed this out the other day on social media. It should be more remarkable that China’s central propaganda department has taken up free real estate throughout American cities.

True, it’s unlikely that many people actually drop a quarter into these boxes to grab a copy of China Daily on their way to work. But this is a matter of diplomatic reciprocity — and national self-respect.

Chen Weihua, China Daily’s EU bureau chief and therefore a central propaganda department official, replied to my post and said that the newspaper boxes are intended “to keep you informed and not brainwashed by crazy warmongers in Washington.” Those are the words of a foreign dictatorship that knows it can get away with brazen propaganda campaigns on U.S. soil. So far, it has.

Many of the replies to my post objected to my questioning of the sordid status quo on First Amendment grounds. (It’s interesting that Chen didn’t make that argument, because, I suspect, defending press freedom could land him in hot water back home.)

But the company that distributes China Daily was designated a foreign mission by the State Department in 2020. Its legal status in America is akin to that of China’s embassy and its consulates, not that of a media outlet with a contrarian streak.

Theoretically, Chinese diplomats can get on a soapbox and say whatever they want, but they don’t have a right to be here. Washington can choose to expel them, as it did in 2020 when the State Department closed China’s consulate in Houston over espionage concerns. It can, and should, also expel Chinese-regime officials working for the China Daily Distribution Corp.

China Daily’s newspaper boxes aren’t just a farcical PR campaign by Beijing; they’re a symbol of an unbalanced diplomatic relationship.

Permitting the central propaganda department to have a presence in American cities is a deliberate policy choice, even if we don’t view it that way. China censors the social-media posts of Nicholas Burns, America’s ambassador to the country. In recent months, Burns said, the Chinese authorities have tightened restrictions on the activities of the U.S. embassy’s staff. And the People’s Daily refused to run an op-ed by Burns’s predecessor, Terry Branstad in 2020.

By contrast, China’s diplomats posted here roam around America virtually unhindered in who they can meet and what they can do, and it’s not clear that the State Department is enforcing existing restrictions on their activities.