China sends message to American soybean farmers

Newspaper section derides trade dispute

OMAHA, Neb. – China’s propaganda machine has taken aim at American soybean farmers as part of its highstakes trade war with the Trump administration.

The publication last month of a fourpage advertising section in the Des Moines Register opened a new battle line in China’s effort to break the administration’s resolve. U.S. farmers are a key political constituency for Trump, and Beijing has imposed tariffs on American soybeans as retaliation for Trump’s tariffs on hundreds of billions in Chinese imports.

China regularly disseminates propaganda in the West through its China Daily newspaper to try to influence public opinion. But the advertorial in the Register was unusual for deploying not a national publication in New York or Washington but a newspaper in the farm state of Iowa.

“It’s the first time I’ve ever seen anything like this in a heartland city,” said Matt Schrader, who edits the China Brief newsletter for the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington research institute that monitors China’s actions.

The Iowa newspaper section was labeled explicitly as a product of China Daily, China’s official English language newspaper. The articles were clearly geared to try to soften the image of China and its president, Xi Jinping. With headlines ranging from “Dispute: Fruit of a president’s folly” and” “Book tells of Xi’s fun days in Iowa” to “Kung Fu skill helps light up life path” and “China seeks pacts on robotics,” the message was a not-very-subtle one about the friendly way Beijing wants to be seen in the farm belt.

Stanley Chao, a business consultant who has written a book called “Selling to China,” said it’s not entirely surprising that China would try to take its trade arguments directly to American farmers, whose crops have been hit by Beijing’s retaliatory tariffs.

“This is the norm for the Chinese propaganda machine,” Chao said.

Chao noted that when a Chinese dissident won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize – chosen by the Norwegian Nobel Committee and an embarrassment for Beijing – China responded by placing propaganda ads in Scandinavian newspapers.

In addition to its connection to the tariffs China imposed on American soybeans and other crops, Iowa is also home to Terry Branstad, a former governor of the state who is now the U.S. ambassador to Beijing. And in the past, President Xi has visited Iowa, whose caucuses serve as the first contest in presidential elections.

Other countries, like Saudi Arabia and Taiwan, typically hire public relations firms and place ads to try to improve their images, in contrast to China’s more direct approach of placing ads in newspapers or posting videos online. The 2016 elections brought attention to foreign influence after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia had meddled in the elections. Federal prosecutors have charged a Russian firm with interfering through bogus Facebook posts.

It’s not yet clear whether or how much Beijing will continue to try to shape public sentiment in the farm belt states.