The Central Propaganda Department

The Central Propaganda Department 中央宣传部  ཀྲུང་དབྱང་དྲིལ་བསྒྲགས་པུའུ། has unified supervision over news and publishing work. Since China is officially a democracy, in which the masses have oversight of the ruling party, it is essential that the masses be trained to think the right thoughts.

In order to strengthen the concentrated and unified management of news and public opinion work, strengthen the management of publishing activities, and develop and invigorate the publishing-related undertakings of socialism with Chinese characteristics, the management responsibilities of the General Administration of Press, Publications, Radio, Film and Television in the areas of news and publishing was in 2018 transferred to the Central Propaganda Department. Externally, the Central Propaganda Department will bear the sign ‘National News and Publishing Administration or National Copyright Office 国家新闻出版署  国家版权局. རྒྱལ་ཁབ་གསར་འགྱུར་དཔེ་སྐྲུན་ཧྲུའུ། ༼ རྒྱལ་ཁབ་པར་དབང་ཅུས༽

This is a huge apparatus. Following the 2018 reorganization, the principal responsibilities of the Central Propaganda Department have put into practice the Party’s propaganda work policies; draw up management policies for the news and publishing industries and supervising implementation; manage administrative affairs for news and publishing; overall planning, guidance and coordination for news and publishing activities. Much of this is done secretly, and “invisible hand” responding instantly to topics trending online, issuing secret instructions to editors as to what to emphasize, what to ignore, and what to censor. The invisible hand discovers the price of online truth by remaining largely invisible, but censorship commands often leak to China Digital Monitor.

China Central Television was previously overseen by the General Administration of Press, Publications, Radio, Film and Television (previously just SARFT), a department under the State Council. The super-network is now a state-sponsored institution, or shiye danwei 事业单位, ལས་དོན་ལས་ཁུངས། directly under the State Council, and directly under the supervision of the CCP Central Propaganda Department.