Centralization+
Understanding China's Transforming Strategy for Global Information Influence

For European and other actors seeking to understand and address foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI), it is essential to grasp the nature of China's evolving domestic propaganda architecture and its impact on the country’s conduct of international communication. Organizational changes in the country directly shape the capabilities, methods, and scale of influence activities that societies in Europe and beyond now confront.

Since 2018, building on changes introduced early in Xi Jinping’s first term, China has fundamentally restructured its external propaganda apparatus. Beijing has moved beyond the "mega external propaganda" model of centralized state media that dominated during the Hu Jintao era and before. In its place, the leadership has developed what this report terms "Centralization+" — a coordinated, multi-tiered system deploying provincial, city, and county-level actors in information operations worldwide.

International Communication Centers (ICCs) stand at the heart of this transformation. Operating under local and regional propaganda office leadership, these centers coordinate state messaging through distributed networks even as they maintain centralized Party control.