According
to Zhao, the state-owned Chinese international broadcaster pays his
company, GBTimes, “several million euros” each year to produce radio
shows for a local audience. That’s a little over half of GBTimes’ annual
revenue.
Zhao, whose media company is based in
Finland, spearheads an operation that broadcasts China-friendly
programming in Europe on behalf of China Radio International (CRI). But
CRI is more than a client of Zhao: A CRI subsidiary owns a 60 percent
stake in GBTimes, according to corporate filings.
Asked
why China is operating abroad through private companies, Zhao said the
initial reason was a lack of talent, funding and knowledge of the
overseas media market.
“As China grows and gets stronger,” he said he believed it would expand its media reach “overseas on its own.”
Zhao,
who spoke with Reuters in an interview last month in Beijing, said
there was no difference between his operation and the
U.S.-government-funded Voice of America (VOA).
When
a reporter said that VOA is transparent about its government links,
Zhao replied: “We’ve never hidden ourselves. There’s nothing to hide.”
According
to Zhao, GBTimes runs a network of 14 radio stations from Finland to
Hungary to Italy. A Reuters review of corporate filings and interviews
with station employees revealed nine stations in which GBTimes either
has an ownership stake or to which it provides content.
Klasszik
Radio in Hungary, which is part of the GBTimes stable, says on its
Facebook page that its mission is to “talk about the pros and cons of
the Asian giant, its rich culture, funny habits and the fact that they
are not as alien to us as we might think.”
All
the radio stations in the GBTimes network adhere to regulatory
requirements in the countries in which they operate, Zhao said.
Zhao’s
counterpart in the Asia-Pacific region is Tommy Jiang, who is in
partnership with CRI through a Melbourne-based media company. The 2009
launch of Jiang’s Canberra FM 88 station was deemed significant enough
by Beijing that China’s ambassador to Australia and CRI’s president
attended.
“China Radio International is now on
the air in the Australian capital of Canberra,” China’s state-run CCTV
reported on its website at the time.
English-language
radio stations in Perth, Canberra and Auckland broadcast China-friendly
programming similar to that being aired in the United States, where CRI
has a partnership with Los Angeles-based businessman James Su. A
station in Thailand, though, broadcasts mainly Thai pop songs.
In
Europe, a number of stations broadcast mainly music, but some also run
programs on Chinese culture and social trends, with names like “Colorful
East” and “Pop Rock Dragon.”
“This is about
selling China’s story to the world,” said Jichang Lulu, an independent
researcher on China who has written about GBTimes. “The explicit
intention is to portray the content as coming from an independent party,
while in fact broadcasting the views of the Chinese government.”
In
Asia, some of the employees at stations in Jiang’s stable have received
training from CRI. An employee at Capital FM 92.4 in Kathmandu, Nepal,
told Reuters that staffers have worked at CRI’s official Nepali language
service in Beijing.
Zhao said he’d like more cooperation with
his counterparts in the United States and Asia-Pacific. Jiang declined
to be interviewed. 
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