Feed aggregator

geneva — A Swiss court handed jail sentences Friday to four members of Britain's richest family, the Hindujas, branding them "selfish" for exploiting Indian staff at their Geneva mansion. Lawyers for the members of the Swiss-Indian family — who were not present in court — said they would appeal the verdict. The defendants were acquitted of human trafficking but convicted on other charges in a stunning verdict for the family, whose fortune is estimated at 37 billion pounds ($47 billion) by The Sunday Times of London. Prakash Hinduja, 78, and his wife, Kamal Hinduja, 75, each got four years, six months, while their son, Ajay, 56, and his wife, Namrata, 50, received four-year terms, the presiding judge in Geneva ruled. They were convicted of "usury" for having taken advantage of their vulnerable immigrant staff to pay them a pittance. "The employees' inexperience was exploited," Judge Sabina Mascotto said in her judgment. "They had little education or none at all and had no knowledge of their rights. "The defendants' motives were selfish," she said, adding that the Hindujas were motivated "by the desire for gain." The court acquitted them of the more serious charge of human trafficking, on the ground that the workers had traveled to Switzerland willingly. $363 salary During the trial, the Hindujas were accused of bringing servants from their native India and confiscating their passports once they got to Switzerland.  Prosecutor Yves Bertossa accused the Hindujas of spending "more on their dog than on their domestic employees." The family paid the household staff about 325 francs ($363) a month, up to 90 percent less than the going rate, the judge said. "The four Hinduja defendants knew the weak position their employees were in and knew the law in Switzerland," Mascotto said. The family denied the allegations, claiming the prosecutors wanted to "do in the Hindujas." They had reached a confidential out-of-court settlement with the three employees who made the accusations against them, leading them to drop their legal action, said the defense. Despite this, the prosecution decided to pursue the case because of the seriousness of the charges. Following the verdict, Bertossa requested an immediate detention order for Ajay and Namrata Hinduja, claiming they were flight risks. The judged denied it, accepting the defense argument that the family had ties to Switzerland. It noted that Kamal Hinduja was hospitalized in Monaco and the three other family members were at her bedside. Both the elder Hindujas had been absent since the start of the trial for health reasons. A statement from the defense lawyers announcing the appeal said they were "appalled and [full of] disappointment" at the court's ruling. But it added: "The family has full faith in the judicial process and remains confident that the truth will prevail." Not mistreated slaves The defense had argued that the three employees received ample benefits, were not kept in isolation and were free to leave the villa. "We are not dealing with mistreated slaves," Nicolas Jeandin told the court. Indeed, the employees "were grateful to the Hindujas for offering them a better life," his fellow lawyer Robert Assael argued. Representing Ajay Hinduja, lawyer Yael Hayat slammed the "excessive" indictment, arguing the trial should be a question of "justice, not social justice." Namrata Hinduja's lawyer, Romain Jordan, had also pleaded for acquittal, claiming the prosecutors were aiming to make an example of the family. He argued the prosecution had failed to mention extra payments made to staff on top of their cash salaries. "No employee was cheated out of his or her salary," Assael added. With interests in oil and gas, banking and health care, the Hinduja Group is present in 38 countries and employs around 200,000 people. 

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

NIAMEY, Niger — Floods in mostly arid Niger have killed 21 people and affected more than 6,000 others during just the first few weeks of the African country's rainy season that runs through September, a government official said. Thirteen people were killed when their homes collapsed and eight died by drowning following heavy rains, Colonel Boubacar Bako, the director-general of civil protection, said on national TV on Thursday evening. From the Maradi region of south-central Niger, 35-year-old resident Ali Abdou told The Associated Press by phone that heavy rains destroyed houses in his community. "It is only the first rain of the season, and our houses are already down," Abdou said. The rainy season, which lasts from June to September, regularly claims many lives in Niger, including in desert areas. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says that floods and heavy rains hitting the country in recent years are the result of climate change. Last year, 52 people died and 176,000 were affected by floods in Niger, the Interior Ministry said. Niger's population struggles with periodic droughts and heat waves during the dry season. The Maradi region has been most affected by the floods so far this year, accounting for 14 of the 21 deaths, Bako said during his televised announcement. Niger's capital, Niamey, and its 2 million inhabitants, usually hit by deadly floods, have been spared so far. But in a suburb of Niamey, the mud-brick house of resident Maiga Harouna, 56, collapsed during the torrential rain. "We desperately need help from the government before the second rain arrives," Harouna said. The government has not yet announced any plans for relocating people who lost homes because of the floods.

Miami, florida — Former President Donald Trump said in an interview posted Thursday he wants to give automatic green cards to foreign students who graduate from U.S. colleges, a sharp departure from the anti-immigrant rhetoric he typically uses on the campaign trail. Trump was asked about plans for companies to be able to import the "best and brightest" in a podcast taped Wednesday with venture capitalists and tech investors called the "All-In." "What I want to do, and what I will do is, you graduate from a college, I think you should get automatically as part of your diploma a green card to be able to stay in this country. And that includes junior colleges, too, anybody graduates from a college. You go there for two years or four years," he said, vowing to address this concern on day one if he is elected president in November. Immigration has been Trump's signature issue during his 2024 bid to return to the White House. His suggestion that he would offer green cards — documents that confer a pathway to U.S. citizenship — to potentially hundreds of thousands of foreign graduates would represent a sweeping expansion of America's immigration system that sharply diverges from his most common messages on foreigners. Trump often says during his rallies that immigrants who are in the country illegally endanger public safety and steal jobs and government resources. He once suggested that they are "poisoning the blood of our country." He has promised to carry out the largest deportation operation in U.S. history if elected. Trump and his allies often say they distinguish between people entering illegally versus legally. But during his administration, Trump also proposed curbs on legal immigration such as family-based visas and the visa lottery program. Right after taking office in 2017, he issued his "Buy American and Hire American" executive order, directing Cabinet members to suggest reforms to ensure that business visas were awarded only to the highest-paid or most-skilled applicants to protect American workers. He has previously said the H1-B program commonly used by companies to hire foreign workers temporarily — a program he has used in the past — was "very bad" and used by tech companies to get foreign workers for lower pay. During the conversation with "All-In," Trump blamed the coronavirus pandemic for being unable to implement these measures while he was president. He said he knew of stories of people who graduated from top colleges and want to stay in the U.S. but can't secure visas to do so, forcing them to return to their native countries, specifically naming India and China. He said they go on and become multibillionaires, employing thousands of workers. "You need a pool of people to work for your company," Trump said. "And they have to be smart people. Not everybody can be less than smart. You need brilliant people." In a statement released hours after the podcast was posted, campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: "President Trump has outlined the most aggressive vetting process in U.S. history, to exclude all communists, radical Islamists, Hamas supporters, America haters and public charges. He believes, only after such vetting has taken place, we ought to keep the most skilled graduates who can make significant contributions to America. This would only apply to the most thoroughly vetted college graduates who would never undercut American wages or workers."

las vegas, nevada — A Nevada judge dismissed an indictment Friday against six Republicans accused of submitting certificates to the U.S. Congress falsely declaring Donald Trump the winner of the state's 2020 presidential election. Nevada was one of four states with criminal charges pending against so-called fake electors. Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford stood after Clark County District Judge Mary Kay Holthus ruled that Las Vegas was the wrong venue for the case and said he'd take the case to the state Supreme Court. "The judge got it wrong, and we'll be appealing immediately," Ford, a Democrat, told reporters, declining additional comment. Defense attorneys bluntly declared the case dead, saying that to bring it now before another grand jury in another venue such as Nevada's capital of Carson City would violate a three-year statute of limitations that expired last December. "They're done," said Margaret McLetchie, attorney for Clark County Republican Party chairman Jesse Law, one of the defendants in the case. 'Society is the victim' The judge called off the trial, which had been scheduled for January, for defendants who included state GOP chairman Michael McDonald; national party committee member Jim DeGraffenreid; national and Douglas County committee member Shawn Meehan; Storey County clerk Jim Hindle; and Eileen Rice, a party member from the Lake Tahoe area. Each was accused of offering a false instrument for filing and uttering a forged instrument — felonies carrying a penalty of up to four or five years in prison. Defense attorneys led by McDonald's lawyer, Richard Wright, contended that Ford improperly brought the case before a grand jury in Las Vegas — Nevada's largest and most Democratic-leaning city — instead of Carson City or Reno, northern Nevada cities in a more Republican region where the alleged crimes occurred. Challenged by Holthus to respond, Deputy State Attorney General Matthew Rashbrook argued that "no one county contains the entirety of these crimes." "Society is the victim of these crimes," the prosecutor said. "Voters who would have been disenfranchised by these acts ... would have been victims of these crimes." But the judge decided that even though McDonald and Law live in Las Vegas, "everything took place up north." After the court hearing, Hindle's attorney, Brian Hardy, declined to comment on calls from advocacy groups for his client to resign from his elected position as overseer of elections in Story County. Meehan is the only defendant not to have been named by the state party as a Nevada delegate to the 2024 Republican National Convention next month in Milwaukee. His defense attorney, Sigal Chattah, said her client chose not to seek the position. Chattah ran as a Republican in 2022 for state attorney general and lost to Ford by just under 8% of the vote. False certifications Nevada is one of seven presidential battleground states where slates of fake electors falsely certified that Trump had won in 2020, not Democrat Joe Biden. The others were Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Nevada's case, filed last December, focused on the actions of six defendants. Criminal cases in three other states focus on many more — 16 in Michigan, 19 in Georgia and 18 in Arizona. Kenneth Chesebro, a lawyer who pleaded guilty in Georgia last October of helping to orchestrate the Trump campaign fake elector scheme in 2020, cooperated with prosecutors in the Nevada criminal investigation and was not charged. In testimony before the grand jury that met in Las Vegas in November, Chesebro said he provided the state GOP with an "organized step-by-step explanation of what they would have to do" to sign and submit certificates falsely stating that Trump, not Biden, won in Nevada. He also called Nevada "extremely problematic" to the fake elector plot, compared with other states, because the meeting of electors was overseen by the secretary of state. Also, unlike other states, Nevada did not have a legal challenge pending in courts at the time. Trump lost Nevada in 2020 by more than 30,000 votes to Biden and the state's Democratic electors certified the results in the presence of Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, a Republican.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

new york — Prosecutors on Friday urged the judge overseeing Donald Trump's criminal hush money case to continue provisions of a gag order aimed at some of the former president's public statements. In court papers, prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney's office argued that parts of the gag order remained necessary given the Republican's "singular history of inflammatory and threatening public statements," as well as efforts by his supporters to "identify jurors and threaten violence against them." "Since the verdict in this case, defendant has not exempted the jurors from his alarming rhetoric that he would have 'every right' to seek retribution as president against the participants in this trial as a consequence of his conviction because 'sometimes revenge can be justified,' " the filing states. The gag order, issued in March, prohibited Trump from making or directing others to make public statements about witnesses, jurors and others connected to the case. It does not restrict comments about the judge, Juan M. Merchan, or Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office prosecuted the case. Attorneys for Trump have called on the judge to lift the order following the culmination of his trial last month, which ended in his conviction on 34 felony counts for falsifying records to cover up a potential sex scandal. Trump, who has denied any wrongdoing, is set to be sentenced on July 11. Defense attorneys argue Trump should be free to fully address the case as he campaigns for the White House, pointing to comments made by President Joe Biden and the continued public criticism of him by his ex-lawyer Michael Cohen and adult film actor Stormy Daniels, both key prosecution witnesses. "Now that the trial is concluded, the concerns articulated by the government and the court do not justify continued restrictions on the First Amendment rights" of Trump, they wrote earlier this month. In their letter, prosecutors agreed that the provision barring statements about trial witnesses no longer needed to be enforced but said the restrictions on statements about court staff and members of the prosecution, excluding Bragg, should remain in place. They cited an "intensified" threat situation in recent months, with more than 60 "actionable threats" directed against Bragg, his family and court staff since April. The threats include social media posts disclosing the address of an employee of the district attorney's office and a photo showing sniper sights aimed at people involved in the case, according to police. Merchan is expected to rule soon, possibly before Trump's June 27 debate with President Joe Biden. Earlier this week, New York's top court declined to hear Trump's appeal on the gag order, finding it did not raise "substantial" constitutional issues that would warrant an immediate intervention.

fort pierce, florida — Lawyers for Donald Trump argued Friday that the Justice Department prosecutor who charged the former president with hoarding classified documents at his Florida estate was illegally appointed and that the case should therefore be dismissed. The challenge to the legality of special counsel Jack Smith’s appointment kicked off a three-day hearing that will further delay a criminal case that had been scheduled for trial last month but has been snarled by unresolved legal disputes. The motion questioning Smith’s selection by the Justice Department is one of multiple challenges to the indictment the defense has raised, so far unsuccessfully, in the year since the charges were brought. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon heard hours of arguments Friday from lawyers for both sides, with Trump attorney Emil Bove asserting that the Justice Department risked creating a “shadow government” through the appointment of special counsels to prosecute select criminal cases. Prosecutors say there was nothing improper or unusual about Smith’s appointment, with James Pearce, a member of Smith's team at one point saying: "We are in compliance. We have complied with all of the department's policies.”  Cannon did not immediately rule, but in an apparent sign that she was taking seriously the Trump team motion, she grilled Pearce on what oversight role Attorney General Merrick Garland — who appointed Smith — had in seeking the indictment. Pearce said he was not in a position to answer the question but noted, “I don't want to make it seem like I'm hiding something.” Even as Smith's team looks to press forward on a prosecution seen by many legal experts as the most straightforward and clear-cut of the four prosecutions against Trump, Friday's arguments didn't concern the allegations against the former president. They centered instead on arcane regulations governing the appointment of Justice Department special counsels like Smith, reflecting the judge's continued willingness to entertain defense arguments that prosecutors say are frivolous and meritless, contributing to the delay of a trial date.   Arbiter's review ordered Cannon, a Trump appointee, had exasperated prosecutors even before the June 2023 indictment by granting a Trump request to have an independent arbiter review the classified documents taken from Mar-a-Lago — an order that was overturned by a unanimous federal appeals panel. Since then, she has been intensely scrutinized over her handling of the case, including for taking months to issue rulings and for scheduling hearings on legally specious claims — all of which have combined to make a trial before the November presidential election a virtual impossibility. She was rebuked in March by prosecutors after she asked both sides to formulate jury instructions and to respond to a premise of the case that Smith's team called “fundamentally flawed.” The New York Times, citing two anonymous sources, reported Thursday that two judges — including the chief federal judge in the Southern District of Florida — urged Cannon to step aside from the case shortly after she was assigned to it. The hearing is unfolding just weeks after Trump was convicted in a separate state case in New York of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to a porn actor who has said she had sex with him. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is poised to issue within days an opinion on whether Trump is immune from prosecution for acts he took in office or whether he can be prosecuted by Smith's team on charges that he schemed to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. At issue in Friday's hearing was a Trump team claim that Smith was illegally appointed in November 2022 by Garland because he was not first approved by Congress and because the special counsel office that he was assigned to lead was not also created by Congress. Smith's team has said Garland was fully empowered as the head of the Justice Department to make the appointment and to delegate prosecutorial decisions to him. They note that a similar argument failed in a challenge to the appointment of Robert Mueller, who was tapped as special counsel by the Trump administration Justice Department to investigate potential ties between Russia and Trump's 2016 campaign. On Monday, the two sides will again discuss matters related to Smith's appointment, as well as a limited gag order that prosecutors have requested to bar Trump from comments they fear could endanger the safety of FBI agents and other law enforcement officials involved in the case. The restrictions were sought after Trump falsely claimed the agents who searched his Mar-a-Lago estate for classified documents in August 2022 were prepared to kill him even though he was citing boilerplate language from standard FBI policy about use of force during the execution of search warrants. The FBI had intentionally selected a day for the search when it knew Trump and his family would be out of town, and the policy he was citing is meant to limit, rather than encourage, the use of force. Trump's lawyers have said any speech restrictions would infringe on his free-speech rights. Cannon initially rejected the prosecution's request on technical grounds, saying Smith's team had not sufficiently conferred with defense lawyers before seeking the restrictions. Prosecutors subsequently renewed the request.

islamabad — The United Nations confirmed Friday that a rare meeting of global envoys with Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers this month will not address concerns about Afghan civil society and women human rights defenders.    Roza Otunbayeva, the head of the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, or UNAMA, emphasized the importance of the world community opening a direct dialogue with the Taliban, suggesting it could create opportunities for Afghan women to participate in future talks. “This is what is possible today. … It is a process. Let’s start to speak,” she told reporters in New York after briefing a U.N. Security Council meeting on the Afghan situation.      The two-day U.N.-hosted meeting will commence in Doha, Qatar, on June 30. It will be the third session of what is referred to as the “Doha process,” and the Taliban have agreed to attend for the first time.     “For the first time, special envoys of all the countries would meet face to face with the Taliban. They would tell them that, 'Look, it doesn’t work like this, and we should have women around the table, and also provide them with access to the business,' ” Otunbayeva said.      U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres launched and hosted the Doha process in May 2023 to establish a coherent and unified global approach to engagement with the Taliban government, which has yet to be formally recognized by the world.  Guterres did not invite de facto Afghan authorities to the first meeting. The Taliban refused an invitation to the second round of talks in February unless their delegates could be accepted as the sole representatives of Afghanistan.  Human rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have criticized the U.N. for inviting the Taliban to the Doha huddle rather than holding them accountable for “crimes” against Afghan women and girls.     Otunbayeva responded to the criticism Friday, saying the U.N. would consult civil society representatives from inside and outside Afghanistan before the June 30 meeting. They also will speak to special international envoys on July 2, a day after the meeting with the Taliban ends, she noted. Help for businesses, farmers The UNAMA chief explained that discussions at the third Doha meeting will focus on helping Afghan private businesses, addressing financial and banking sector issues, and finding alternate livelihoods for farmers affected by the Taliban's nationwide ban on opium poppy cultivation. She said all these issues are related to women: “There are 5 million addicted people in Afghanistan. More than 30% [of them] are women.” Otunbayeva said the Taliban expect international assistance and capacity building in the security, agriculture and health sectors.      “What do we need [in return]? We need them to change their minds and let girls go to school. I don’t understand what is the reason why they don’t let girls go to school. There is no Islamic country out of 57 where girls don’t go to schools.”      The Taliban regained power in Kabul in August 2021 as U.S.-led NATO troops withdrew from the country after nearly 20 years of involvement in the Afghan war. The fundamentalist authorities have since barred girls aged 12 and older from attending secondary school and have suspended female students from universities as well as other higher education.      Most Afghan women are prohibited from public and private employment, including the U.N., and they are not allowed to visit public places such as parks, gyms and bathhouses. Women are required to undertake road or air trips only when accompanied by a male relative. The Taliban dismiss criticism of their policies, insisting they are aligned with Afghan culture and Islamic law. Agnes Callamard, the secretary-general at Amnesty International, said in a statement Friday that the credibility of the Doha meeting “will be in tatters if it doesn’t adequately address” the Afghan human rights situation and fails to engage Afghan women rights defenders.     “Sidelining critical discussions on human rights would be unacceptable and set a deeply damaging precedent,” Callamard said. She urged the international community to adopt a clear and united stance to protect the rights of Afghan women.       "Caving into the Taliban’s conditions to secure their participation in the talks would risk legitimizing their gender-based institutionalized system of oppression — a system that has sought to erase women and girls from society by callously stripping them of their most fundamental rights,” she said. Tirana Hassan, the executive director at Human Rights Watch, described the exclusion of Afghan women from the upcoming Doha talks as shocking.     “Excluding women risks legitimizing the Taliban’s abuses and triggering irreparable harm to the U.N.’s credibility as an advocate for women’s rights and women’s meaningful participation,” Hassan said in a statement issued Friday. VOA U.N. Correspondent Margaret Besheer contributed to this report.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

nairobi, kenya — Africa became less attractive to foreign investors last year and finance deals declined by 50 percent to $64 billion, according to a new report.     The World Investment Report, released Thursday by the U.N. Trade and Development, said foreign investment remains subdued by the global economic slowdown and rising geopolitical tensions.     On the continent, central African countries recorded the largest drop in foreign investment, 17 percent, and West Africa recorded the lowest dip, 1 percent.     Bruce Nsereko-Lule, a general partner at Seedstars Africa Ventures, a venture capital firm that invests in high-growth companies, said conditions in Western economies have contributed to the reduction in foreign direct investment in Africa. “We have seen very high interest rates in Western economies," he said. "With the devaluation of the currency, we saw this is partially driven by the same factor. Investment in these developing markets, emerging markets, even became less attractive as the companies effectively had to work significantly hard to generate a return that would make a good return for Western investors.” Researchers say that the lack of financial inflows to Africa and other countries affected sustainable development, with new funding dropping by 10 percent globally. Lack of financing for development programs will hinder countries from achieving the 2030 agenda, which covers economic growth, social inclusion and environmental protection. The reduction of foreign investments is also blamed on protectionist policies by African governments and on regional realignments, which investigators say are disrupting the world economy, fragmenting trade networks, regulatory environments and global supply chains. Some governments' actions have undermined the stability and predictability of global investment flows, creating obstacles and isolating opportunities.     Samuel Nyandemo, economics lecturer at the University of Nairobi, said the behavior of some African governments is turning away investors. "There is corruption, there is bureaucracy in investments, the red tape bureaucracies, and then the marginal rates of returns from investments are not forthcoming," he said. The fall of foreign direct investment in Africa is blamed on insecurity in some African countries, the weakening of local currencies, a harsh business environment, corruption and political uncertainty.     However, Africa has received investment in a growing share of greenfield mega projects worth $5 billion, plus wind and solar energy production worth $10 billion. And Morocco, a North African nation, is getting $6.4 billion to manufacture electric vehicle batteries. Nyandemo said Africa needs to create an environment where investors feel safe with their businesses.  "They need to have investor confidence, create a conducive macroeconomic environment for investments and enable investors to repatriate their profits appropriately without any bureaucratic procedures, and minimize taxation," he said. "Create a tax regime which is conducive for investment." The U.N. report predicted that despite challenges, financial conditions in Africa are expected to improve. Governments can address low investments by creating transparent and streamlined business environments.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

WASHINGTON — Each year, China’s government spends billions on foreign propaganda and until recently those efforts were largely driven by departments in the central government and state media. Now, a growing number of cities are joining that effort, with the China Media Project, an independent research group, recently documenting at least 23 foreign propaganda centers at China's city and provincial levels. China experts say the move makes sense because it allows Beijing to draw on more resources and create tailored messages at a time when the country’s image is facing serious challenges over concerns that range from trade to human rights as well its handling of the COVID pandemic. “The battle for discourse power requires all hands on deck,” Jonathan Sullivan, a China specialist at the University of Nottingham, told VOA. “In every sector, China brings its full capacity — institutional, financial and human resources — to the fight, so it is normal” for Beijing to do the same with propaganda, Sullivan said. Joshua Kurlantzick, author of Beijing’s Global Media Offensive, said this is one of the many attempts to spread the Chinese Communist Party, or CCP, propaganda. “If one doesn’t work, China has so many efforts they can try others,” he told VOA in a written response. The centers are popping up across the country and the most recent was on June 7, when China’s northeastern city of Tianjin established the Tianjin International Communication Center, or TICC. According to the city’s state-run newspaper, the Tianjin Daily, the new center will “use lenses and pens to demonstrate a lively Tianjin to the outside world” and “serve the country’s overall public diplomacy.” The establishment of the TICC follows the formation on May 31 of Zhejiang International Communication Center. That provincial-level center, according to the China Public Diplomacy Association, will “showcase China’s governance through the Zhejiang model … and allow the world to truly understand China.” Since 2023, the spread of global propaganda centers at the local level began expanding rapidly. On July 3, 2023, Shenzhen formed the SZMG International Communication Center. A few days later, eastern Jiangsu province established Jiangsu International Communication Center on July 12. Shanghai joined in October 2023 with SMG International, a city-level external communication base dubbed as “a video window for Shanghai’s city image.” On January 6, 2024, the northern province of Hebei announced its own Great Wall International Communication Center. As of this month, China has established 23 provincial-level external communication centers, tasked to remake China’s approach of delivering its message externally. Gary Rawnsley, a professor of public diplomacy at the University of Lincoln, said these provincial-level centers indicate China has begun to realize that it cannot carry out the same propaganda to all foreigners. “I would say that this is a clever and strategic move because it indicates that China is understanding the need to tailor its messages for particular audiences,” he said. “When we look at the activities of some of these centers, they are very much oriented toward the needs and interests of people in neighboring countries.” Tailored for its audiences "Tailored" and "targeted" are key words used by provincial-level international communication centers, or ICCs. An article by Qiushi Journal, the leading official theoretical journal for the Chinese Communist Party, says the centers are “developed based on local propaganda needs” and will become “a new force” for China’s global propaganda. The Jiangsu International Communication Center has active accounts in seven languages on major social platforms that are blocked in China, including X, formerly known as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. The director of the Hubei Communication Center told a local newspaper that in addition to making full use of social media accounts, the center has adopted a "one place, one policy" approach to tailor the content according to their audiences. "For example, we focus on football programs to Brazil and Argentina, and culinary shows to Southeast Asia and Italy," said the center’s director, Cao Xiqing. Not all the centers were established over the past year. China’s Yunnan province, which borders Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, formed the South and Southeast Asian Media Network on May 31, 2022. According to the Information Office of the Yunnan Government, this is "the only international communication center in the country specially designed for audiences in South Asia and Southeast Asia.” The regional network publishes journals in Burmese, Thai, Cambodian and Lao. In addition to distributing its content on social media, it also has web pages in seven languages — Burmese, Lao, Thai, Khmer, English, Vietnamese and Chinese. Soft power focus The local ICCs focus on China’s soft power. Rawnsley from the University of Lincoln said this is deliberate. “It seems to be that at the central level, they are moving toward a much more political style of programming and letting these regional centers soften their programming for particular audiences and focusing much more on culture, tourism and history,” he told VOA. VOA examined recent tweets by the Henan International Communication Center and found topics that included night scenes of its capital, Zhengzhou, foreigners learning Chinese medicine, Henan Opera and Shaolin Kung Fu. The Henan ICC also has a promotional video of the Belt and Road Initiative, Beijing’s massive global infrastructure project. The ICCs also host various activities. For example, the Hubei ICC held an event named “The Story of the Communist Party of China” in May 2023, inviting foreigners in China to learn the history of the CCP. Rawnsley said this highlights how everything the regional centers are doing is not completely autonomous. “Everything will be following particular guidelines that are laid down in Beijing,” he said. Limited effect Despite their rapid formations, these centers have not attracted much traffic. The Henan ICC, which joined X in November 2022, currently has 19,000 followers. The Jinan ICC’s X account has around 55,000 followers since it was established in April 2022. China has poured enormous resources into its external propaganda, yet people’s attitudes toward China have worsened in recent years, especially since the 2020 coronavirus outbreak. A poll by the Pew Research Center in May showed that 81% of Americans have an unfavorable view of China, including 43% who hold a very unfavorable view of the country. A 2022 poll by Pew that surveyed people in 19 countries found 68% of the respondents had an unfavorable impression of Beijing. The research organization found these unfavorable opinions are related to concerns about China’s policies on human rights. China has received heavy criticism for its strict policies in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong, as well as its aggression toward self-ruling island Taiwan, which China claims as a breakaway province. The CCP leadership denies all these accusations. Rawnsley said the problem China faces is much more than just its presentation. “China keeps adding more and more platforms, but it doesn't change the message. It doesn't change what people know is going on inside China,” he said. “At the end of the day, policy and behavior determines credibility,” he said. “Actions speak louder than words.”

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.