News Snapshot:
An army of western social media influencers, each with hundreds of thousands of followers on TikTok, [Instagram] or Twitch, is set to spread positive stories about China throughout next month’s Winter Olympics. Concerned about the international backlash against the Beijing Games amid a wave of diplomatic boycotts , the government has hired western PR professionals to spread an alternative narrative through social media. In November, as Joe Biden mulled a diplomatic boycott, Vipinder Jaswal, a US-based Newsweek contributor and former Fox News and HSBC executive, signed a $300,000 contract with China’s consulate general in New York to “strategise and execute”...
