From propaganda to public diplomacy: Assessing China's international practice and its image, 1950–2009

• As concepts, international propaganda and public diplomacy do not appear to be interchangeable in research over the past several decades, with the latter becoming more visible.
• China has benefited conceptually from the shift of international propaganda to public diplomacy in academic inquiries.
• There is lingering doubt, however, about China's external practices and it seems to be difficult for the country to shed its image of an international propagandist inherited from the years past.

Since World War II, government-sponsored international propaganda and public diplomacy have become more visible and sophisticated in countries around the world. China is no exception. It is not immune to the compulsion and communication imperative to reach and woo the public, both at home and abroad, for its vested interests. From propaganda to public diplomacy, the practices and activities have taken different forms and scopes, mainly including government-owned media outlets aimed at foreign audiences, state-subsidized media organizations as quasi-governmental instruments, overseas advertising and public relations campaigns designed to sway public opinion to win general support for the nation involved or to repair international relations damaged by terrorist attacks and other man-made crises, and recruiting and bribing journalists as clandestine operatives. Whether such practices have been effective in changing hearts and minds among international audiences, however, is open to debate and remains to be further explored. Within the perspective of sociology of knowledge, the main purpose of this study is to look at how China comes to be viewed as an object in international communication research over the past decades that cast the country through the prism of either propaganda or public diplomacy.