CCP Lobbying and Propaganda in the United States

This project explores how CCP lobbying influences American foreign policy and media coverage. It employs a dataset drawn from the public records of the US Foreign Agents Registration Act that includes over 10,000 lobbying and media outreach activities undertaken by the Chinese government between 2005 and 2019. Preliminary evidence suggests that autocratic lobbying poses an important challenge to democratic integrity. CCP lobbying makes members of Congress more likely to vote for legislation that is favorable to Chinese interests and less likely to vote for legislation that is hostile to Chinese interests. US media outlets that participated in CCP-sponsored trips subsequently covered China as less threatening. Coverage pivoted away from US-China military rivalry and the CCP’s persecution of religious minorities and toward US-China economic cooperation. Case studies of ZTE and Hikvision and interviews with American journalists will illustrate the promise of lobbying as well as its limitations.

Erin Baggott Carter

Erin Baggott Carter is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Southern California and a Hoover Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Her research focuses on Chinese politics, propaganda, and foreign policy. Her first book, Propaganda in Autocracies (Cambridge University Press) explores how and why propaganda varies across the world. She is currently working on a book on how the United States and China seek to improve their national security environment by influencing each other. Her other work has appeared or is forthcoming in the British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Security Studies, International Interactions, China Quarterly, New York Times, and Foreign Affairs. She holds a PhD in Political Science from Harvard University, a MSc in Modern Chinese Studies from the University of Oxford, and an AB from Harvard College.