Deploying a mixture of stealth and opportunism, Russia and China are making strategic advances in vulnerable territories while the rest of the world looks on.
I am not talking here about gains made on the front lines in Ukraine or displays of military strength made off the coast of Taiwan. Moscow and Beijing are pouring resources into another struggle, a global information war, and right now they are in the ascendancy.
The isolationist policy of Donald Trump’s administration, with its focus on “America First” and its tariff-linked trading with other nations, has presented the Kremlin and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) with new opportunities. So too has Trump’s campaign to undermine Western news media.
Above all, the decision to dismantle the 83-year-old Voice of America (VoA) network and other outlets run by the US Agency for Global Media, creates an information vacuum which Russia and China will look to fill. VoA broadcast in nearly 50 languages to a global weekly audience of 360 million. It was America’s equivalent to the BBC World Service but the President deemed its output “anti-Trump”.
China’s state newspaper, Global Times, rejoiced that VoA – which led in reporting China’s persecution of its Uyghur Muslim minority – had been discarded by the White House “like a dirty rag”. The head of Moscow’s RT applauded Trump’s “awesome decision”.
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Read MoreWith VoA off air, the race is on to provide international news to underserved audiences across the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America. Russia and China, which between them have a global news budget of around £8bn a year, are well placed to win.
The BBC is the largest international news provider with a weekly audience of 414 million, but the World Service (annual budget around £400m) is cutting 130 net jobs to find £6m in savings. To widespread dismay, it has closed its influential Hardtalk interview show. The World Service is launching The Interview, a more cost-effective product highlighting the global breadth of BBC journalism.
“Flicking a switch and filling all of the void left by VoA is not possible,” says Jonathan Munro, global director of BBC News. “We have to work smartly to plug the biggest gaps.” The BBC has no Spanish-language radio operation to serve VoA’s large Latin American audiences. “That is where you might find the Russian and Chinese moving in,” he says. “The Chinese and Russians are accelerating very, very quickly.”
When the BBC closed its Arabic radio service in 2023, the Kremlin’s Sputnik operation occupied its frequency in Lebanon. During Israel’s war on Hezbollah, Sputnik listeners were encouraged to see Moscow as an ally of Arab nations.The information war has enormous consequences for international trade and voting behaviour at the United Nations.
Trust will be a critical factor in deciding who wins. The Russia Today channel (RT) was banned in the UK by Ofcom over 29 incidents of biased coverage of the invasion of Ukraine. China’s CGTN lost its UK licence in 2021 for being controlled by the CCP. Elsewhere these outlets face less stigma. In Egypt, where US support for Israel means Western media can be viewed with suspicion, trust scores for RT have increased by 48 per cent since 2020. CGTN’s trust rating has risen by 130 per cent.
From Indonesia to Venezuela, Russian media benefits from positive audience attitudes to Moscow’s antipathy to the US. The Kremlin supports this with TikTok memes enhancing Vladimir Putin’s strongman image, which resonates with young social media users.
Money matters as much as trust. Since the invasion of Ukraine, Russia has spent heavily in African media, funding outlets across West Africa, South Africa and the politically unstable Sahel region. In Nigeria, where the World Service has a long and trusted tradition, Russian and Chinese media are growing. Russian flags were waved at anti-government protests last year. Other players are active. Turkey paid high salaries so that Istanbul’s TRT World service could poach most of the BBC’s Hausa-language digital team, focused on northern Nigeria.
Munro says the BBC is different from state-sponsored media because “we criticise and scrutinise the UK government”. He says that the UK government, for all the pressures on public spending, must give the World Service a “secure financial foundation” and not force it to continually negotiate its budget.
“If Britain has a role in the world in the years ahead,” he says, “it is to be the biggest single surveyor of truthful, impartial journalism when misinformation is marching around the world.”
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