Tania Branigan reports in the Guardian:
It is the world’s largest political party and has held absolute power for 60 years through state control and media censorship. So when the Chinese Communist party decided to overhaul its propaganda machine, there was only one place to look: the spin tactics of New Labour.
Research by Anne-Marie Brady, a political scientist at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, shows that officials were briefed in depth on the Blair government’s handling of crises as they modernised their news management.
Brady, a specialist on Chinese propaganda, said that following the 2002 Sars outbreak – which was originally covered up by officials – the party set about training “a legion of government spin doctors to handle any future political crisis”.
