FPI / September 18, 2025
By Richard Fisher
Lower levels of China’s state media have been used to push anti-American propaganda themes in the wake of the tragic Sept. 10, 2025 assassination of conservative, Christian and pro-Donald Trump youth influencer Charlie Kirk, founder of the Turning Point USA college-outreach organization.
All media in China serves the interests of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and through the powerful CCP Propaganda Department, all media must follow guidelines and submit to censorship.
At the top level are publications closest to the CCP like People’s Daily, which since Kirk’s assassination to Sept. 15, ran 11 articles all from the main state media news service Xinhua, which essentially repeated news of from the U.S. of assassination and the follow up investigation.
But for the previous four years, according to its search engine, People’s Daily nor Xinhua ran any story on Charlie Kirk, preferring not to pay any attention to this young American leading a growing Christian-conservative movement that was literally transforming U.S. youth politics, as he increasingly warned of the challenges to freedom and Americans from the CCP.
At a second level there are more nationalist publications, such as two in the English language, like Global Times and the South China Morning Post, which often carry more provocative and even threatening messages that can be denied by Chinese government spokespeople if necessary but still must be approved by the Propaganda Department.
Global Times, known for its promotion of CCP goals and harsh criticism of the U.S. and its allies, has so far followed the People’s Daily’s lead, ignoring the Charlie Kirk phenomenon in the U.S. only until his assassination, then running 9 largely reporting articles, including three from Xinhua.
Chinese power cheerleader South China Morning Post has published mainly international news wire stories on the assassination and follow up investigation, until Sept. 15 when it ran a story by Hong Kong lawyer and consultant Dong Lie, titled, “Why Charlie Kirk’s killing holds a warning for the world,” that questioned the stability of the United States at home and on the world stage, saying:
“In the US, the death of Charlie Kirk, a young conservative, has triggered political and cultural fallout and marks a disturbing milestone…This was not merely a tragic act of violence – it was a rupture in the American psyche. It forces us to confront a deeper question: Are we entering an era where the passions of the people, unmoored from institutions, will drive us towards more terrible conflicts than ever?”
It is at the third level of Chinese state media where the CCP Propaganda Department has been most active, such as with the Shanghai-based web portal publication “Guancha” (Observer), which publishes articles by academics and others — with ample comments from “Netizens,” reflecting more strident nationalism, CCP triumphalism and harsh criticism of the CCP’s foreign enemies, which since October 2023 has included increasing criticism of Israel.
Guancha, which is “safer” for the CCP as it does not have an English version, had its sights set on Charlie Kirk much earlier, publishing three articles before his death, starting with the reprinting of an Aug. 26, 2020 New York Times article by liberal critic Frank Bruni, “The Epic Shamelessness of the Republican Convention.”
Chinese readers were able to benefit from Bruni’s observation, “The best performance of the convention so far went to [Charlie] Kirk, who called Trump the ‘guardian of Western civilization,’ a description that sounded like something out of a Kevin Costner movie or a bust of Aristotle.”
But on Sept. 11, the day after his death, Guancha immediately fired off and article by nationalist commentator and Fudan University professor Shen Yi, “How do the two factions in the United States plan to eat Charlie Kirk’s ‘human blood steamed bun’?,” a Chinese colloquialism for exploiting political murder.
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