Warner Bros. Collaboration with Chinese Propaganda Outlet Draws Congressional Outrage

The Discovery Channel worked with China’s CGTN on a ‘documentary’ about Xinjiang, where Beijing is carrying out genocide against Uyghurs.

T he Discovery Channel partnered with Chinese propaganda outlet CGTN to produce a series of English-language videos presenting a sanitized look at Xinjiang, the northwestern region where the U.S. assesses that Beijing is carrying out genocide against Uyghurs, National Review has learned.

Members of Congress are investigating the partnership, which initially came to light last month when CGTN published a trailer advertising the videos, revealing Discovery’s role in  the production of the series.

Led by Representative Jim Banks, a group of six House Republicans demanded answers from David Zaslav, the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns the channel. They wrote to him yesterday, in a letter obtained exclusively by National Review.

“The Chinese Communist Party produces enough propaganda without the help of an American media company,” Banks told NR in a statement. “I don’t understand how Warner Bros. Discovery, who claims to be a ‘champion for inclusion and equity,’ would allow themselves to be complicit in whitewashing the Communist Party’s forced labor and genocide in Xinjiang.”

In the letter, Banks and the other lawmakers note that CGTN previously attacked CNN — another Warner Bros. Discovery subsidiary — for reporting on Xinjiang. “Now, your company has seemingly partnered with CGTN in a series praising the results of their decade-long effort to strip Uyghurs of their freedom, religion, homeland, and way of life,” they wrote.

They also said that Discovery has co-produced a work of propaganda that is “whitewashing obvious crimes against humanity.” Both the Trump and Biden administrations have found that the Chinese campaign in Xinjiang constitutes a genocide against Uyghurs and crimes against humanity targeting several Turkic minority groups.

In addition to Banks (Ind.), the other letter signatories include Representatives Mike Gallagher (Wisc.), Mike Waltz (Fla.), Rob Wittman (Va.), Carlos Giménez (Fla.), and Ashley Hinson (Iowa), all of whom are members of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.

Gallagher, the chairman of that panel, has made media and film-industry ties to, and censorship on behalf of, CCP entities a particular focus of investigation. He and committee members traveled to California last year for meetings with Hollywood executives on the matter.

The CGTN-Discovery series, called the “World’s Ultimate Frontier,” is made up of five half-hour videos in which three foreign hosts take the viewer around Xinjiang to showcase various cultural sites and athletic activities in the region.

At no point in the documentary does it mention the Communist Party’s implementation of an Orwellian system replete with high-tech mass surveillance, a network of detention facilities, and forced labor practices.

Instead, the documentary backs key Chinese propaganda tropes that have been identified by human-rights groups, including the idea that happy, dancing Uyghurs often spontaneously fill the streets of Xinjiang’s cities and that people are free to worship as they please.

Episode three of the series, titled “X-pression,” features a conversation with a man named Abbas Mamet at a mosque in the city of Kashgar. “On the 13th is the Eid, and there will be a huge celebration. People from all backgrounds will gather and dance at the square,” says Mamet, who works for Id Kah Mosque, according to the video.

A subsequent scene includes shots of that dance festival, with a large crowd filling the square in front of Id Kah Mosque.

But international media coverage tells a different story, peeling back the façade on Beijing’s systematic campaign against religious expression in Xinjiang.

A Radio Free Asia report last year revealed that residents of the region had been barred from praying in mosques and in their homes to mark Eid.

Another report from RFA last year, citing interviews with unnamed officials, said that Id Kah Mosque has been closed to worshippers and is now used only for tourist visits and propaganda campaigns.

A later episode features Xinjiang’s textile industry in a favorable light, implicitly rebutting internationally recognized evidence of the widespread use of Uyghur forced labor.

Hinson called it “unfathomable” that Discovery “would partner with the CCP on their propaganda tour and help whitewash the regime’s genocide against Uyghurs.”

The lawmakers requested that Zaslav provide more information on the partnership with CGTN, including an indication of whether it will result in the production of additional “documentary” series. They also asked if Warner Bros. Discovery agrees with the U.S. genocide designation.

“The American people must know what access and/or benefit Communist China promised Warner Bros. in exchange for this despicable partnership,” Giménez said in a statement. A congressional GOP aide said that the company might have been especially susceptible to pressure from the Chinese authorities to enter into a joint production, considering that the Chinese market for foreign cultural production is shrinking.

Spokespeople for Warner Bros. and the Discovery Channel did not respond to requests for comment today.

Warner Bros. is not the only U.S. media company to partner with the Chinese authorities. Disney came under fire after viewers noticed that the credits for the live-action version of Mulan thanked CCP and police entities in Xinjiang tied to the atrocities. More recently, Senator Marco Rubio wrote to CBS News after it published an article about a trip to Xinjiang organized by the CCP’s Central Propaganda Department.