Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc., the parent company of the Discovery Channel, appeared to express remorse in a letter to members of Congress made public on Thursday about its decision to co-produce a travel program with Chinese state media focused on occupied East Turkistan, where the Communist Party has been engaging in genocidal activities since at least 2017.
The Discovery Channel entered an agreement with CGTN, a Chinese government propaganda outlet, to produce a documentary released in January called World’s Ultimate Frontier, showcasing the breathtaking desert and mountain landscapes of East Turkistan. China refers to East Turkistan, a formerly free state colonized by mass murderer Mao Zedong, by the Mandarin name “Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region,” or XUAR. The documentary claims to portray the “real Xinjiang,” as opposed to the reality that human rights activists and journalists have uncovered throughout the past decade of a genocidal police state littered with concentration camps, slave-worked farms, and high-tech mass surveillance.
“What comes to mind when you think of Xinjiang? Vast expanses of desert, towering mountains, diverse minorities living in harmony, cultures fusing together?” CGTN asks in its promotional video on the documentary.
“The fact is that Xinjiang has so many facets that its charm can hardly be captured in words! Thankfully anyone interested in experiencing the real Xinjiang is in for a treat when the documentary World’s Ultimate Frontier is aired on January 19.”
CGTN deleted its preview article and video on the documentary series shortly after its debut, as it attracted the attention of members of Congress, who questioned the Discovery Channel’s role in promoting the series. The series remains online, however, on CGTN’s YouTube channel, with no overt mentions of the Discovery Channel’s role in the production.
The series debuted in January, attracting the attention of lawmakers in Congress. Six Congressmen, led by Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), sent a letter to the CEO of parent company Warner Bros. Discovery, David Zaslav, in February asking for confirmation of the Discovery Channel’s role in the production, an explanation for why the network decided to work with the Chinese government, and commitments to suspending cooperation with Chinese state-owned media.
“Since the creation of Warner Bros. Discovery less than two years ago, the company has sought to implement policies and procedures designed to ensure that its production decisions around the world reflect the company’s core values,” Brian D. Smith, an attorney representing Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc., wrote in a letter replying to the Congressmen made public on Thursday.
“With those efforts in mind, and looking at the 2021 agreement with the benefit of hindsight and in recognition of developments since that time, Warner Bros. Discovery would decline to enter that production agreement if it were presented with it today,” Smith asserted.
Smith specified that the talks that led to the production of the program began in “late 2020,” about four years after reports indicate that genocidal dictator Xi Jinping began building a network of as many as 1,200 concentration camps to house Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz people, and other Turkic indigenous peoples in East Turkistan. The talks occurred “between Discovery’s affiliate in Singapore (Discovery Networks Asia Pacific PTE LTD) and CCTV Documentary International Media Co., Ltd. (“CDIMC”).”
The attorney also confirmed that CDIMC, a Chinese state company, paid Discovery to produce the series.
“We understand that Discovery Networks Asia Pacific’s intent with the program was to create a travel program that accurately presented the dramatic geography and landscape of Xinjiang,” Smith wrote, “along with the dynamic and diverse cultures, communities, minorities, and religions in the region. Although the program was not intended as a news or public affairs program, Warner Bros. Discovery understands and deeply appreciates the concerns raised in your letter.”
The “concerns” surround actions by the Chinese government in the region that human rights experts have concluded meet the international law definition of genocide. In an independent legal process in 2021, the Uyghur Tribunal, a group of international lawyers and genocide experts, concluded that China was “beyond a reasonable doubt” guilty of genocide in East Turkistan. The report documented graphic human rights atrocities committed in the government’s concentration camps.
“Women detainees have had their vaginas and rectums penetrated by electric shock rods and iron bars. Women were raped by men paying to be allowed into the detention centre for the purpose,” the Tribunal found. “One young woman of twenty or twenty-one was gang raped by policemen in front of an audience of a hundred people all forced to watch.”
Chinese authorities claim the concentration camps are “vocational and education training centers” meant to improve the opportunities of impoverished indigenous people.
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Smith did not specifically mention these atrocities, but said that it would seek to meet with members of the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP), a human rights advocacy group, to discuss the genocide. He also confirmed, ” Warner Bros. Discovery will not broadcast the program on the company’s broadcast networks or streaming platforms. This decision applies to the company’s distribution in Asia and more broadly around the world.”
Smith added that the original video published by CGTN used the Discovery Channel logo and claimed that this was “inconsistent with the production agreement,” leading to CGTN removing the offending video.
“I’m glad that Warner Brothers acknowledged it made a mistake by partnering with the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] on this project,” Rep. Banks said in a statement on Thursday responding to the letter. “Moving forward, I hope the company learns from their meeting with the Uyghur Human Rights Project and continues to distance itself from Beijing.”
Xi Jinping has spearheaded efforts to flood international media with pro-regime propaganda. In 2018, the dictator hosted a two-day meeting to discuss ways to improve state propaganda in which he demanded his officials “reject the vulgar, the base and the kitsch. Put forward more healthy, high quality internet works of culture and art.”
International partnerships are key to the success of Chinese regime propaganda. The propaganda partnerships have been more successful in countries tied to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China’s debt-trap infrastructure program, such as Italy. In the United States, however, China has had some success with partnerships between Chinese and American newspapers. Beijing also successfully cooperated with Disney on the production of Mulan, filmed partially in occupied East Turkistan and featuring thank-you credits for the perpetrators of the Uyghur genocide.
The Discovery Channel has also produced content outside of China with ties to questionable human rights situations. In June, the Discovery Channel’s international broadcasts aired a documentary titled Explore The Line: City of Future in the Deserts of Saudi – NEOM City, promoting Riyadh’s flagship “Vision 2030″ project, the future city of Neom. The documentary featured an interview with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in which he claimed “Neom will compete with Miami in terms of entertainment, culture, sports, and retail” and that it was being built on “empty” land.
In reality, Neom is located in the ancestral land of the Huwaitat tribe, who have accused the Saudi government of violently displacing them and killing some of its most vocal activists.
“For the Huwaitat tribe, Neom is being built on our blood, on our bones,” Huwaitat activist Alia Hayel Aboutiyah al-Huwaiti told the Guardian in 2020. “It’s definitely not for the people already living there! It’s for tourists, people with money. But not for the original people living there.”
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