Tell China’s conspiracy well: Networks and narratives of anti-CCP YouTube conspiracy theorists

In recent years, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has intensified its propaganda efforts beyond the Great Firewall, aiming to ‘tell China’s story well’ to global audiences. Meanwhile, many YouTube influencers have emerged to tell the opposite kind of stories – anti-CCP conspiracy theories – which have attracted millions of Chinese-speaking viewers both inside and outside China. Drawing on Habermas’s theory of communicative action, this study combines social network analysis and critical discourse analysis to examine the networks and narratives of these conspiratorial actors. We identified a strategically coordinated Falun Gong group, a tightly knitted Whistle-blower Movement block, and a loosely connected residual of political dissidents. Through critical discourse analysis of seven central channels, we illustrate how anti-CCP conspiracy theorists legitimize their extraordinary claims by (1) leaping from basic facts to morally embellished informative fictions and (2) making reassuring doomsday predictions that dissipate revolutionary potential. We show how anti-CCP conspiracy theorists exploit progressive ideals for strategic purposes, complicating the notion of dissent while demonstrating that the dichotomy of ‘authoritarianism versus anti-authoritarianism’ is inadequate for capturing the complexities of the transnational Chinese-language media ecology today.