Initium, recently published an article detailing the structure and functions of China's central propaganda department which was re-published by Advox, the international organisation for media rights, on November 12, 2017. Noting the central Propaganda outfit is now headed by Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC) member Wang Huning, it said the CCP C'S Propaganda Department will now further propagate and theorise Xi Jinping's “China Dream” of national revival inside and outside China. It said that following the 1989 crackdown on the 'democracy' movement on June 4 in Tiananmen, the Propaganda (now called Publicity) Department came back to the political core with its leader nominated a member of the CCP CC Politburo Standing Committee. The Publicity Department today governs four key areas:

i) Ideology: The department is in charge of the Theory Bureau and the Education Bureau. The two bureaus often publish articles on CCP theories and policies.

ii) Culture and arts: The Publicity Department has become the curator of culture and art production. It leads the Ministry of Culture, the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television (SARFT) together with other culture and arts-related official organizations such as China Federation of Literary and Art and China Writers Association.

iii) Education and research: The Publicity Department is in charge of the national ideological and political education curriculum. In addition, it controls the humanities and social science research in the country by leading the national philosophy and social science planning team in allocating billions of Chinese Yuan for national social science research. In 2017 alone, there were more than 10 research topic titles that began with “President Xi Jinping's Thought on…”

iv) International publicity: The department leads an International Communication Office which is responsible for interacting with foreign media and delivering the Chinese news and policy to the world.

The Publicity Department also invests in “foreign media” such as Nouvelles d'Europe (欧洲时报) and China Times (旺报) to report positively on China among overseas Chinese communities. In China, all domestic newspapers, periodicals and publishing houses are either government or party affiliated and the Publicity Department can exercise direct supervising power.

The latest development is that the new director of SARFT Nie Chenxi is also the Vice Minister of the Publicity Department. Nie also heads the Cyberspace Administration of China and the Office of the CCP Central Leading Group for Cyberspaces Affairs. This implies that the administration of both conventional and new media answers to the Publicity Department.