China’s latest media stars are 14 photogenic wild elephants who wandered 500 kilometres from their home to end up on the outskirts of the southwestern city of Kunming. Images of the elephants nuzzling each other to sleep have whizzed around the world, accompanying stories outlining officials’ desperate attempts to guide the herd home. “Thanks to the elephants, an image of a real and caring China is emerging,” trumpeted the Global Times newspaper. This is no coincidence; the cuddly elephants are the latest weapon in President Xi Jinping’s propaganda offensive to present a more “lovable” global image of China.

The elephants are just one manifestation of Beijing’s decade-long obsession with boosting what it calls its “discourse power”. President Xi firmly believes that Beijing needs to upgrade its global image in fitting with its status as the world’s second largest economy. To that end, it’s been steadily redrawing the global media landscape through the overseas expansion of its state-run media, the acquisition of stakes in foreign news outlets by pro-China businesspeople and the construction of global communications infrastructure, such as its satellite television network across Africa.

When it comes to the global image war, the narrative battle that has raged between China and the US over COVID’s origins is just one skirmish in a much wider campaign. Yet the impact of the pandemic has been to supercharge the conflict, reshaping the battlefield and allowing Beijing to take advantage of Washington’s distraction at a time of domestic Trump-related turmoil.

In the past year, Beijing’s cadre of “wolf warrior” diplomats has aggressively used social media to spread disinformation, in particular spreading the conspiracy theory that the coronavirus originated in the United States. China’s also used paid trolls and ordinary citizens in influence campaigns, for example to deny abuses against the Uighur ethnic minority. It’s moved on from its original aim of “telling China’s story well” to produce region-specific propaganda, sometimes designed to increase distrust in liberal democratic systems.

This represents a more assertive strategy, harnessing the web of content-sharing agreements it has already built, which offers Chinese propaganda for free to overseas news outlets. Beijing is also spending millions placing advertorials in foreign newspapers. Beijing’s sheer propaganda reach was revealed during a single week during the March meeting of China’s legislative assembly, when the People’s Daily boasted that it had placed a total of 4500 articles – or “media drops” as it terms them – in 12 languages in 200 news outlets.

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In the pre-COVID era, Beijing also bought sympathetic coverage in foreign papers by offering free junkets to China for foreign journalists, wowing them with five-star treatment. Dozens of high-profile Australian journalists have availed themselves of such tours; many wrote breathless, wide-eyed paeans echoing the party line on China’s warp-speed economic development. Wittingly or not, they ended up telling China’s story well.

It is one indication of Beijing’s surprising sophistication at propaganda that even though the first known COVID-19 outbreak originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan, China has managed to leverage the pandemic to bolster its global reputation. In research for the International Federation of Journalists, our survey of journalism unions in 50 countries found that almost 60 per cent of respondents judged that coverage of China in their country had become more positive since the COVID outbreak. The vast majority – more than 90 per cent – of those surveyed had received Chinese medical aid, while 42 per cent were recipients of China’s COVID vaccine. In vaccine recipient countries, the predominant narrative regarding China’s handling of the pandemic was twice as likely to be positive.

Meanwhile, chaotic American and European responses to the pandemic played into China’s hands, since they resulted in developing countries publicly pleading for Beijing’s help in providing masks, PPE and medical aid. The deliveries of these provided an opportunity for dramatic and public shows of gratitude, such as gigantic billboards bearing the words “Thank you, brother Xi!” in the streets of the Serbian capital. In Tunisia the opening of a Chinese-funded $70 million hospital caused many Tunisians to view Beijing as a saviour. In this way, Chinese aid donations do double duty by providing Beijing with propaganda wins that project its image as a responsible member of the international community.