State Council Information Office


The State Council Information Office is the chief information office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China and an external name of the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party.
Historically, SCIO was the external name of the Office of External Propaganda of the Chinese Communist Party under an arrangement termed "one institution with two names." In 2014, OEP was absorbed into the Central Propaganda Department, turning SCIO into an external nameplate.

History

The SCIO was formed in 1991 when the CCP Central Committee decided that the External Propaganda Leading Group of the CCP Central Committee should have the name of State Council Information Office externally. The External Propaganda Leading Group was transformed into the Office of External Propaganda, officially called in English as the International Communications Office. The office was created with the goal of improving the Chinese government's international image following the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre. According to scholar Anne-Marie Brady, the SCIO became a separate unit from the CCP Central Propaganda Department but still connected to it and was the "public face of this new direction in foreign propaganda work."
In May 2014, the OEP was formally abolished, with its functions absorbed into the CCP's Central Propaganda Department. The SCIO turned into an external nameplate for the Propaganda Department, used primarily for activities of one of its bureaus. In September 2018, the Press Conference Hall of the SCIO was moved from 225 Chaoyangmennei Street, Dongcheng District to the Beijing Telegraph Building in 11 West Chang'an Avenue, Xicheng District.

Structure

Before its absorption to the Propaganda Department, the OEP had nine functional bureaus, with corresponding ones in the SCIO, as well as supervised organs. It oversaw the China Foreign Languages Publishing Administration, while its seventh bureau oversaw the China Society for Human Rights Studies, a front group established in 1993 dealing with human rights-related narratives towards China.
The SCIO oversees the China Internet Information Center. The SCIO formerly had responsibility for internet censorship in China, with its Internet Affairs Bureau overseeing internet censorship and the suppression of "disruptive" activity on the web in mainland China. In May 2011, the SCIO transferred the offices, namely its fifth and ninth bureaus, which regulated the internet to a new subordinate agency, the State Internet Information Office. In May 2014, with the abolishment of the OEP, the SIIO was absorbed into the newly established Central Leading Group for Cybersecurity and Informatization.
Since the 2014 merger SCIO's nine bureaus are now controlled by the Central Propaganda Department, sometimes used by the department's bureaus as external nameplates.

List of directors

Every SCIO director except Zhao Qizheng have also served as deputy heads of the Central Propaganda Department.
NameChinese nameTook officeLeft office
Zhu Muzhi朱穆之1991November 1992
Zeng Jianhui曾建徽November 1992April 1998
Zhao Qizheng趙啟正April 19986 August 2005
Cai Wu蔡武6 August 200530 March 2008
Wang Chen王晨30 March 200826 April 2013
Cai Mingzhao蔡名照26 April 20139 January 2015
Jiang Jianguo蒋建国9 January 201525 July 2018
Xu Lin徐麟21 August 20189 June 2022
Sun Yeli孙业礼17 January 202311 April 2024
Mo Gaoyi莫高义11 April 2024Incumbent