State Council Information Office
The State Council Information Office (SCIO; ), also called the Central Office of Foreign Propaganda, is an administrative office under the State Council, the chief administrative body of the People's Republic of China. History. The SCIO was formed in 1991 when the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) made the External Propaganda Leading Group of the Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party its own 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 Propaganda Department but still connected to it and was the "public face of this new direction in foreign propaganda work." The office formerly had responsibility for Internet censorship. The SCIO's Internet Affairs Bureau dealt with internet censorship in China and repressed "disruptive" (anti-Chinese government) activity on the web in mainland China. However, in May 2011, the SCIO transferred the offices which regulated the internet to a new subordinate agency, the Cyberspace Administration of China. In 2014, the SCIO was absorbed into the CCP's Propaganda Department. In November  2020, the director of the SCIO, Xu Lin, gave a speech in which he emphasized the need for the CCP to reinforce its control over commercial media ventures.