China’s state television has posted a video introducing Xinjiang’s culture and food in what scholars are calling “panda diplomacy” — an attempt to whitewash the mass detention of Uyghurs in the region.

CCTV News on Sunday posted a video on Weibo featuring Uyghur celebrities Nigermaidi Zechman and Dilraba Dilmurat, as well as Tong Liya, an actress of Xibe ethnicity who was born in Xinjiang. The video was three and a half minutes long and introduced Xinjiang’s geography, culture and specialty foods.

“Our Xinjiang is a great place, wonderful ranches north and south of Tianshan,” Nigermaidi said in the video, quoting a song. Tong said it was “wondrous” to experience the customs of the region’s ethnic minorities.

The video was reposted nearly 20,000 times on Weibo on Sunday and drew nearly 10,000 comments, many by fans of the celebrities.

On May 31, Chinese President Xi Jinping told a Politburo group study session that officials needed to “better construct China’s stories and tell China’s discourse and narratives” and promote a more “reliable, admirable and respectable” image.

Mainland-based political scholar Wu Qiang told Apple Daily that China’s propaganda efforts are starting to shift from “wolf warrior” to “panda diplomacy.”

“The Xinjiang video is unquestionably a signal of ‘panda diplomacy,’ by using the most popular Uyghur celebrities and those born in Xinjiang,” Wu said, adding that Chinese authorities are trying to create an image of “ethnic solidarity and peace.”

Wu said the videos might achieve a propaganda victory at home, but the international community has become skeptical of China’s claims. Propaganda efforts cannot achieve genuine openness, dialogue and understanding, he added.

Veteran political commentator Johnny Lau said that the video focused on culture, travel and food as an alternative to politics. That strategy can be easily undermined when foreign countries bring up negative news related to Xinjiang, he said.

Hong Kong Baptist University journalism lecturer Bruce Lui said the recent shift showed that the “wolf warrior” approach had clearly failed. Beijing might want to use “softer” propaganda methods to subtly alter the international consensus, but it continues to rule Xinjiang with an iron fist.

More than a million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities have been held in camps in Xinjiang, with some reporting mistreatment, according to rights groups, activists and researchers. Beijing initially denied the existence of the camps, but later said they are vocational training facilities designed to combat religious extremism.

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