EPR Editorial Team3 min read
Part of EPR's Public Affairs and Political Communications pillar. See also: Government Relations & Lobbying and the companion study, The AI Lobbying Industry Map 2026.
China has paid U.S. lobbying, public affairs, and communications firms more than $418 million since 2016, according to OpenSecrets analysis of Department of Justice FARA filings.
That makes China the largest foreign purchaser of FARA-registered influence activity in the United States over the last decade.
The composition of that spending is now changing. State-media spending is declining in relative importance. Corporate lobbying by Chinese technology companies is becoming a larger share of the market.
EPR Research and 5W today released The China Lobbying Industry Map™ 2026, documenting Chinese government, state-owned enterprise, and Chinese-headquartered company lobbying and public relations activity in the United States.
Per OpenSecrets analysis of Department of Justice FARA filings, China has paid FARA-registered U.S. firms more than $418 million since 2016 — more than any other country in the world. The vast majority of that historical spend has flowed to two Chinese state-run media outlets — CCTV and China Daily.
When state media is excluded, China's "traditional" lobbying spend has generally trailed Saudi Arabia, Japan, and South Korea. Japan was the top FARA spender in 2024 at $48.5 million.
The most significant single-company shift in 2025 was Tencent America, the U.S. arm of the Chinese multimedia conglomerate.
Tencent's spending increase was one of the largest year-over-year lobbying escalations by a Chinese-headquartered company in recent years.
| Period | Federal Lobbying Spend |
|---|---|
| 2020–2024 Quarterly Average | ~$200,000 |
| Q2 2025 | $760,000 |
| Q3 2025 | $1.5 million |
The acceleration follows Tencent's January 2025 addition to the Department of Defense's list of Chinese military companies. Tencent's 2025 lobbyist roster is unusually concentrated in former Trump-aligned operatives:
John McEntee — former head of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel during Trump's first term. Received $400,000 from Tencent across two quarters in 2025.
MO Strategies (Marty Obst, former Pence aide and Trump campaign leadership) — received $530,000 in Q3 2025 alone.
Hogan Lovells — received $410,000 in Q3 2025. Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck and Mercury Public Affairs were also retained in Q3 2025.
Deep dive: Tencent's Washington Buildout — Inside China's Fastest-Growing Lobbying Campaign.
If Tencent represents escalation, ByteDance represents normalization.
Following its U.S. ownership restructuring, ByteDance's lobbying activity moved in the opposite direction. ByteDance spent approximately $10.4 million on federal lobbying in 2024. After the January 2026 deal that finalized U.S. ownership restructuring through Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX, ByteDance reported $1.6 million in Q1 2026 lobbying — down roughly 45 percent year-over-year from $2.8 million in Q1 2025.
In February 2025, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memorandum curtailing FARA enforcement actions, calling for limiting FARA criminal cases to those involving "more traditional espionage" and ending the Foreign Influence Task Force established after the 2016 election. The Justice Department has not announced a new FARA case since September 2024.
Deep dive: The Post-Bondi FARA Environment — How One Memo Reshaped the Foreign-Influence Market.
Jones Day — represented the Chinese embassy and Chinese state-owned enterprises since 1986.
Hogan Lovells — represented the People's Republic of China on WTO and trade matters since 2003.
WPP affiliates (Wexler & Walker, Hill & Knowlton) — historic earnings leader on China lobbying and PR work.
The China lobbying market is no longer primarily a government-affairs story. Increasingly, it is a technology-company story.
Tencent, ByteDance, and other Chinese firms operating in global markets now face the same Washington realities as major U.S. technology companies: regulatory scrutiny, national-security review, antitrust concerns, and political risk.
China is the foreign principal that has paid more money to U.S. FARA-registered firms than any other country since 2016. The composition of that spending is now shifting — away from state media production and toward direct corporate lobbying by Chinese-headquartered companies operating in U.S. markets, particularly in technology, gaming, social media, and finance.
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