Rattled by the mounting global pressure for its handling of the coronavirus outbreak and pro-democracy agitation in Hong Kong, the Chinese establishment appears to have unleashed a digital warfare — a massive cross-platform network of coordinated propaganda.
A New York-based intelligence firm, Graphika, has recently published a report suggesting how Beijing might be using YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter to influence public opinion across the world on the topics sensitive to the Chinese establishment.
Titled Spamouflage Dragon, the Graphika report, acknowledged by Gooogle’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG), found out the Chinese used hacked accounts from Bangladesh as assets.
Social-media platforms operating in the mainland are now flooded with fake messages of Indian troops making intrusions into the Chinese territory.
Misleading Chinese propaganda on social-media platforms.
Misleading Chinese propaganda on social-media platforms.
Misleading Chinese propaganda on social-media platforms.
Misleading Chinese propaganda on social-media platforms.
Video clips of the 1962 conflict are also being circulated apparently to provoke nationalistic sentiments in China.
Earlier this week, the TAG confirmed that it had removed 1,000 YouTube channels, believed to part of a sophisticated propaganda network backed by China’s state actors, since March.
While Google and Facebook remain banned in China, China-affiliated platforms, such as TikTok, have a censored version in the country.
But in India and the rest of the democratic world, the same platform is used as a preferred medium of disinformation.
Recently the India government asked TikTok to moderate its content in the light of reports that the platform was used to spread Covid-related misinformation.
China has also apparently been using a separate international propaganda network with regard to police violence in Hong Kong.
A China-linked campaign recently photoshopped images of police in foreign countries to suggest they supported Chinese actions in Hong Kong.
This is really disgusting pic.twitter.com/7MOyABMYSU
— (@goodboynotfun) May 20, 2020
Countries like Australia are investigating the social-media propaganda that falsely showed their police defending the use of force in last year’s Hong Kong protests, news reports said.
