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Begin New Search Political Geography China Author Albert Zhang

1. Countering China’s coercive diplomacy: Prioritising economic security, sovereignty and the rules-based order

Author:
Fergus Hunter, Daria Impiombato, Yvonne Lau, Adam Triggs, Albert Zhang, and Urmika Deb
Publication Date:
02-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is increasingly using a range of economic and non-economic tools to punish, influence and deter foreign governments in its foreign relations. Coercive actions have become a key part of the PRC’s toolkit as it takes a more assertive position in international disputes and seeks to reshape the global order in its favour. This research finds that the PRC’s use of coercive tactics is now sitting at levels well above those seen a decade ago, or even five years ago. The year 2020 marked a peak, and the use of trade restrictions and state-issued threats have become favoured methods. The tactics have been used in disputes over governments’ decisions on human rights, national security and diplomatic relations.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Sovereignty, Economic Security, and Coercion
Political Geography:
China and Asia

2. Gaming public opinion: The CCP’s increasingly sophisticated cyber-enabled influence operations

Author:
Albert Zhang, Tilla Hoja, and Jasmine Latimore
Publication Date:
04-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) embrace of large-scale online influence operations and spreading of disinformation on Western social-media platforms has escalated since the first major attribution from Silicon Valley companies in 2019. While Chinese public diplomacy may have shifted to a softer tone in 2023 after many years of wolf-warrior online rhetoric, the Chinese Government continues to conduct global covert cyber-enabled influence operations. Those operations are now more frequent, increasingly sophisticated and increasingly effective in supporting the CCP’s strategic goals. They focus on disrupting the domestic, foreign, security and defence policies of foreign countries, and most of all they target democracies. Currently—in targeted democracies—most political leaders, policymakers, businesses, civil society groups and publics have little understanding of how the CCP currently engages in clandestine activities online in their countries, even though this activity is escalating and evolving quickly. The stakes are high for democracies, given the indispensability of the internet and their reliance on open online spaces, free from interference. Despite years of monitoring covert CCP cyber-enabled influence operations by social-media platforms, governments, and research institutes such as ASPI, definitive public attribution of the actors driving these activities is rare. Covert online operations, by design, are difficult to detect and attribute to state actors. Social-media platforms and governments struggle to devote adequate resources to identifying, preventing and deterring increasing levels of malicious activity, and sometimes they don’t want to name and shame the Chinese Government for political, economic and/or commercial reasons.
Topic:
Public Opinion, Cybersecurity, Social Media, and Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
Political Geography:
China and Asia

3. Suppressing the truth and spreading lies: How the CCP is influencing Solomon Islands’ information environment

Author:
Blake Johnson, Miah Hammond-Errey, Daria Impiombato, Albert Zhang, and Joshua Dunne
Publication Date:
10-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is attempting to influence public discourse in Solomon Islands through coordinated information operations that seek to spread false narratives and suppress information on a range of topics. Following the November 2021 Honiara riots and the March 2022 leaking of the China – Solomon Islands security agreement, the CCP has used its propaganda and disinformation capabilities to push false narratives in an effort to shape the Solomon Islands public’s perception of security issues and foreign partners. In alignment with the CCP’s regional security objectives, those messages have a strong focus on undermining Solomon Islands’ existing partnerships with Australia and the US. Although some of the CCP’s messaging occurs through routine diplomatic engagement, there’s a coordinated effort to influence the population across a broad spectrum of information channels. That spectrum includes Chinese party-state media, CCP official-led statements and publications in local and social media, and the amplification of particular individual and pro-CCP content via targeted Facebook groups. There’s now growing evidence to suggest that CCP officials are also seeking to suppress information that doesn’t align with the party-state’s narratives across the Pacific islands through the coercion of local journalists and media institutions.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Propaganda, Disinformation, and Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
Political Geography:
China, Solomon Islands, and Asia-Pacific

4. Assessing the impact of CCP information operations related to Xinjiang

Author:
Albert Zhang and Tilla Hoja
Publication Date:
07-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is using technology to enforce transnational digital repression and influence unwitting audiences beyond China’s territory. This includes using increasingly sophisticated online tactics to deny, distract from and deter revelations or claims of human rights abuses, including the arbitrary detention, mass sterilisation and cultural degradation of minorities in Xinjiang. Instead of improving its treatment of Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities, the CCP is responding to critiques of its current actions against human rights by coordinating its state propaganda apparatus, security agencies and public relations industry to silence and shape Xinjiang narratives at home and abroad. Central to the CCP’s efforts is the exploitation of US-based social media and content platforms. CCP online public diplomacy is bolstered by covert and coercive campaigns that impose costs and seek to constrain international entities—be they states, corporations or individuals—from offering evidence-based critiques of the party-state’s record on human rights in Xinjiang and Hong Kong and other sensitive issues. This asymmetric access to US-based social media platforms allows the CCP to continue testing online tactics, measuring responses and improving its influence and interference capabilities, in both overt and covert ways, across a spectrum of topics. The impact of these operations isn’t widely understood, and the international community has failed to adequately respond to the global challenges posed by the CCP’s rapidly evolving propaganda and disinformation operations. This report seeks to increase awareness about this problem based on publicly available information.
Topic:
Human Rights, Propaganda, Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Uyghurs, and Information
Political Geography:
China, Asia, and Xinjiang

5. Trigger warning. The CCP’s coordinated information effort to discredit the BBC

Author:
Jacob Wallis, Albert Zhang, and Ariel Bogle
Publication Date:
03-2021
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) diplomatic accounts, Chinese state media, pro-CCP influencers and patriotic trolls are targeting the UK public broadcaster, the BBC, in a coordinated information operation. Recent BBC reports, including the allegations of systematic sexual assault in Xinjiang’s internment camps, were among a number of triggers provoking the CCP’s propaganda apparatus to discredit the BBC, distract international attention and recapture control of the narrative. In ASPI ICPC’s new report, Albert Zhang and Dr Jacob Wallis provide a snapshot of the CCP’s ongoing coordinated response targeting the BBC, which leveraged YouTube, Twitter and Facebook and was broadly framed around three prominent narratives: That the BBC spreads disinformation and is biased against China That the BBC’s domestic audiences think that it’s biased and not to be trusted That the BBC’s reporting on China is instigated by foreign actors and intelligence agencies. In addition, the report analyses some of the secondary effects of this propaganda effort by exploring the mobilisation of a pro-CCP Twitter network that has previously amplified the Covid-19 disinformation content being pushed by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and whose negative online engagement with the BBC peaks on the same days as that of the party-state’s diplomats and state media. To contest and blunt criticism of the CCP’s systematic surveillance and control of minority ethnic groups, the party will continue to aggressively deploy its propaganda and disinformation apparatus. Domestic control remains fundamental to its political power and legitimacy, and internationally narrative control is fundamental to the pursuit of its foreign policy interests.
Topic:
Media, Journalism, Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and BBC
Political Geography:
China, Asia, and Australia

6. Strange bedfellows on Xinjiang: The CCP, fringe media and US social media platforms

Author:
Albert Zhang, Jacob Wallis, and Zoe Meers
Publication Date:
03-2021
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
This report explores how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), fringe media and pro-CCP online actors seek—sometimes in unison—to shape and influence international perceptions of the Chinese Government’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang, including through the amplification of disinformation. United States (US) based social media networks, including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, along with Chinese-owned TikTok (owned by Chinese company ByteDance), are centre stage for this global effort. The Chinese Government continues to deny human rights abuses in Xinjiang despite a proliferation of credible evidence, including media reporting, independent research, testimonies and open-source data, that has revealed abuses including forced labour, mass detention, surveillance, sterilisation, cultural erasure and alleged genocide in the region. To distract from such human rights abuses, covert and overt online information campaigns have been deployed to portray positive narratives about the CCP’s domestic policies in the region, while also injecting disinformation into the global public discourse regarding Xinjiang. The report’s key findings: Since early 2020, there’s been a stark increase in the Chinese Government and state media’s use of US social media networks to push alternative narratives and disinformation about the situation in Xinjiang. Chinese state media accounts have been most successful in using Facebook to engage and reach an international audience. The CCP is using tactics including leveraging US social media platforms to criticise and smear Uyghur victims, journalists and researchers who work on this topic, as well as their organisations. We expect these efforts to escalate in 2021. Chinese Government officials and state media are increasingly amplifying content, including disinformation, produced by fringe media and conspiracist websites that are often sympathetic to the narrative positioning of authoritarian regimes. This amplifies the reach and influence of these sites in the Western media ecosystem. Senior officials from multilateral organisations, including the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations (UN), have also played a role in sharing such content. The Xinjiang Audio-Video Publishing House, a publishing organisation owned by a regional government bureau and affiliated with the CCP’s United Front Work Department, has funded a marketing company to create videos depicting Uyghurs as supportive of the Chinese Government’s policies in Xinjiang. Those videos were then amplified on Twitter and YouTube by a network of inauthentic accounts. The Twitter accounts also retweeted and liked non-Xinjiang-related tweets by Chinese diplomatic officials and Chinese state-affiliated media in 2020.
Topic:
Human Rights, Media, Social Media, and Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
Political Geography:
China, United States of America, and Xinjiang

7. #StopXinjiang Rumors: The CCP’s decentralised disinformation campaign

Author:
Fergus Ryan, Ariel Bogle, Albert Zhang, and Jacob Wallis
Publication Date:
12-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
This report analyses two Chinese state-linked networks seeking to influence discourse about Xinjiang across platforms including Twitter and YouTube. This activity targeted the Chinese-speaking diaspora as well as international audiences, sharing content in a variety of languages. Both networks attempted to shape international perceptions about Xinjiang, among other themes. Despite evidence to the contrary, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) denies committing human rights abuses in the region and has mounted multifaceted and multiplatform information campaigns to deny accusations of forced labour, mass detention, surveillance, sterilisation, cultural erasure and alleged genocide in the region. Those efforts have included using Western social media platforms to both push back against and undermine media reports, research and Uyghurs’ testimony about Xinjiang, as well as to promote alternative narratives. In the datasets we examined, inauthentic and potentially automated accounts using a variety of image and video content shared content aimed at rebutting the evidence of human rights violations against the Uyghur population. Likewise, content was shared using fake Uyghur accounts and other shell accounts promoting video ‘testimonials’ from Uyghurs talking about their happy lives in China. Our analysis includes two datasets removed by Twitter: Dataset 1: ‘Xinjiang Online’ (CNHU) consisted of 2,046 accounts and 31,269 tweets. Dataset 2: ‘Changyu Culture’ (CNCC) consisted of 112 accounts and 35,924 tweets. The networks showed indications of being linked by theme and tactics; however, neither achieved significant organic engagement on Twitter overall—although there was notable interaction with the accounts of CCP diplomats. There were signs of old accounts being repurposed, whether purchased or stolen, and little attempt to craft authentic personas. Twitter has attributed both datasets to the Chinese government, the latter dataset is specifically linked to a company called Changyu Culture, which is connected to the Xinjiang provincial government. This attribution was uncovered by ASPI ICPC in the report Strange bedfellows on Xinjiang: the CCP, fringe media and US social media platforms.
Topic:
Human Rights, Diaspora, Social Media, Disinformation, Misinformation, and Twitter
Political Geography:
China, United States of America, and Xinjiang

8. Borrowing mouths to speak on Xinjiang

Author:
Fergus Ryan, Ariel Bogle, Nathan Ruser, Albert Zhang, and Daria Impiombato
Publication Date:
12-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
This report explores how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) uses foreign social media influencers to shape and push messages domestically and internationally about Xinjiang that are aligned with its own preferred narratives. Our research has found key instances in which Chinese state entities have supported influencers in the creation of social media content in Xinjiang, as well as amplified influencer content that supports pro-CCP narratives. That content broadly seeks to debunk Western media reporting and academic research, refute statements by foreign governments and counter allegations of widespread human rights abuses in Xinjiang. Often, such content is then promoted by party-state media and diplomatic accounts across major international social media networks and in Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) briefings. This trend is particularly notable given the difficulty faced by journalists reporting in Xinjiang. Our research also examines how the CCP’s use of foreign influencers presents a growing challenge to global social media platforms, and in particular their efforts to identify and label state-affiliated accounts. This report focuses on the promotion of foreign influencers who disseminate content about Xinjiang on US-based social media and content networks, including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, as well as on Chinese platforms such as Bilibili. The report analyses this unique online influencer ecosystem and examines three in-depth case studies with a focus on Xinjiang-focused foreign influencer content and the amplification of that content by Chinese state entities. The Chinese party-state continues to deny allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang, including forced labour, mass detention and cultural erasure. Previous work by ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre (ICPC) has found Chinese party-state entities using US social media networks in an effort to create greater ambiguity about the situation in Xinjiang, push a counter-narrative and amplify disinformation. It has also found that the CCP uses tactics, including leveraging US social media platforms, to criticise and smear Uyghur victims, journalists and researchers who work on this topic, as well as their organisations. Other tactics have included temporal and narrative alignment between pro-CCP social media influencers and state entities (for example, targeting the BBC over its reporting on allegations of systematic rape in Xinjiang’s internment camps, among other stories) as well as the amplification of content that depicts Uyghurs as broadly supportive of the Chinese Government’s policies in Xinjiang.
Topic:
Social Media, Propaganda, Disinformation, Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and Influencers
Political Geography:
China and Xinjiang

9. Retweeting through the Great Firewall: A persistent and undeterred threat actor

Author:
Jake Wallis, Tom Uren, Elise Thomas, Albert Zhang, Samantha Hoffman, Lin Li, Alex Pascoe, and Danielle Cave
Publication Date:
06-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
This report analyses a persistent, large-scale influence campaign linked to Chinese state actors on Twitter and Facebook. This activity largely targeted Chinese-speaking audiences outside of the Chinese mainland (where Twitter is blocked) with the intention of influencing perceptions on key issues, including the Hong Kong protests, exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui and, to a lesser extent Covid-19 and Taiwan. Extrapolating from the takedown dataset, to which we had advanced access, given to us by Twitter, we have identified that this operation continues and has pivoted to try to weaponise the US Government’s response to current domestic protests and create the perception of a moral equivalence with the suppression of protests in Hong Kong.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Internet, Social Media, COVID-19, Misinformation, and Twitter
Political Geography:
China and Asia

10. Covid-19 attracts patriotic troll campaigns in support of China’s geopolitical interests

Author:
Albert Zhang and Elise Thomas
Publication Date:
04-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
Abstract:
This new research highlights the growing significance and impact of Chinese non-state actors on western social media platforms. Across March and April 2020, this loosely coordinated pro-China trolling campaign on Twitter has: Harassed and mimicked western media outlets; Impersonated Taiwanese users in an effort to undermine Taiwan’s position with the World Health Organisation (WHO); Spread false information about the Covid-19 outbreak; Joined in pre-existing inauthentic social media campaigns.
Topic:
World Health Organization, Non State Actors, Geopolitics, Social Media, COVID-19, Misinformation, and Twitter
Political Geography:
China, Taiwan, Asia, and Australia