The US State Department’s Global Engagement Center has presented a report accusing the People’s Republic of China, or PRC, of manipulating the flow of global information for its own advantage. Beijing is spending billions of dollars to construct a network of resources that will help it spread disinformation and promote propagandas that can project the Asian giant in a positive light in front of the world.
Beijing aims to “construct an information ecosystem in which PRC propaganda and disinformation gain traction and become dominant,” the report states. “Unchecked, the PRC’s efforts will reshape the global information landscape, creating biases and gaps that could even lead nations to make decisions that subordinate their economic and security interests to Beijing’s,” it further added.
China is a habitual offender that has been planting false news on social media regarding origins of COVID-19 virus since outbreak happened in the year 2020. China has also been actively involved in spreading hate campaigns during the US elections in order to get a desired result. Now this latest State Department report has projected China as even more dangerous than before as now the Dragon is working globally and is not just focused on topic or event.
Beijing has honed its skills to such an extent that it can shape the information catering to specific nation, group, or individual’s taste and possibly the information available in academia and society would be available in a distorted form to suit China’s agenda.
Chinese Embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyuhas claimedthat the US report is yet another tool to pull China down and boost American supremacy. “A quick look at its [the report’s] summary is enough to know what it is about: heightening ideological confrontation, spreading disinformation, and smearing China’s domestic and foreign policies,” Liu said. “We urge the
U.S. to reflect on itself, stop framing China for the so-called ‘information manipulation.'”
The State Department report delves deep into publicly available and newly acquired government information.”As the PRC has grown more confident in its power, it appears to have calculated that it can more aggressively pursue its interests,” it says. The State Department report has keenly observed China’s tactics and points at a dynamicstyle of working that involved expansive state-run media, surveillance technologies, financial and political coercion and Chinese-language media. All this, and more, in totality has pulled together an information network that uses bots, trolls, and government machinery to resonate pro-China feeling across the world while countering its opponents with equal force.
The report also discloses China’s failure to achieve the desired impact in Western and Western-leaning nations as they had never let their guards down.”When targeting democratic countries, Beijing has encountered major setbacks, often due to the pushback from local media and civil society,” the report states. “Although backed by unprecedented resources, the PRC’s propaganda and censorship have, to date, yielded mixed results.”
The report is further backed by observations done by Meta, the social media company behind Facebook and Instagram. Meta called Chinese-sponsored disinformation operation
In the world as “Spamouflage” and started its own clean-up measures in August this year. “Despite the very large number of accounts and platforms it used, Spamouflage consistently struggled to reach beyond its own (fake) echo chamber,” Meta said. “Only a few instances have been reported when Spamouflage content on Twitter and YouTube was amplified by real-world influencers.”
Researchers such as Bret Schafer, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Alliance for Securing Democracy believe that Beijing was able infiltrate the information system of the West. “China’s most successful influence efforts have always been smaller in scale and more targeted, like the effort to harass dissidents and critics.””It reminded the world that China is investing time and resources to manipulate the information environment,” he said while calling the US report an early wake up call.
Another report from Microsoft suggests that Beijing has started using artificial intelligence (AI) to create content that is pleasing to the eye and at the same also promotes its agendas. “This relatively high-quality visual content has already drawn higher levels of engagement from authentic social media users,” Microsoft said in its report. “Users have more frequently reposted these visuals, despite common indicators of AI-generation.”
US General Paul Nakasone while answering a query regarding use of AI and the upcoming U.S. presidential election at the National Press Club in Washington said, “Russia, China, others are going to try to use this technology.” Nakasone heads U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency. He was wary of China’s influence on the global information network and how China can weaponize technology for its own good. The US State Department report overall concludes that the PRC’s information tinkeringbid primarily constitutes fivey elements: leveraging propaganda and censorship, promoting digital authoritarianism, exploiting international organizations and bilateral partnerships, pairing co-optation and pressure, and exercising control over Chinese-language media. China can use these five elements to pull strings of global information environment and create an mirage in the cyber world that can bend the world to its whims and fancies. It can affect a country’s election result, create conflictbetween countries, post false maps, and can even lead nations to make decisions that goes very well with Beijing’s interests.
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