(TibetanReview.net, Feb18’24) – China appears to have co-opted, through the agency of a Beijing public relations firm, more than 100 websites in 30 countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America to push its propaganda information at local levels. The outlets are seen to be disguised as local news outlets, but push unmitigated Chinese Party-state propaganda, suggests Reuters Feb 8, citing Toronto-based digital watchdog Citizen Lab Feb 7.
The propaganda material is interspersed with news aggregated from local news outlets and Chinese state media, the watchdog’s research report was stated to show.
“While the campaign’s websites enjoyed negligible exposure to date, there is a heightened risk of inadvertent amplification by the local media and target audiences, as a result of the quick multiplication of these websites and their adaptiveness to local languages and content,” researcher Alberto Fittarelli has said in the report.
The sites’ contents were stated to sway between conspiracy theories, often about the United States or its allies – such as a piece blaming American scientists for “leaking” Covid-19 – to articles attacking Beijing’s critics.
Citizen Lab has said the campaign began in mid-2020 and traced the network to public relations firm Shenzhen Haimaiyunxiang Media Co., Ltd., also known as Haimai.
One of the websites in the campaign was stated to be Roma Journal, “which looks every bit like a local Italian news outlet: headlines discuss the Italian prime minister’s political prospects, a hot air balloon festival in a northern province and a book launch.
“But a ‘press releases’ button at a corner of its homepage leads to a range of Chinese state media articles on topics such as China’s contribution to the global economic recovery and its push towards technological innovation.”
What is more, much of the content on the sites Citizen Lab found was seen to be sourced from a press releases service called Times Newswire, which analysts at cybersecurity firm Mandiant last year found to be at the centre of a separate Chinese influence operation that targeted US audiences.
The report cited experts tracking such operations as saying while online influence campaigns are increasingly common as powerful people and governments around the world seek to manipulate public opinion, China remains one of the biggest sources of such drives alongside Russia and Iran.
Notably, Chinese influence operations have increased and expanded well beyond Asia, social media giant Meta said in a report in Nov 2023, calling it “the most notable change in the threat landscape” since 2020.
The report said Citizen Lab dug deeper into the network it found after a series of such websites popped up in South Korea and Italy.
It said that South Korea’s National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) – part of the country’s national intelligence agency – exposed 18 of the sites in a report in Nov 2023, also linking the operation to Haimai.