{"id":72013,"date":"2022-04-19T15:00:02","date_gmt":"2022-04-19T05:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=72013"},"modified":"2022-04-19T14:39:18","modified_gmt":"2022-04-19T04:39:18","slug":"pro-ccp-inauthentic-social-media-accounts-shift-focus-to-the-quad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/pro-ccp-inauthentic-social-media-accounts-shift-focus-to-the-quad\/","title":{"rendered":"Pro-CCP inauthentic social media accounts shift focus to the Quad"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

A subset of a pro\u2013Chinese Communist Party network, known for disseminating disinformation on US-based social media platforms, is breaking away from its usual narratives in order to interfere in the Quad partnership of Australia, India, Japan and the United States and oppose Japanese plans to deploy missile units in southern Okinawa Prefecture.<\/p>\n

\u2018Osborn Roland\u2019 joined Twitter in August 2021 and claims<\/a> to be concerned about the military deployments in Okinawa. A Facebook account named \u2018Vivi Wu\u2019\u2014who apparently speaks German, Spanish, French, English and Chinese\u2014says<\/a> that the Japanese \u2018are treated as dogs by the United States\u2019. Korean-named \u2018Hag Yoenghui<\/a>\u2019, who has an Arabic profile description, tweeted:<\/a> \u2018We in Australia originally supported the United States to fight against China, and the relationship with China was extremely tense \u2026 Why does our government help the United States to deal with China?\u2019<\/p>\n

So far, ASPI\u2019s International Cyber Policy Centre researchers have uncovered 80 accounts\u2014and counting\u2014across Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and YouTube that since December have posted in multiple languages opposing Japan\u2019s military activities and the Quad. The timelines of these accounts show they previously posted content consistent with the pro-CCP Spamouflage<\/a> network, which typically targets topics<\/a> relevant to Chinese diaspora communities and amplifies narratives that align with the CCP\u2019s geopolitical goals.<\/p>\n

Past campaigns have focused on smearing Chinese dissident Guo Wengui, denying human rights abuses in Xinjiang<\/a> and Hong Kong<\/a>, promoting<\/a> Buddhist sects supported<\/a> by the CCP\u2019s United Front Work Department, co-opting the StopAsianHate<\/a> hashtag and disseminating<\/a> Covid-19 origin conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Like with previous campaigns, this network is poorly operated. Errors in hashtags, incomplete URLs<\/a> to Chinese state media articles and evidence of instructions<\/a> posted in a tweet are clear indications of coordination and possible automation. One Twitter account named \u2018Catherine\u2019 posted<\/a> a screenshot of their working environment while sharing a Facebook post from \u2018Vivi Wu\u2019. The image revealed that the operator of this account saved bookmarks to an \u2018offshore navigation and internet access\u2019 (\u5883\u5916\u5bfc\u822a\u00a0 \u2013\u4e0a\u7f51\u4ece) website and two Canadian Chinese news websites, \u2018Anpopo Chinese News\u2019 (\u5b89\u5a46\u5a46\u534e\u4eba\u7f51) and \u2018Fenghua Media\u2019 (\u67ab\u534e\u7f51), and was closely monitoring Chinese virologist Yan Limeng\u2019s multiple Twitter accounts.<\/p>\n

In August last year, Defence Minister Nobuo Kishi confirmed<\/a> that Japan was emplacing anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles on Ishigaki Island to defend Japan\u2019s contested southwestern islands and counter Chinese anti-access and area-denial (A2\/AD) capabilities that could prevent the US from intervening in a regional conflict. This followed a broader shift<\/a> in Japanese foreign policy in 2021 which described<\/a> China\u2019s military assertiveness as a \u2018strong concern\u2019 and provoked Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to suggest<\/a> Japan was being \u2018misled by some countries holding biased view against China\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In response to these announcements, the network of pro-CCP accounts leveraged<\/a> local concerns about the environment and the tourism industry in Ishigaki to try to prevent the missile emplacement and suggested<\/a> Japan \u2018was acting as a pawn for the United States\u2019 in an attempt to undermine the bilateral relationship. This included posting<\/a> photos of atomic bomb mushroom clouds over Hiroshima and\u00a0Nagasaki.<\/p>\n

Other accounts in the network posed<\/a> as citizens in Australia, India, Japan and the US to criticise the Quad diplomatic partnership by spruiking their economic relationships with China. These covert efforts coincided with a Chinese state media article<\/a> posted in December arguing that Japanese politicians are \u2018attempting to interfere in the Taiwan Straits\u2019 and the \u2018international community should be highly vigilant about Japanese right-wing forces\u2019 mentality of playing with fire\u2019.<\/p>\n

Some accounts amplified Change.org petitions created in 2019 that sought to stop the construction of missile bases on Ishigaki. By this month, the English-language petition<\/a> had 312 signatures while the Japanese-language version<\/a> had more than 6,000. Based on our analysis of previous CCP information operations<\/a>, we expect pro-CCP accounts in this network to co-opt other similar local petitions and protests. One account<\/a> has already amplified reporting of a December protest<\/a> over the use of private ports in Ishigaki by the Japan Self-Defense Forces.<\/p>\n

This emerging reiteration of the Spamouflage network has only recently started replenishing with newly created accounts and content, so the impact of the campaign has been low. Most tweets have received at most two interactions and most accounts have fewer than 10 followers. These types of networks, however, can quickly scale up to tens of thousands of accounts and persist on US-based social media platforms for years before being retweeted or amplified by an influential opinion leader or government official. It took Russia\u2019s Internet Research Agency<\/a> at least two years to prepare before it interfered in the 2016 US election.<\/p>\n

Twitter has previously attributed<\/a> these networks to the Chinese government, which makes them useful for gaining insights into the CCP\u2019s broader political and psychological warfare strategies.<\/p>\n

Overall, the campaign indicates that the CCP is concerned about the strengthening alignment between countries in Europe, NATO, Asia and the Indo-Pacific following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Eroding alliances such as the Quad, AUKUS, ANZUS and NATO will remain the CCP\u2019s main strategic goal.<\/p>\n

It also demonstrates that the network is highly agile and can switch quickly from targeting Chinese diaspora and disseminating propaganda to engaging in military-related information operations and interference in foreign force posturing. Aspects of this campaign sought to shape local domestic Japanese sentiment through intimidation<\/a>, which is more akin to psychological warfare than propaganda.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A subset of a pro\u2013Chinese Communist Party network, known for disseminating disinformation on US-based social media platforms, is breaking away from its usual narratives in order to interfere in the Quad partnership of Australia, India, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1065,"featured_media":72017,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1383,52,381,135,2328,224],"class_list":["post-72013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-ccp","tag-china","tag-information-warfare","tag-japan","tag-quad","tag-social-media"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPro-CCP inauthentic social media accounts shift focus to the Quad | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/pro-ccp-inauthentic-social-media-accounts-shift-focus-to-the-quad\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pro-CCP inauthentic social media accounts shift focus to the Quad | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A subset of a pro\u2013Chinese Communist Party network, known for disseminating disinformation on US-based social media platforms, is breaking away from its usual narratives in order to interfere in the Quad partnership of Australia, India, ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/pro-ccp-inauthentic-social-media-accounts-shift-focus-to-the-quad\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ASPI.org\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-04-19T05:00:02+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-04-19T04:39:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/GettyImages-1128759542.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"683\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Albert Zhang\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Albert Zhang\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/\",\"name\":\"The Strategist\",\"description\":\"ASPI's analysis and commentary site\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/pro-ccp-inauthentic-social-media-accounts-shift-focus-to-the-quad\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/GettyImages-1128759542.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/GettyImages-1128759542.jpg\",\"width\":1024,\"height\":683,\"caption\":\"A Twitter logo is seen on a computer screen in this photo illustration in Warsaw, Poland on March 5, 2019. 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