{"id":73499,"date":"2022-06-29T17:00:46","date_gmt":"2022-06-29T07:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=73499"},"modified":"2023-04-12T11:29:29","modified_gmt":"2023-04-12T01:29:29","slug":"the-ccps-information-campaign-targeting-rare-earths-and-australian-company-lynas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-ccps-information-campaign-targeting-rare-earths-and-australian-company-lynas\/","title":{"rendered":"The CCP\u2019s information campaign targeting rare earths and Australian company Lynas"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

A Chinese Communist Party information operation is using environmental, political and health concerns to undermine efforts to diversify global rare-earth supply chains. The operation is focused on audiences in the United States, Australia and Malaysia. A major target of the smear campaign is Australian mining company Lynas Rare Earths. Others include the Western Australian government<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is the first time this persistent CCP-backed network\u2014which ASPI has been tracking in various forms since 2019\u2014has targeted a commercial entity for strategic purposes. In this case, the goal is to support China\u2019s dominance of the global rare-earth supply chain and to constrain Western companies\u2019 ability to compete. This network was simultaneously identified<\/a> by cybersecurity firm Mandiant while ASPI\u2019s investigation was being finalised.<\/p>\n

Since March, ASPI has tracked a network of inauthentic accounts across Twitter<\/a>, Facebook<\/a>, Instagram<\/a> and other forums spreading disinformation about environmental damage caused by Lynas\u2019s rare-earth refinery in Malaysia and targeting<\/a> Lynas\u2019s CEO Amanda Lacaze. The network also targeted Oklahoma governor Kevin Stitt<\/a> online due to his public support for breaking US reliance on the Chinese rare-earth supply chain, in part through rare-earth manufacturing in his state.<\/p>\n

ASPI assesses that these accounts likely belong to the same CCP-backed<\/a> network that targeted the Quad and Japanese defence policy<\/a> earlier this year and which is currently<\/a> harassing high-profile Asian women<\/a> working for Western media outlets and human rights organisations.<\/p>\n

Prior to posting about rare-earth mining, these accounts amplified<\/a> content smearing Chinese virologist Yan Limeng and recycled profile images<\/a> used by previously suspended<\/a> accounts<\/a>. They also display similar posting patterns to past iterations of the network.<\/p>\n

Rare earths are critical components found in all modern technologies<\/a>\u2014such as electric vehicles, solar panels, semiconductors and defence weapon systems\u2014and are considered<\/a> raw materials of strategic significance for economic and military security. Lynas is the only significant producer of rare earths outside China and democratic countries globally are seeking<\/a> to reduce<\/a> their dependency on Chinese exports.<\/p>\n

In 2021, China produced around 60%<\/a> of the world\u2019s rare earths and was responsible for 78% of the US\u2019s rare-earth imports between 2017 and 2020. In addition to economic benefits, the dominance of the rare-earth supply chain gives the CCP a strategic advantage that it can leverage to achieve political objectives. For example, the Chinese government blocked<\/a> exports of rare earths to Japan to secure the release of a detained Chinese fishing boat captain in one of the earliest cases of CCP economic coercion<\/a>. The Japanese government later backed<\/a> Japanese trading company Sojitz to sign a US$250 million deal with Lynas to supply rare earths and help build Lynas\u2019s Malaysian refinery. This reduced<\/a> Japan\u2019s reliance on Chinese rare earths from 90% in 2010 to 58% within a decade.<\/p>\n

This latest CCP-linked information operation presumably seeks to harm Lynas\u2019s reputation and complicate its efforts to increase rare-earth production and expand its operations. Multiple accounts in this network warned<\/a> investors not to buy Lynas shares, falsely claimed the company was polluting the environment and called for a boycott<\/a> in both English and Mandarin<\/a>. Accounts increased the frequency of their posts after Lynas announced<\/a> in June 2022 that it had signed an additional US$120 million contract with the Pentagon to support construction of a rare-earths separation facility in Texas. In response, accounts also falsely claimed there were protests<\/a> in the US and presented<\/a> as US citizens concerned about environmental pollution.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

In 2019, bona fide concerns were raised<\/a> by Malaysian residents and activists about health and environmental risks posed by Lynas\u2019s Malaysian refinery. Since then, several independent and scientific reviews<\/a>\u2014including by the International Atomic Energy Agency and by a Malaysian government executive review committee\u2014have found that Lynas is compliant with all relevant regulations and that it had adopted international best practices. In 2020, Lynas received<\/a> a three-year licence extension from the Malaysian government after demonstrating that its operations were safe and agreeing not to import materials carrying low-level radioactive waste into the country.<\/p>\n

Inauthentic accounts, posing mostly as Western<\/a> women<\/a>, have co-opted these concerns in 2022 and exaggerated other claims of environmental and health risks. Accounts spread messages that combined true events with false narratives. One account named \u2018Joy Greene\u2019 shared<\/a> an image of real protests in 2019 organized by the Save Malaysia Stop Lynas group that were combined with images of medical conditions falsely attributed to Lynas. In the screenshot below, the top-left image is of a child exposed to pollution near an unrelated mine in Guatemala according<\/a> to HuffPost<\/em>. The top-right image<\/a> is of skin lesions from arsenic poisoning unrelated to Lynas\u2019s operations. It was taken in 2009<\/a>. In another image<\/a> posted on 23 May 2022, an Instagram account named \u2018ewersalison1\u2019 invited people to join protests against \u2018Lynas\u2019 radioactive waste\u2019, which were planned to be held three years ago.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

The operatives running these accounts appear to be actively monitoring the #Lynas hashtag and tweets containing \u2018Lynas\u2019. Accounts in the network replied<\/a> to every tweet that used the #Lynas<\/a> hashtag within a few days and sometimes mistakenly targeted<\/a> tweets tagging environmental writer Mark Lynas<\/a>, who has no connection to the Australian mining company. Twitter now ranks tweets from accounts in this network as some of the top posts in simple keyword searches such as \u2018Lynas pollution\u2019<\/a> and \u2018Lynas Australia<\/a>\u2019.<\/p>\n

Other accounts are targeting<\/a> a broader US audience as part of a coordinated coercive campaign to sway US public opinion against the domestic development of rare-earth production. Images shared by accounts falsely depict US rare-earth mining as destroying the environment or spreading<\/a> nuclear-related pollution. Unlike the posts that reused images from protests in Malaysia, images were customised for this part of the campaign and indicated the operators have an in-house graphic design team.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

Interactions with posts in this campaign were low across all platforms; however, some accounts appeared to be engaging with apparently real individuals and gaining more traction. One investment-focused account said that it was \u2018not aware\u2019 of the allegations of Lynas\u2019s environmental pollution suggested<\/a> to them by this network and was shocked by them. Another Facebook post<\/a> accumulated 126 likes for claiming polluters were being let \u2018off the hook\u2019 and Americans were \u2018suffering consequences\u2019 for critical mineral production, but it was unclear whether users liking the post were authentic. Prior to this post, this account had never received any interaction.<\/p>\n

This activity shows the CCP is continuing to abuse its asymmetric access to Western information spaces and persistently deploys coordinated inauthentic campaigns against global citizens and companies to constrain their ability to express their commercial or human rights. It also shows that US social media platforms are struggling to keep up and must shift their thinking and approaches<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The complexity of actors involved and tactics deployed highlights the need to establish an Indo-Pacific hybrid threat centre<\/a>, which ASPI recently recommended as a way to build broader situational awareness on the growing range of hybrid threats across the region. Through research and analysis, engagement, information sharing and capacity building, such a centre would function as a confidence-building measure and contribute to regional stability and the security of individual nations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Chinese Communist Party information operation is using environmental, political and health concerns to undermine efforts to diversify global rare-earth supply chains. The operation is focused on audiences in the United States, Australia and Malaysia. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1065,"featured_media":73507,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[52,3479,2279,2619,224],"class_list":["post-73499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-china","tag-critical-minerals","tag-disinformation","tag-rare-earths","tag-social-media"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe CCP\u2019s information campaign targeting rare earths and Australian company Lynas | 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\/the-ccps-information-campaign-targeting-rare-earths-and-australian-company-lynas\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The CCP\u2019s information campaign targeting rare earths and Australian company Lynas | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A Chinese Communist Party information operation is using environmental, political and health concerns to undermine efforts to diversify global rare-earth supply chains. 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