Chinese Influence Campaign Uncovered: Largest Covert Operation to Date

Expanding Influence

An article claiming that the United States was responsible for the bombing of underwater pipelines in the Baltic Sea was published on multiple blogging platforms. The Chinese influence campaign quickly spread the article to numerous websites, including social media platforms like Reddit, Medium, Tumblr, Facebook, and YouTube. Translations of the article in various languages also began appearing online.

A Massive Operation

Researchers at Meta, the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, stated that this Chinese influence campaign is the largest they have seen to date. The campaign was aimed at furthering China's interests and discrediting its adversaries, particularly the United States. In total, Meta removed thousands of accounts and pages tied to the Chinese campaign across multiple platforms.

Intense Effort, Limited Success

The Chinese campaign struggled to gain traction and attract attention. Many posts had spelling errors and poor grammar, while others were incongruent and unrelated to the subject being discussed. The operation utilized different languages and websites banned in China in order to reach a broad audience. However, the network's wide and noisy approach often resulted in the same repetitive comments, making it difficult to engage users.

A Delicate Time

Meta reported this operation as the seventh Chinese influence campaign it has discovered and removed over the past six years. With ongoing trade negotiations between the United States and China and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo currently in China, the disclosure of this campaign comes at a sensitive time.

Mimicking Russian-style Operations

The Chinese campaign appeared to learn and mimic Russian-style influence operations and was coordinated by Chinese law enforcement from various offices across the country. The network frequently posted identical messages on different social media platforms to spread pro-China messaging. Despite Meta's efforts to remove the campaign from Facebook and Instagram, accounts on platforms such as Reddit and TikTok remain online.

Targets and Tactics

The Chinese influence campaign initially focused on discrediting the 2019 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. It later shifted to deflecting blame for the Covid-19 pandemic away from China and onto the United States. The campaign employed various tactics, including publishing a false research paper and promoting it through YouTube and Vimeo videos, as well as posts on blogging platforms like LiveJournal, Tumblr, and Medium. Links to these posts were then shared on Facebook and other social media sites.

In addition, the campaign produced videos on YouTube and TikTok highlighting racial disparities in the United States to further inflame divisions. The Chinese operation also posted TikTok videos denying human rights abuses in Xinjiang, a region in China where repressive policies against Uyghur and other ethnic minority groups have been heavily criticized internationally.