China battles to control nationalist narrative on social media
After months of aggressive anti-US posts by Chinese diplomats Beijing is cracking down on ‘smear campaigns’ at home
Beijing’s ‘Wolf Warrior’ diplomacy has coincided with a rise of nationalist content on Chinese social media. Photo: Reuters
Beijing is battling allegations that it is running a disinformation campaign on social media, as robust posts by its diplomats in Western countries promoting nationalist sentiment have escalated into a spat between China and other countries, especially the United States.
In the latest in a series of online controversies, the Chinese embassy in France claimed its official Twitter account had been hacked after it featured a cartoon depicting the US as Death, knocking on a door marked Hong Kong after leaving a trail of blood outside doors marked Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine and Venezuela. The inclusion in the image of a Star of David on the scythe also prompted accusations of anti-Semitism.
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“Someone posted a false image on our official Twitter account by posting a cartoon entitled ‘Who is Next?’. The embassy would like to condemn it and always abides by the principles of truthfulness, objectivity and rationality of information,” it said on Monday.
The rise of China’s aggressive “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy has been regarded by analysts as primarily aimed at building support for the government at home but the latest incident is seen as an attempt by Beijing to take back control of the nationalist narrative it has unleashed.
Florian Schneider, director of the Leiden Asia Centre in the Netherlands, said the removal of the embassy’s tweet reflected a constant concern in Beijing about the range of people – including ordinary citizens – who were involved in spreading nationalistic material online.
“The state insists that its nationalism is ‘rational’, meaning it is meant to inspire domestic unity through patriotism but without impacting national interests or endangering social stability,” he said.
“This makes nationalism a mixed blessing for the authorities … if nationalist stories demonise the US or Japan or some other potential enemy, then any Chinese leader dealing diplomatically with those perceived enemies ends up looking weak.
“Trying to guide nationalist sentiment in ways that further the leadership’s interests is a difficult balancing act and I suspect this is partly the reason why the authorities are currently trying to clamp down on unauthorised, nationalist conspiracy theories.”
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Last month the European Union toned down a report which initially accused China of running a “global disinformation campaign”
to deflect blame for the coronavirus outbreak using “overt and covert tactics”. The section was removed after intervention by Beijing.
The report came after months of social media posts – including by Chinese diplomats – defending China against accusations it had mishandled the coronavirus pandemic and attacking the US and other perceived enemies.
In March, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian promoted a conspiracy theory on Twitter suggesting the virus had originated in the US and was brought to China by the US Army. His comments were later downplayed, with China’s ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai saying questions about the origin of the virus should be answered by scientists.
Schneider said this showed that the state-backed nationalistic propaganda online was at risk of backfiring diplomatically.
“The authorities have to constantly worry that they might lose control of the nationalist narrative they unleashed, especially considering how many people produce content on the internet, how fast ideas spread, and how strongly commercial rationales drive misinformation online,” he said.
Last month, a series of widely shared social media articles about people in different countries “yearning to be part of China” resulted in a diplomatic backlash against Beijing. Kazakhstan’s foreign ministry summoned the Chinese ambassador in April to lodge a formal protest against the article.
Following the incident, the Cyberspace Administration of China, the country’s internet regulator which manages the “firewall” and censors material online, announced a two-month long “internet cleansing” to clear privately owned accounts which engage in “smear campaigns”.
A popular account named Zhidao Xuegong was shut down by the Chinese social media platform WeChat’s owner Tencent on Sunday after publishing an article which claimed Covid-19 may have killed 1 million people in the US and suggested the dead were “very likely” being processed as food.
The article had at least 100,000 readers, with 753 people donating money to support the account. According to Xigua Data, a firm that monitors traffic on Chinese social media, the account garnered more than 1.7 million page views for 17 articles in April.
According to a statement from WeChat, the account was closed for fabricating facts, stoking xenophobia and misleading the public.
A journalism professor at the University of Hong Kong said this case differed from the Chinese embassy’s tweet, despite both featuring anti-US sentiment.
Masato Kajimoto, who leads research on news literacy and the misinformation ecosystem, said the closure of the WeChat account seemed to be more about Chinese authorities feeling the need to regulate producers of media content whose motivations were often financial rather than political.
“I would think the government doesn’t like some random misinformation going wild and popular, which affects the overall storylines they would like to push, disseminate and control,” he said.
One way for China to respond to the situation was to fact-check social media and to position itself as a protector facts and defender of the integrity of public information, he said.
“In the age of social media, both fake news and fact-checking are being weaponised by people who try to influence or manipulate the narrative in one way or another,” Kajimoto said.
“Not only China but also many other authoritarian states in Asia are now fact-checking social media. Governments in Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia and other countries all do that.
“Such initiatives benefit them because they can decide what is true and what is not.”
Source: SCMP
