CHINA WATCHCCP’s Increasingly Sophisticated Cyber-enabled Influence Operation
Last week DOJ announced police officers from China’s Ministry of Public Security (MPS) created thousands of fake online personas on social media sites to target Chinese dissidents through online harassment and threats. The announcement marked the first definitive public attribution to a specific Chinese government agency of covert malign activities on social media. The MPS, however, is one of many party-controlled organizations that analysts have long suspected of conducting covert and coercive operations to influence users on social media.
Last week, the US Department of Justice unsealed a significant criminal complaint. Police officers from China’s Ministry of Public Security (MPS) were charged with creating ‘thousands of fake online personas on social media sites, including Twitter, to target Chinese dissidents through online harassment and threats’ and for spreading ‘propaganda whose sole purpose is to sow divisions within the United States’.
This announcement marked the first definitive public attribution to a specific Chinese government agency of covert malign activities on social media. However, the MPS is one of many party-controlled organizations that analysts have long suspected of conducting covert and coercive operations to influence users on social media.
Under the guise of ‘guiding public opinion’, a policy concept that dates back to the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) justifies its manipulation of information to maintain social stability and political control over China. More recently, China’s authoritarian leader, Xi Jinping, has revived the Cultural Revolution-era term ‘public opinion struggle’ and declared social media ‘the main battlefield’ because of its ability to spread values and ideas—like human rights and democracy—that are perceived as threats to the party’s political legitimacy.
The CCP’s efforts to shape public opinion online now go beyond simply censoring dissidents and spreading pro-government propaganda. They are more global and aggressive, often directly interfering in state sovereignty and democratic discourse and supporting the party’s broader strategic and economic goals.
ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre has published a new report entitled ‘Gaming public opinion: The CCP’s increasingly sophisticated cyber-enabled influence operations’, alongside reporting by The Washington Post which explores the growing challenge of CCP cyber-enabled influence operations conducted within democracies through social media.
The report canvasses the existing publicly available evidence of covert cyber-enabled influence operations originating from China to provide an assessment of the CCP’s evolving capabilities. We find that the CCP has developed a persistent capability to sustain coordinated networks of personas and that multiple Chinese government agencies probably conduct, in parallel if not collectively, covert influence operations on social media. Those operations have become more frequent, sophisticated, and effective in targeting democracies by disrupting domestic and foreign policies and decision-making processes.
