RECOMMENDED READING: “Chinese Discourse Power- China’s Use of Information Manipulation in Regional and Global Competition”

The Atlantic Coun­cil, a U.S. think tank, has pub­lished an exten­sive report on China’s use of infor­ma­tion manip­u­la­tion in region­al and glob­al com­pe­ti­tion report titled “Chi­nese Dis­course Pow­er- China’s Use of Infor­ma­tion Manip­u­la­tion in Region­al and Glob­al Com­pe­ti­tion.” The report con­cludes that China’s infor­ma­tion oper­a­tions tar­get­ing the West have result­ed in inef­fec­tive influence:

This study exam­ined  the  Chi­nese  Com­mu­nist  Party’s  (CCP)  use  of  both  Man­darin-lan­guage  and   West­ern   social   media   plat­forms   as   tools  for  dis­course  pow­er  pro­jec­tion.  The DFR­Lab found  Chi­na  to  be  effec­tive  on  Man­darin-lan­guage  sites  that  tar­get  both  Chi­nese  cit­i­zens  and  the  Chi­nese  dias­po­ra,  employ­ing  the  use  of  strict  cen­sor­ship  and  favor­able  CCP  mes­sag­ing  pri­or­i­ti­za­tion.  On the oth­er hand, while attempt­ing to engage for­eign actors through West­ern social media plat­forms, the infor­ma­tion oper­a­tions found to date have result­ed in inef­fec­tive influ­ence, relied on out­sourc­ing the oper­a­tion to third par­ties, and uti­lized “astro­turf­ing” and “sock puppets.”

Read the entire report here.

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed last Novem­ber on a study that con­clud­ed: “Chi­na has no idea how to run a Twit­ter net­work.” How­ev­er, in Octo­ber that year, we report­ed that var­i­ous secu­ri­ty experts had con­clud­ed that Chi­nese influ­ence oper­a­tions pose a greater long term threat to the US than do Russ­ian efforts. Accord­ing to that report, “the Chi­nese are grow­ing bold­er and more brazen, often tak­ing pages from what used to be seen as Russia’s play­book in dis­cred­it­ing the Unit­ed States.”