The Chinese government has built up the world’s largest known online disinformation operation and is using it to harass US residents, politicians, and businesses—at times threatening its targets with violence, a CNN review of court documents and public disclosures by social media companies has found.
The onslaught of attacks – often of a vile and deeply personal nature – is part of a well-organized, increasingly brazen Chinese government intimidation campaign targeting people in the United States, documents show.
The US State Department says the tactics are part of a broader multi-billion-dollar effort to shape the world’s information environment and silence critics of Beijing that has expanded under President Xi Jinping. On Wednesday, President Biden is due to meet Xi at a summit in San Francisco.
Victims face a barrage of tens of thousands of social media posts that call them traitors, dogs, and racist and homophobic slurs. They say it’s all part of an effort to drive them into a state of constant fear and paranoia.
I don’t think I’ve heard/read somebody getting called a “dog” much before (unless they’re referring to the other name somebody might use “b****”), isn’t that more a foreign and/or rural insult? I don’t remember ever getting hit with any of these myself, so maybe it stings more in that context, but that list of insults is almost comical and reads like words somebody would say that didn’t speak English as their primary language.
The Chinese spam machine was operating at the same time as the Russian system back in 2016, it was hilariously ineffective because apparently the sensibilities are so different. Memes didn’t land, insults are odd sounding.
What I found really interesting in this article is they’ve changed or adjusted, or maybe just made more visible the effective part of this campaign. Targeting Chinese ex-pats, or Chinese abroad, even ethnically Chinese people who are first or second generation citizens of Western countries.
It’s a way to reach out and maintain influence through fear, nowhere is safe sort of thing.
This finally explains the purpose of TikTok as a spy platform to me. What better way to get deep research into the sensibilities of your targets.
China knows all about my taste in thicc goth women
This is an issue that has come up in national news recently for Canada too. The harassment has been targeting those with Chinese backgrounds that have been involved in an infrastructure or politics. There’s been a controversy as CSIS did not disclose this threat initially, even to those targeted.
It will be interesting to see if Biden will be able to get the US and Chinese military to perform joint exercises again with the upcoming visit. The Chinese pulled out of them in protest to Pelusi’s visit to Taiwan last year.