How China’s TikTook, Facebook Influencers Push Propaganda

To her 1.4 million followers throughout TikTook, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook, Vica Li says she is a “life blogger” and “food lover” who desires to show her followers about China to allow them to journey the nation with ease.

“Through my lens, I will take you around China, take you into Vica’s life!” she says in a video posted in January to her YouTube and Facebook accounts, the place she additionally teaches Chinese courses over Zoom.

But that lens could also be managed by CGTN, the Chinese-state run TV community the place she has frequently appeared in broadcasts and is listed as a digital reporter on the corporate’s web site. And whereas Vica Li tells her followers that she “created all of these channels on her own,” her Facebook account exhibits that no less than 9 individuals handle her web page.

That portfolio of accounts is only one tentacle of China’s quickly rising affect on US-owned social media platforms, an Associated Press examination has discovered.

As China continues to claim its financial would possibly, it’s utilizing the worldwide social media ecosystem to broaden its already formidable affect. The nation has quietly constructed a community of social media personalities who parrot the federal government’s perspective in posts seen by a whole bunch of 1000’s of individuals, working in digital lockstep as they promote China’s virtues, deflect worldwide criticism of its human rights abuses and advance Beijing’s speaking factors on world affairs like Russia’s warfare towards Ukraine.

Some of China’s state-affiliated reporters have posited themselves as fashionable Instagram influencers or bloggers. The nation has additionally employed companies to recruit influencers to ship fastidiously crafted messages that increase its picture to social media customers.

And it’s benefitting from a cadre of Westerners who’ve devoted YouTube channels and Twitter feeds to echoing pro-China narratives on the whole lot from Beijing’s therapy of Uyghur Muslims to Olympian Eileen Gu, an American who competed for China in the latest Winter Games.

The influencer community permits Beijing to simply proffer propaganda to unsuspecting Instagram, Facebook, TikTook and YouTube customers across the globe. At least 200 influencers with connections to the Chinese authorities or its state media are working in 38 totally different languages, in response to analysis from Miburo, a agency that tracks international disinformation operations.

“You can see how they’re trying to infiltrate every one of these countries,” stated Miburo President Clint Watts, a former FBI agent. “It is just about volume, ultimately. If you just bombard an audience for long enough with the same narratives people will tend to believe them over time.”

While Russia’s warfare on Ukraine was being broadly condemned as a brazen assault on democracy, self-described “traveler,” “story-teller” and “journalist” Li Jingjing took to YouTube to offer a different narrative.

She posted a video to her account called “Ukraine crisis: The West ignores wars & destructions it brings to Middle East,” in which she mocked US journalists covering the war. She’s also dedicated other videos to amplifying Russian propaganda about the conflict, including claims of Ukrainian genocide or that the US and NATO provoked Russia’s invasion.

Li Jingjing says in her YouTube profile that she is eager to show her roughly 21,000 subscribers “the world through my lens.” But what she does not say in her segments on Ukraine, which have tens of thousands of views, is that she is a reporter for CGTN, articulating views that are not just her own but also familiar Chinese government talking points.

Most of China’s influencers use pitches similar to Li Jingjing’s in hopes of attracting audiences around the world, including the US, Egypt and Kenya. The personalities, many of them women, call themselves “travelers,” sharing photos and videos that promote China as an idyllic destination.

“They clearly have identified the ‘Chinese lady influencer’ is the way to go,” Watts said of China.

The AP identified dozens of these accounts, which collectively have amassed more than 10 million followers and subscribers. Many of the profiles belong to Chinese state media reporters who have in recent months transformed their Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube accounts — platforms that are largely blocked in China — and begun identifying as “bloggers,” “influencers” or non-descript “journalists.” Nearly all of them were running Facebook ads, targeted to users outside of China, that encourage people to follow their pages.

The personalities do not proactively disclose their ties to China’s government and have largely phased out references in their posts to their employers, which include CGTN, China Radio International and Xinhua News Agency.

Foreign governments have long tried to exploit social media, as well as its ad system, to influence users. During the 2016 US election, for example, a Russian internet agency paid in rubles to run more than 3,000 divisive political ads targeting Americans.

In response, tech companies like Facebook and Twitter promised to better alert American users to foreign propaganda by labelling state-backed media accounts.

But the AP found in its review that most of the Chinese influencer social media accounts are inconsistently labelled as state-funded media. The accounts — like those belonging to Li Jingjing and Vica Li — are often labelled on Facebook or Instagram, but are not flagged on YouTube or TikTok. Vica Li’s account is not labelled on Twitter. Last month, Twitter began identifying Li Jingjing’s account as Chinese state-media.

Vica Li said in a YouTube video that she is disputing the labels on her Facebook and Instagram accounts. She did not respond to a detailed list of questions from the AP.

Often, followers who are lured in by accounts featuring scenic images of China’s landscape might not be aware that they’ll also encounter state-endorsed propaganda.

Jessica Zang’s picturesque Instagram photos show her smiling beneath a beaming sun, kicking fresh powered snow atop a ski resort on the Altai Mountains in China’s Xinjiang region during the Beijing Olympics. She describes herself as a video creator and blogger who hopes to present her followers with “beautiful pics and videos about life in China.”

Zang, a video blogger for CGTN, rarely mentions her employer to her 1.3 million followers on Facebook. Facebook and Instagram identify her account as “state-controlled media” but she is not labelled as such on TikTok, YouTube or on Twitter, where Zang lists herself as a “social media influencer.”

“I think it’s likely by choice that she doesn’t put any state affiliations, because you put that label on your account, people start asking certain types of questions,” Rui Zhong, who researches technology and the China-US relationship for the Washington-based Wilson Center, said of Zang.

Peppered between tourism photos are posts with more obvious propaganda. One video titled “What foreigners in BEIJING think of the CPC and their life in China?” options Zang interviewing foreigners in China who gush concerning the Chinese Communist Party and demand they don’t seem to be surveilled by the federal government the best way outsiders would possibly assume.

“We actually wish to let extra individuals … know what China is admittedly like,” Zang tells viewers.

That’s an essential aim in China, which has launched coordinated efforts to form its picture overseas and whose president, Xi Jinping, has spoken brazenly of his want to have China perceived favourably on the worldwide stage.

Ultimately, accounts like Zang’s are meant to obscure world criticisms of China, stated Jessica Brandt, a Brookings Institution knowledgeable on international interference and disinformation.

“They want to promote a positive vision of China to drown out their human rights records,” Brandt stated.

Li Jingjing and Zang didn’t return messages from the AP looking for remark. CGTN didn’t reply to repeated interview requests. CGTN America, which is registered as a international agent with the Justice Department and has disclosed having industrial preparations with a number of worldwide information organizations, together with the AP, CNN and Reuters, didn’t return messages. A lawyer who has represented CGTN America didn’t reply both.

A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, Liu Pengyu, stated in a press release, “Chinese media and journalists carry out normal activities independently, and should not be assumed to be led or interfered by the Chinese government.”

China’s curiosity within the influencer realm turned extra evident in December after it was revealed that the Chinese Consulate in New York had paid $300,000 (roughly Rs. 230 lakh) for New Jersey agency Vippi Media to recruit influencers to submit messages to Instagram and TikTook followers throughout the Beijing Olympics, together with content material that might spotlight China’s work on local weather change.

It’s unclear what the general public noticed from that marketing campaign, and if the social media posts had been correctly labeled as paid ads by the Chinese Consulate, as Instagram and TikTook require. Vippi Media has not offered the Justice Department, which regulates international affect campaigns by way of a 1938 statute generally known as the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a duplicate of the posts it paid influencers to disseminate, although federal legislation requires the corporate to take action.

Vipp Jaswal, Vippi Media’s CEO, declined to share particulars concerning the posts with the AP.

In different circumstances, the cash and motives behind these Facebook posts, YouTube movies and podcasts are so murky that even those that create them say they weren’t conscious the Chinese authorities was financing the mission.

Chicago radio host John St. Augustine informed the AP {that a} buddy who owns New World Radio in Falls Church, Virginia, invited him to host a podcast known as “The Bridge” with a group in Beijing. The hosts mentioned each day life and music within the US and China, inviting music trade staff as company.

He says he did not know CGTN had paid New World Radio $389,000 (roughly Rs. 300 lakh) to provide the podcast. The station was additionally paid hundreds of thousands of {dollars} to broadcast CGTN content material 12 hours each day, in response to paperwork filed with the Justice Department on behalf of the radio firm.

“How they did all that, I had no clue,” St. Augustine stated. “I was paid by a company here in the United States.”

The station’s relationship with CGTN resulted in December, stated New World Radio co-owner Patricia Lane.

The Justice Department lately requested public enter on the way it ought to replace the FARA statute to account for the ephemeral world of social media and its transparency challenges.

“It’s not leaflets and hard copy newspapers anymore,” FARA unit chief Jennifer Kennedy Gellie stated of messaging. It’s “tweets and Facebook posts and Instagram images.”

A rising refrain of English-speaking influencers has additionally cultivated a web-based area of interest by selling pro-Chinese messaging in YouTube movies or tweets.

Last April, as CGTN sought to broaden its community of influencers, it invited English audio system to hitch a months-long competitors that might finish with jobs working as social media influencers in London, Nairobi, Kenya or Washington. Thousands utilized, CGTN stated in September, describing the occasion as a “window for young people around the world to understand China.”

British video blogger Jason Lightfoot raved concerning the alternative in a video on YouTube promoting the occasion.

“So many crazy experiences that I’ll never forget for the rest of my life, and that’s all thanks to CGTN,” Lightfoot stated in a video he stated was filmed from China tech firm Huawei’s campus.

Lightfoot, who didn’t reply to requests for remark, doesn’t disclose this relationship with CGTN on his YouTube profile, the place he has accrued hundreds of thousands of views with headlines like “The Olympics Backfired on USA — Disastrous Regret” and “Western Media Lies about China.”

The video matters are sometimes in sync with these of different pro-China bloggers like Cyrus Janssen, a US citizen residing in Canada. During the Olympics, Janssen and Lightfoot each shared movies celebrating Gu’s three-medal win, utilizing similar photographs of the Olympian in posts that blasted the US

“USA’s boycott failure … Eileen Gu Wins Gold!” Lightfoot posted on February 10. That identical day, Janssen uploaded a video titled “Is Eileen Gu a Traitor to America? American Expat Shares the Truth.”

In emails to the AP, Janssen stated his movies are meant to coach individuals about China and stated he is by no means accepted cash from the Chinese authorities. But when pressed for particulars about a few of his partnerships, which embody Chinese tech companies, Janssen responded solely with questions on an AP’s reporter wage. The AP additionally discovered movies that present him showing on CGTN broadcasts.

The Western influencers routinely decry what they see as distorted American media protection of Beijing and life there. Some posts, for example, have ridiculed Western considerations over the security of Chinese tennis participant Peng Shuai, who disappeared from view after leveling sexual assault allegations towards a former high-ranking member of China’s ruling Communist Party. She resurfaced across the Olympics in a managed interview through which she vigorously denied wrongdoing by Chinese officers and stated her preliminary allegations had created an “huge misunderstanding.”

Her abrupt about-face prompted skeptical reactions within the West, which YouTuber Andy Boreham mocked in a video through which he invoked language paying homage to the MeToo motion. “I wonder what happened to #BelieveAllWomen,” he said.

Boreham is a New Zealander and columnist for Shanghai Daily. Twitter recently labelled his account as Chinese-state affiliated media. His YouTube account remains unlabelled. In a statement, YouTube said it only applies state-affiliated media labels to organizations, not individuals who work for or with state-funded media.

In a YouTube post last year, Lightfoot, who has more than 200,000 subscribers, marvelled at video footage of what he said were “clean, modern, peaceful, pleasant” streets of China. The submit then lower to video of gritty, trash-strewn streets he stated had been in Philadelphia.

“When I first saw this video,” he says by the use of narration, “I actually thought it was from a movie. I thought it was from a zombie movie or some kind of end-of-the-world movie. But it’s not. This is real. This is America.”

YouTubers Matthew Tye, an American, and Winston Sterzel, who’s from South Africa, imagine that, in lots of circumstances, China’s paying for movies to be created.

Their proof?

The pair was included final 12 months on an e mail pitch to quite a few YouTube influencers from an organization that recognized itself as Hong Kong Pear Technology. The e mail requested the influencers to share a promotional video for China’s Hainan province, a vacationer seashore vacation spot, on their channels.

Tye and Sterzel, who spent years residing in China and have become vocal critics of its authorities, assume they had been in all probability included on the pitch by mistake.

But, intrigued, they engaged in a back-and-forth with the corporate whereas feigning curiosity within the provide. The firm consultant quickly adopted up with a brand new request — that they submit a propaganda video that claimed COVID-19 didn’t originate in China, the place the primary case was detected, however somewhat from North American white-tailed deer.

“We could offer $2,000 (roughly Rs. 1,51,700) (totally negotiable considering the nature of this type of content) lemme know if u are interested,” an worker named Joey wrote, in response to emails shared with the AP.

After Tye and Sterzel requested for articles that might again up the false declare, the emails stopped.

In an e mail to the AP, a Pear Technology worker confirmed he had contacted Tye and Sterzel, however stated he didn’t know a lot concerning the shopper, including “it might be from the government??”

Tye and Sterzel say the alternate pulls again the curtain on how China pushes propaganda by way of influencers who revenue from it.

“There’s a very easy formula to become successful,” Sterzel stated in an interview. “It’s simply to praise the Chinese government, to praise China and talk about how great China is and how bad the West is.”