Owning the Conversation: Study unveils extensive Russia-China disinformation operations

In the war that Russian President Vladimir Putin launched more than two months ago, the Kremlin has tried not only to suppress information about its actions against Ukrainian people, but also to push disinformation onto many major global social media outlets.

While the Kremlin continues to wield disinformation as a powerful weapon against the conflict, it hasn't acted alone: Social media activities of Chinese official sources appeared to be echoing the Kremlin’s preferred language and narratives about its war, according to data released by U.S. analysts this week.

Beijing has increasingly followed Moscow’s lead on releasing information on the conflict, the analysts told reporters during a virtual briefing hosted by the State Department's Foreign Press Center, TURAN's Washington correspondent reports.

"... There has been an increase in the alignment between the narratives promoted by Russian and Chinese officials and entities," said Bret Schafer, a senior fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy.

"... What we often see is that there is a two-way street of amplification where Russian officials are also increasing their engagement with Chinese officials online, sometimes to validate their talking points but often because their worldview on certain topics are so closely aligned..." he explained. "One metric we can cite to highlight this phenomenon is the number of retweets of Chinese officials from Russian officials and vice versa."

The strategies used by Chinese and Russian politicians and how their state media outlets carry out these campaigns is the focus of a new study. The data comes to light amid a dispute between U.S. and Chinese officials over who bears responsibility for Russia’s invasion of the Eastern European country in February, including frequent allegations by Washington that Beijing has taken Moscow’s side.

"Through the first four months in 2022, we have seen almost three times as many retweets of Chinese diplomats from Russian sources that we saw in the same period in 2021. This is largely driven by the amplification of Russian state media outlet RT, but we’ve also seen this occur at the diplomatic level"  Schafer said.

One example is the Chinese embassy in Paris, which has on several occasions retweeted the Russian embassy in Paris, including on sensitive topics like war crime denialism in Bucha.

Through the first four months of 2022, Russian diplomats have retweeted Chinese officials more than 140 times, a nearly 10-time increase in the number of retweets in the same period as 2021. The most retweeted accounts are not state media but are in fact Chinese officials, most notably Chinese officials affiliated with the ministry of foreign affairs, including the official ministry of foreign affairs account. Schafer said much of this content had a significant anti-American tone.

One of the key narratives behind the Russian-China joint campaign was the idea that NATO is "the aggressor" in the latest war.

"This of course is a line that has been pushed by Russian officials and Russian state media for years leading up to the invasion. But we’ve seen a clear adoption of this line from Chinese sources as well since the invasion in February," Schafer said.

The experts have also seen this with direct adoption of the Kremlin talking point that NATO expansion is directly to blame for the conflict. "Of note, one can also see in Chinese messaging a number of tweets that mention Iraq, Afghanistan, again, as I mentioned, kind of redirecting and distracting from the current war by focusing on past U.S. wars."

Another talking point is the idea that Ukrainians are "neo-Nazis", that there needs to be denazification happening within Ukraine. "Obviously, this has been a main justification made by the Kremlin over the last several months. We again have seen Beijing adopting this talking point," the expert said.

A fourth narrative alignment is around the specific language used to describe what is happening in Ukraine. "We have seen a continued use of “special operation” used instead of the term “invasion”, Schafer added.

The experts have noticed an amplification of Kremlin-promoted conspiracies, particularly around a U.S. bioweapons program in Ukraine. "We saw Chinese officials actually promoting this narrative to a greater degree than Russian officials, who initially put out these statements."

"I’ve been in this job full time five years, and I think I’ve dealt with at least four or five different bioweapons conspiracies in that time, from the Lugar Lab in Georgia, then of course coronavirus bioweapons conspiracies with Fort Detrick. And so it’s almost like a Hollywood franchise where each new sequel has the same villain, but it’s repackaged slightly differently to kind of fit within the times and to reach a new audience." Schafer said.

Speaking about the evolving nexus of Chinese-Russian disinformation war, Georgia State University professor Maria Repnikova told reporters that they've long noticed the co-creation of a shared enemy.

"That’s already something we’ve seen before the war.  But... Chinese foreign ministry spokespeople in particular framing the U.S. and NATO as the key adversary and instigator, very much echoing Russia’s narratives, although I would argue that’s quite an opportunistic move because it’s a convenient narrative for them to adopt when it comes to their external communication, and very much targeting domestic audiences as well with that, something I’ll mention a bit more in detail later."

The experts have also noticed selective amplification of direct disinformation.

When asked by TURAN about audiences that China-Russian disinformation machine has been targeting, Repnikova said, there are two audiences: A domestic component and external audiences.

"I don’t think that these officials are aiming to convince Western politicians or Western publics to kind of align with them - it seems to be very counterproductive.. But I do think that some of these messages resonate, again, in the Global South."

How can people in vulnerable countries with lack of press freedom such as Azerbaijan, of course, vaccinate themselves against the Russia-China disinformation campaign?

Answering this question, Repnikova said, a lot of it comes down to media literacy and "pushing out information that’s credible and balanced in your own media".

"I think that’s the best way to challenge these disinformation tactics. But also it’s transparency" she added.

For Schafer, a lot of the messages are really specifically tailored and targeted to audiences outside of Europe and the U.S.

"Clearly it’s a greater challenge in environments where Chinese or Russian state media sources have an outsized influence, just because there’s not as much competition. But we’ve seen at least on the edges of society that they can be very effective, even in the most sort of mature information environments" Schafer said.

Alex Raufoglu

Washington D.C.