Hitting two birds with a stone: China develops fake news factories to fill information vacuum, curb criticism

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BEIJING: The Great Wall of China is one of the seven wonders of the world. The wall that was built to keep out Mongol invaders is so massive that arguably it could be seen from space. But in China, there exists another less talked about wall, one that is far more effective in keeping out things that the Communist Party of China (CCP) does not want the Chinese people to get exposed to, that is China’s Great Firewall (GFW). 

The GFW refers to a series of legislative and technological barriers that allow the CCP and the Chinese government to control the flow of information and regulate the domestic internet. China has over 800 million internet users and each one of them is subject to the world’s most sophisticated censorship system - The Great Firewall.

The GFW blocks access to multiple foreign social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter and also does not allow access to the widely used online messaging platform WhatsApp. It also allows the CCP to block access to foreign media sources, further allowing it to keep the Chinese people in the dark and enables it to control how much and what exactly the Chinese people hear of the outside world.

The GFW is a major component but is only of the components used by the CCP to monopolize information. A massive chunk of CCP’s information control mechanism consists of disinformation, fake news, and censorship. These practices are rampant in almost all sources of information - from social media to television and even print. The internet and the advancements in technologies have given people access to news and information from all around the world, and when people can have accurate information about happening in the world, they can attain a better understanding of international events that impact them. Wei Xing , the former editor-in-chief of Sixth Tone in his article 'Mike Pompeo's  Dad was a Hunanese  Bandit' and other real fake news has explained how China has built its fake news machinery to fill the information vacuum between China and news from the rest of the world. In the article , he has stated that “When citizens have accurate information about their country , it's only then that they can adopt a rational, open-minded worldview.”

It might seem an admirable concept and granting free access to accurate information to citizens is something all nations should strive for. However, the case of CCP and the Chinese government is different. The CCP has ruled China for decades and holds a monopoly on power in China and wants to preserve its monopoly of power at any cost and thus views open access to information for the Chinese citizens as a threat to that power. Because if the people had free access to information from unbiased and international sources, the Chinese people would not be swayed by the Chinese government's propaganda. By controlling almost all sources of information, the CCP ensures that the Chinese people are not able to tell the difference between fake news, propaganda, and the truth.

One does not have to speculate that the CCP is trying to control sources of information like media houses, they are stating it themselves. As per a report of South China Morning Post, Xu Lin, the vice-director of China's Central Propaganda Department stated on November 19, 2020 that the actions of Chinese media outlets must be based on ‘loyalty to the party,rather than the market’. He further added, “Digitalisation could bring about changes in media but no matter what kind of media outlet, no matter if it’s mainstream or a commercially-run platform, online or offline, big or small screen, there is but one criterion for guidance, there is no space outside the law, no enclave for public opinion.”

 The CCP has historically considered the media as a means of advancing its political agenda and narrative. The CCP has always been anxious about online media portals such as Litchi News, Shanghai-based The Paper, Southern Weekly, and others like them because these platforms are not directly controlled and funded by CCP, like Xinhua and CCTV. As per the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Xi Jinping is utilising the ideology of ‘struggle’ to mobilize  aggressive nationalism among the Chinese people. This has now become a central part of his rule. Thus, to inspire nationalism , the CCP must promote narratives that  make China look good, effectively deflect blame away from it and criticize the actions of the West.

One example of this is - how China and Chinese media took a German epidemiologist’s study out of context to try and portray to the Chinese people that the COVID-19 virus did not originate in Wuhan, China. In the past few months, the CCP has been subjected to a barrage of criticism for their handling of the COVID-19 outbreak and its initial attempts to withhold information. To deflect blame away from itself and absolve itself of any blame in the eyes of the Chinese people, state media outlets in China claimed that the coronavirus did not originate in Wuhan, as per German scientist Alexander Kekule’s study. Professor Kekule, who specialises in virology and microbiology, was initially stunned that his study was being used by Chinese media and then stated that what they were doing was ‘pure propaganda’ and that the Coronavirus did originate in China and the Chinese government even concealed it.

China's growing prominence due to its recent hostile actions has resulted in the Chinese people demanding a greater amount of international news. As per news website Sixth Tone, a 2019 study of 10 Chinese cities revealed that 99.82% of the respondents in the study got their news from their smartphones, 75% of respondents received their news from chat groups on WeChat, another 20% listed Weibo as their primary source of news (including international news). The study also revealed that 6.5% and less than 1% of respondents use television and print media as their source of information respectively. As the study showed, an overwhelming majority of people in China use the internet and internet platforms as their primary source of news, the GFW run by the CCP, and the Chinese government censors and controls all the information on the internet.

Another example of China trying to use disinformation to change the narrative is the CCP’s attempts to portray the pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong as members of ‘ISIS’ and ‘cockroaches’, Facebook's head of cybersecurity policy, Nathaniel Gleicher in a blog post on 19 August 2019, stated that Facebook had removed seven pages, three groups, and five user accounts that were ‘involved in coordinated inauthentic behaviour’, the blog post added that the efforts to Spread disinformation originated in China and focused on Hong Kong. Another report by The Guardian titled ‘Beijing's new weapon to muffle Hong Kong protests: fake news’ published in August 2019 stated that the Chinese state media was trying to malign the pro-democracy protests.

Fang Kecheng, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong stated that the  Chinese media’s coverage of the protests could not be called journalism. He added that it was pure propaganda and that the state media was taking very small amounts of information and then distorting and magnifying it to meet the CCP’s narrative needs. Chinese state media routinely termed peaceful protest Hong Kong protests as ‘riots’ and routinely termed the protestors as ‘radicals’ and ‘thugs’.

The party fiercely wishes to maintain absolute power over the Chinese people, in the regard it believes that giving free access to information to people will threaten its monopoly on power. Therefore , it wishes to keep the Chinese people in the dark and cut off from the rest of the world. The CCP only allows the people to see what they wish the people to see by propagating narratives that benefit the Party and criticises the West. These exposes have also highlighted that in addition to running global disinformation campaigns, the CCP also runs domestic disinformation campaigns so that the general public remains oblivious of the atrocities the CCP commit against the Chinese people, further bulwarking international criticism and domestic discontent.