The Communist Party of China orchestrated an international campaign to undermine the BBC and discredit its reporting during the first two months of the year, using Western social media networks, an Australian thinktank has discovered.
The attacks intensified in response to high-profile BBC reports, including an investigation into systemic rape in internment camps in Xinjiang that was broadcast in early February, said the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, in its report, “Trigger Warning”.
It describes a “coordinated effort by the CCP’s propaganda apparatus … to discredit the BBC, distract international attention and regain control of the narrative”, mainly outside Chinese borders.
The researchers tracked posts on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube – blocked platforms in mainland China – that were sent by diplomatic and state media accounts and pro-Beijing influencers, and then expanded by troll networks.
He described three main approaches that have been implemented repeatedly to try to undermine the critical reporting by the UK public broadcaster.
The posts claimed that the BBC was biased and spread misinformation, claimed that the domestic audience in the UK did not trust its reporting and that its coverage of China was instigated by espionage agencies or foreigners hostile to Beijing.
“The coordinated approach to containing and undermining the BBC highlights several characteristics of the CCP’s increasingly agile propaganda and disinformation apparatus,” the report concluded.
The posts included several that broadened and promoted British and other Western critics of the BBC, trying to deepen and expand existing divisions.
“The CCP’s apparatus of influence increasingly exploits pre-existing narratives and content that it obtains from Chinese and Western social media and marginal sites, knowing that some of these narratives already have degrees of recognition and resonance that will engage the public,” he said. the report.
The analysis was intended to be a “snapshot” of coordinated attacks, rather than a comprehensive survey, but on Twitter alone, researchers recorded more than 250 mentions of the BBC by almost 50 diplomatic and state media between the beginning of the year and 17 February.
Although the techniques are not new, the intensity of the campaigns and the combination of the actors involved are increasing, concluded the ASPI.
The posts reached a wider audience through “mobilizing a pro-CCP network on Twitter that has already expanded the disinformation content of Covid-19 promoted by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” the report said. “Negative online involvement with the BBC peaks on the same days as that of diplomats and the party’s state media.”
The growing aggression and sophistication of China’s international information campaigns were brought into focus by the pandemic, as Chinese authorities shared and promoted conspiracy theories about the origins and sought to discredit investigations of its initial spread.
Australia’s foreign minister accused China of spreading disinformation that “contributes to a climate of fear and division”, while the European Union faced allegations that a report on Chinese disinformation about Covid-19 was watered down in response to pressure from Beijing.
Another spike in activity came when Chinese state broadcaster CGTN lost its broadcasting license in the UK, after regulator Ofcom concluded that the news network was controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.
A week after Beijing threatened to retaliate for that decision, BBC World News was banned from airing in China. The attacks on the BBC are part of an information war pattern that Beijing is likely to continue, warned the ASPI.
“In order to contest and circumvent criticism, the party will continue to aggressively deploy its propaganda and disinformation apparatus,” the report said.
“This is because she believes that internal control is fundamental to her political power and legitimacy, and because controlling global narratives around important public issues is fundamental to the pursuit of her foreign policy interests.”