Social media trolling, which “frequently evolve (s) into threats of death, rape, or assault”, is being deployed by China to suppress reports of atrocities against Uyghurs and other minorities in the Xinjiang region, according to a newly released US Department of State report.

Depiction of the Chinese Troll Army
Depiction of the Chinese Troll Army

The campaigns, which feature on and offline harassment, are designed to prevent victims from sharing their stories or frighten them into silence.

There is no mercy in the sponsored attacks by the People’s Republic of China (PRC), which include cyber attacks, and cyber bullying or harassment through doxing – a term coined for when an individual’s personal information (such as full name, home address, or job) is published online without their permission.

The State Department report homepage
The State Department report homepage

The report by the Global Engagement Centre, the counter-disinformation unit, concludes that this is part of a coordinated effort to “amplify Beijing’s preferred narratives on Xinjiang, to drown out and marginalise narratives that are critical of the PRC’s repression of Uyghurs, and to harass those critical of the PRC.

“Despite these efforts to distract from the situation in Xinjiang, independent media outlets, academics and human rights activists have published multiple eyewitness accounts and verifiable data that China has imprisoned an estimated one million people and that credible evidence exists of torture, forced sterilization and other abuses,” the report says. 

The messaging tactics include flooding search engines and social media with disinformation to drown out content which contradicts Beijing’s official line, and using sophisticated AI-generated images to insinuate authenticity around fake user profiles.

Another tool to manipulate narratives is to have pro-PRC actors engage in astroturfing – a term used to describe the effect of fake posts that create the illusion there is widespread support for a person or campaign when none exists.

The report gives the example of the PRC using astroturfing to suggest that the Uyghur population leads “simply happy lives,” as well as creating posts extolling how, thanks to PRC policies, economic gains have been brought to Xinjiang.

It describes videos posted by 300 pro-PRC inauthentic accounts in mid-2021 which show Uyghurs seeming to deny abuse in the region and claiming that they are “very free.”

PRC messengers also posted amplified content denying abuse claims by independent media outlets and internationally renowned thinktanks.

“Some of these accounts repeatedly denied the PRC’s atrocities in Xinjiang, falsely asserting that the body of overwhelming and objective independent evidence of the atrocities is simply a fabrication of the United States and its allies,” it says.

Social media hashtags such as #AmazingXinjiang and #Xinjiang meanwhile seek to highlight positive stories about Xinjiang and Uyghurs to counter independent reports of widespread abuse in the region. 

Fake accounts were also posted of a multicultural society living in harmony, in stark contrast to the reality of the PRC’s extensive surveillance of the Uyghurs, including PRC officials living in Uyghur homes for at least six weeks a year.

A Xinjiang Internment Camp (Credit: Wikipedia)
A Xinjiang Internment Camp (Credit: Wikipedia)

In 2017, authorities in Xinjiang began arbitrarily detaining Uyghurs and other Turkic peoples in a vast network of “reeducation” camps and prisons, despite no evidence they had committed crimes.

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  • Dennis Rice

    National Security News (NSN) welcomes the appointment of Dennis Rice, former Chief Reporter of the Daily Express and Investigations Editor of the Mail on Sunday, as its Launch Editor. He brings with him three decades of experience covering national and international news, which has also included a stint working as a producer at Channel 4 Dispatches. Commenting on his new role, Dennis said: “NSN is a digital platform which exists purely to break stories and uncover new twists and exclusives around existing ones. Whether it’s reporting on the cloak and dagger world of espionage, cyber terrorism, subversion, or intelligence we are very much looking forward to giving the existing media a run for its money.” Dennis Rice is a veteran investigative journalist who has finished as a runner up in Journalist of the Year category at the British Press Awards. He also worked as Investigations Editor of the Mail on Sunday, Chief Reporter of the Daily Express, and as a senior journalist at the Sunday Mirror and the News of the World. His Dispatches credits include working as a producer on How To Stop Your Nuisance Calls (an expose on charity fundraisers) and Murder in the Sky: Flight MH17 (reporting on the crash of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, shot down over the eastern Ukraine). While at the Mail on Sunday he wrote a series of articles which resulted in the resignation of BP Chief Lord Browne, and earlier David Blunkett as the then Work and Pensions Secretary. In 2011 he was paid damages at the High Court after his former employer the News of the World admitted hacking his phone.