China is pushing propaganda on your news screen: Report

If you’ve recently come across Chinese content in your local town’s news sites, it might be due to a network of fake websites posing as local news outlets. These sites, as identified in a recent investigation by cyber experts, are part of a coordinated effort to spread content that aligns with China’s interests globally.

Citizen Lab, a Toronto-based cybersecurity watchdog has uncovered a network of 123 websites, known as ‘Paperwall’ websites operating in multiple languages, linked to locations in at least thirty countries across four continents.

While these websites vary slightly in content and design, they all function in a similar fashion to export narratives in a capillary and targeted manner. At times, they engage in coordinated campaigns to push Chinese disinformation and discredit dissidents abroad.

So, the next time you read a “Rome Journal”,” or an “Eiffel Post,” or a “BritishFT,” and find some pro-China articles, know that it doesn’t necessarily belong to Rome, France or Britain. Such ‘Paperwall’ websites mimic content from genuine news platforms but lack proper attribution.

Further, they mix in pieces from Chinese state media like CGTN and the Global Times, clearly crediting these sources, as well as commercial press releases (much of it on crypto). ‘Paperwall’ websites also report direct assaults on critics of the Chinese regime, along with outright disinformation and conspiracy theories often carrying an anti-United States slant.

To appear as legitimate local news outlets, these ‘Paperwall’ websites typically use local references as part of their names. For example, “Eiffel” or “Provence” for French-language websites; “Viking” for the Norwegian one; or city names, commonly used for Italian and Spanish websites.

What kind of misinformation?

Remember the Chinese-born virologist Li Meng Yan, known for accusing the Chinese government of hiding the artificial origins of Covid-19. Although the international scientific community contested her theories, ‘Paperwall’ sites still launched a fabricated campaign aimed at discrediting her and obstructing her appointment at the University of Pennsylvania.

Paperwall’s tactic of embedding ad-hominem attacks against Beijing’s critics within extensive benign content can severely harm the targeted individuals, leading to delegitimisation, lost professional opportunities, and even harassment, bolstering the reach and credibility of these attacks.

Another prominently found content within the ‘Paperwall’ network of websites is conspiracy theories, typically aimed at tarnishing the image of the United States, or its allies. Claims could include, for example, allegations of the US conducting biological experiments on the local population in South-East Asian countries.

Citizen Lab identified ‘Paperwall’ websites in most European Union countries, but the campaign is truly global. There are several fake outlets in Turkey (“Cappadocia Post,” “Anadolu Ha”), Brazil (“Financeiro Post,” “Brazil Industry”), South Korea (“Seoul PR,” “Daegu Journal”), Japan (“Nikko News,” “Fujiyama Times”) and even in Russia (“Find Moscow,” “Rostov Life”) as well as others in Mexico, Argentina, the United States and Ecuador.

Lastly, political content disseminated by ‘Paperwall’ often takes the form of verbatim reposts of content from Chinese state media, such as CGTN or the Global Times, including articles like “Closer people bonds foster China and Vietnam diplomatic friendship.”

The rapidly expanding campaign serves as an example of a wide-reaching influence operation catering to both financial and political interests, aligning with Beijing’s political agenda. Open-source data indicates that these websites attract minimal traffic and lack significant coverage by mainstream media or amplification through social media. Consequently, their impact, while limited, is not harmless.

Beijing is increasingly getting aggressive in the spheres of influence operations (IOs), both online and offline. In the digital realm, Chinese IOs are shifting their tactics and increasing their volume of activity, as per the finding of this report.

The novelty of this campaign’s approach is registering several websites at a time and then maintaining them over time so that the fake websites can become increasingly authentic in the eyes of unsuspecting users.