How Chinese propaganda is helping Russia spread false news about Ukraine

Ye has already analyzed the tactics of Russian propaganda in the European Union, as well as manipulation in the Belarusian media. But it should be noted that China is also helping Russian propagandists to actively spread false information about Ukraine abroad.

According to theguardian.com, numerous Chinese government media and pro-Russian social media accounts are spreading pro-Russian sentiment on Chinese social media by mistranslating or manipulating international news about the war in Ukraine. In response, anonymous volunteers - such as the Great Translation Movement on Twitter - began exposing Chinese pro-Russian propaganda, highlighting inaccurate translations, manipulations accusing Ukrainian bombing troops and crimes committed by Russian troops against civilians.

For example, on April 21, The Guardian published a text stating that civilians killed during the Russian occupation of the Ukrainian city of Bucha were killed by small metal arrows. called flash disks, from Russian artillery shells. However, South Review, the official state media and a branch of the Communist Party of China, owned by the Guangzhou Daily, mistranslated the text, claiming that the flash cartridges were fired by Ukrainian forces.

The publication of the Ministry of Defense "Armyinform" actively wrote about the use of flash drives in Bucha.

The fact that China is spreading pro-Russian information about Ukraine through numerous channels around the world, shows an analysis conducted by NewsGuard, an organization that analyzes propaganda on the Internet.

Experts warn of the widespread influence of Chinese information channels on social networks. Despite the ban in China, more than half a billion Facebook users have now subscribed to government publications affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party.

 

The NewsGuard study included publications on social media China Xinhua News, claiming that "Ukraine experimented with coronaviruses on bats with US support."

This followed previous news from Russian propagandists that Ukraine had received Washington's support for the production of biological weapons in laboratories. The news agency, which NewsGuard claims distributes pro-Russian content to Chinese communities around the world, has more than 92 million followers on Facebook, nearly four times the population of Australia.

Subsequent Chinese media reports reiterated the Kremlin's view that Russian troops were not responsible for killing civilians in Bucha, and especially for bombing maternity hospitals in Mariupol. Analysts believe that the massive media pressure supported by the state is an attempt to distort the global narrative in favor of Russia.

The fact that China is spreading Russian narratives has been noticed in the European Union.

The European Union news agency EUvsDisinfo, which fights against fake news, is trying to oppose Chinese propaganda, especially when it comes to the war in Ukraine.

In the last few weeks, the European External Action Service (EUVSDisinfo) project has published two reports in Chinese on disinformation about Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Euronews reports.

"Among the many lies that Russia has spread about the war in Ukraine, the misinformation that Ukraine is developing biological weapons is particularly insidious," reads the translation of the tweet of the European External Action Service published in Chinese, reports TheHill.

Chinese propaganda is not only trying to justify Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine, but is undermining legitimate biological and epidemiological research around the world, endangering global public health.

It is interesting that these reports are the first published content of the EUvsDisinfo Agency in Chinese, because it usually publishes its reports in European languages.

A spokesman for the European Commission told Euronews that the reports were made with the aim of "providing the Chinese-speaking audience with fact-based information to raise awareness of misinformation about the war in Ukraine".

"In the past, EUvsDisinfo has reported on coordination between pro-Kremlin and Chinese sources controlled by both countries, such as COVID-19, human rights violations in Xinjiang, Afghanistan and Ukraine.