Explainers
'Assessing the impact of CCP information operations related to Xinjiang' report
Albert Zhang with Tilla Hoja
Instead of improving its treatment of Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities, the Chinese Communist Party is responding to critiques of its human rights record by coordinating its state propaganda apparatus, security agencies and public relations industry to influence and even silence governments, businesses and civil society at home and abroad.
In ASPI’s report, Assessing the impact of CCP information operations related to Xinjiang, the authors collected and analysed a vast amount of multi-language data, including Chinese government documents and speeches, government statements made to the UN Human Rights Council, corporate responses to Chinese state-affiliated consumer backlashes (regarding Xinjiang-related forced labour), 613,301 Facebook posts, 6,780,809 tweets and retweets, and 494,710 media articles.
The research reveals that CCP information operations are successfully silencing governments, businesses and civil society organisations globally and deterring them from criticising the CCP’s humans rights record and actions.
CCP online information operations deny, distract and deter voices critical of CCP policies by flooding social media with positive depictions of Xinjiang and whitewashing evidence of human rights abuses.
These activities are coordinated with other coercive tactics such as state-affiliated trolling campaigns, cyber surveillance operations and offline harassment.