A video of a prison riot in the South American country of Ecuador earlier this year was sent to Asia and turned into a disinformation campaign about “white black Americans killing Chinese in California. Scholars have found that this kind of anti-American and anti-American information warfare is stirring in Thai society for reasons related to the Communist narrative that is gaining ground in the Thai media, academia, and political and business circles. Thai people from all walks of life have expressed concern about this phenomenon.
“What’s wrong with America?”
(audio of prison riot film)
In this violent video, an Asian man falls to the ground with his face in pain and is clubbed by dozens of Spanish-speaking men, beaten in broad daylight until his stomach is broken and blood is spilled.
The video, which is not attributed to a source, has been hyped as a hate attack against Asians in the United States. Since mid-April of this year, the film has been widely circulated in Southeast Asian Chinese communities, on Chinese and Taiwanese social media platforms, and on messaging apps, with a common misleading narrative – “What’s wrong with America?”
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A check of text circulating in Chinese WeChat groups, communication software Line groups, and social networking site Facebook groups reveals that the video targeted different viewer groups in China, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia writing: “Disorderly America! California blacks and whites kill Chinese, turn to the nation!” The video was released to the public in the U.S., “A Chinese man died in vain, and our government is still holding the thigh of the United States?” , “Chinese people in the United States should wake up and flee the United States as soon as possible; go back to China or move to Southeast Asian countries as soon as possible, the sooner the better.”
These messages and the bloody video caused a lot of commotion in the Chinese community in Thailand.
“Facebook groups and Line are the most relied upon source of information for Thais, especially the older generation.” Teeranai Charuvastra, a board member of the Bangkok-based Thai Journalists Association, said such fake videos portraying “anti-America” and “anti-Americanism” have been commonplace in Thailand for more than a year, but he said with a smile. The young people of Thailand do not eat this, but the older people are not sure.
We searched for the source of the video and its distribution path, and found that it was from the prison riot that happened in Ecuador on February 23rd this year. The first original video was tweeted by an Ecuadorian Justice Ministry official, and on March 14, it was circulated to the Telegram Channel, a Russian communications software. In late April, the video began appearing on Chinese, Taiwanese, and Southeast Asian messaging software and social media; it also appeared on the U.S. forum Reddit, where it was incorrectly described as a violent incident in Los Angeles, but the account that uploaded it has since deleted it.
Screenshot of WeChat
The characteristics of information warfare? Why did Thailand fall for it?
In the view of Li Minzhen, an independent researcher who has long tracked the CCP’s information warfare, the spread of the fake message fits two main themes of recent CCP cognitive warfare: first, to shape the narrative that the CCP’s governance model is superior to the West’s since the epidemic; and second, to use the recent incidents of discrimination and hate crimes against Asians in the United States to promote the CCP’s role as the guardian of order.
“To create a narrative that the CCP is going to protect the Chinese and protect all Chinese people in a big brother way.” Li Minzhen told the station that whether the CCP’s information warfare points to chaos in the United States or glorifies China, its goal, approach, and narrative are the same: to reinforce the notion that “democracy is not a good way to govern people.
However, unlike Russia’s information warfare, which is led directly by government departments, the CCP’s information warfare is often characterized by outsourcing to different departments and even commercial companies, so the products can be of varying quality and easily detected. The fake video did not cause too much of a stir in Taiwan, which has a high level of vigilance in the resistance and a gradually established fact-checking mechanism, but instead festered in Thai society. “The reason this is particularly useful in Thailand is that since last year’s (Thai) school movement, the spread of conspiracy theories of hatred against the U.S. began to be very serious, with a large number of fake messages saying that the U.S. incited the students, and even directly connecting the Hong Kong school movement as well, saying that the five major demands were replicated in Thailand.”
In February 2020, the dissolution of the Future Forward Party, Thailand’s new progressive party beloved by young people, ignited the largest wave of pro-democracy protests in Thailand since 2014. The student-led pro-democracy movement has blossomed across the country with three major demands: to dissolve the junta-dominated parliament, to stop cracking down on dissidents, and to amend the new 2017 military-drafted constitution. At the same time, protesters also demanded reforms to Thailand’s royal family to limit the excessive power of the Thai emperor.
The fires of democracy on the streets of Thailand have temporarily fallen silent following the outbreak of the New Crown (Chinese Communist virus) epidemic and the authorities’ efforts to suppress it with mass arrests.
“I think the most unfortunate thing is that these (information wars) are very distracting.” Teeranai Charuvastra, 33, recalled what frustrated him most about last year’s pro-democracy movement was the confusion of information that led to unfocused discussions. “We could spend time debating whether we should dissolve the parliament, amend the constitution or reform the royal family, but in the end public opinion wasted time discussing who was behind the school movement, questioning the workings of Western powers such as the U.S., and conspiracy theories accusing students of being mobsters and paid actors …… The danger of this disinformation is that it vilifies these campaigners and discredits them, and the movement as a whole, to society at large.”
Expanding CCP’s “Media and Information Cooperation” in ASEAN through Belt and Road
In addition to conspiracy theories, the spread of gossip has exacerbated internal divisions within Thailand’s civic movement. Dr. James Gomez, director of the regional center of the Asia Centre, a Thai think tank, is also concerned about another important wave of public influence: the expansion of official Chinese media in Thailand.
The official media are strictly required to pledge allegiance to the Communist Party of China and to Xi Jinping. China ranks fourth from the bottom in the world in the 2021 World Press Freedom Index, published by Reporters Without Borders, an international organization that advocates for press freedom, and is also the country with the largest number of journalists in prison in the world.
In 2015, the Chinese government made “media and information cooperation” with ASEAN member states an important part of its “One Belt, One Road” strategy, and over the next few years began to provide free content from Xinhua, CCTV and other Chinese official media through acquisitions of Thai media outlets or memoranda of association. In the next few years, we will start to provide free content from Chinese official media such as Xinhua News Agency and CCTV to Thai TV stations through acquisitions or MOUs.
In 2019, Xinhua’s content was featured in Thailand’s third largest newspaper, Khaosod, in the context of the “China-ASEAN Media Exchange Year. Tyler Roney, a Bangkok-based journalist, observes that this has allowed Thai newspapers to adopt Beijing’s narrative model exclusively when covering the massive pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong.
By 2020, Thai media were even more influenced by Beijing in their treatment of the topic of the origins of the new crown epidemic. “Some Thai media outlets directly packaged conspiracy theories from the official Chinese Communist Party media as news, such as ‘Heavy discovery:New crown virus may have originated from US military,’ and these so-called news stories were not checked and ignored the fact that the source of information was the official Chinese Communist Party-controlled state-run media.” Teeranai Charuvastra said.
Dr. James Gomez analyzed that, compared to the high level of vigilance of Taiwanese and Japanese societies against disinformation and disinformation from foreign forces, Thailand not only lacks sufficient public awareness in screening Chinese information in this regard, but the Thai government is also somewhat silent about the CCP’s ambition to try to dominate the direction of public opinion.
“Thai government departments and elites have close ties with the CCP in order to gain economic, military or political benefits. Therefore they will not criticize the CCP, let alone use the term ‘intervention by forces outside the country’ to describe the CCP. I think that’s the problem – the reluctance (of those in power) to confront the influence caused by the CCP’s dominant narrative on the ground.” Gomez said.
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“China’s Good Voice” enters Thailand
China and Thailand have grown closer economically in recent years, with Chinese students already the leading foreign students at Thai universities and Chinese tourists accounting for 27.6 percent of all foreign visitors to Thailand in 2019. As the China-Thailand high-speed rail project unfolds, China will overtake Japan as the leading source of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Thailand by 2020.
A poll conducted by the Nihon Keizai Shimbun earlier this year found that Thai people were split 50-50 when asked to choose between the United States and China.
“To some extent, this also reflects the fact that Thailand’s foreign policy has historically followed the principle of equilibrium between powers (equilibrium).” Poowin Bunyavejchewin, a senior researcher at the Center for East Asian Studies at Thailand’s National University of Law and Economics, explained that there is a clear distinction between the official and private sectors, the upper class and the lower and middle classes, and that the private sector is concerned about the growing influence of the Chinese Communist Party in Southeast Asia and Thailand, the quality of the high-speed railway, the possible debt trap, and the Communist Party’s vaccine diplomacy. There are concerns about the CCP’s growing influence in Southeast Asia and in Thailand, the quality of the high-speed railway, the possible debt trap, and the CCP’s vaccine diplomacy.
But Chinese money entering Thai academia in a non-transparent manner is also a disturbing phenomenon to Boa Shakwen.
“In the last five years or so, I feel as if there is an official spokesperson for the Chinese Communist Party in Thai academia.” Some academics echo Beijing’s rhetoric in high-profile ways, such as touting the controversial high-speed rail project, the Kexin vaccine with its worrying effectiveness, or even advocating that Thailand should copy China’s development model exactly, Boyar Sherman said, “They are able to hold the words to the public that are not exactly based on the real situation or in the real interests of the Thai state. “
Dr. James Gomez, director of the regional center of the Asia Centre, a Thai think tank, shares the concern that diverse voices are being drowned out and vilified in Thailand, affecting the vitality of Thai civil society.
“This trend will continue, and as long as no one stops it, the space for free expression in Thai society will eventually be swallowed up.” He said this is the situation he is most worried about.
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