The Twitter account of Liu Xiaoming, the former Chinese Communist Party ambassador to the UK (small photo).
The Chinese Communist Party has been accused of trying to influence global public opinion through Western social media platforms. A study by U.S. media and the Oxford University Internet Institute found that nearly 27,000 fake accounts on Twitter retweeted posts by Chinese diplomats and official media more than 200,000 times, spreading political propaganda about the Chinese government.
The seven-month study found that Chinese diplomats and official media have been active on Twitter and Facebook for the past two years. Among them, Liu Xiaoming, the former Chinese Communist Party ambassador to the United Kingdom, opened a Twitter account in October 2019, and his posts were retweeted more than 43,000 times from June last year to February this year alone. But more than half of the accounts retweeted were deactivated by Twitter because of the manipulation involved. Many of the accounts that distributed information about the Chinese government, posing as British citizens, accumulated more than 16,000 retweets and responses before they were removed from Twitter late last month and early this month. However, the study could not confirm whether the Chinese government had funded the accounts.
A Twitter spokesperson said that if there is clear evidence that the country is involved, the accounts will be removed as a matter of priority. Once the investigation is complete, all accounts will be made public in the public archives.
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