Israeli cybersecurity firm Cyabra discovered that behind Zhao Lijian’s tweets was an elaborate propaganda war.
The Australian Army illustration, which has caused renewed tensions between China and Australia, continues to fester. China’s ambassador to Australia has criticized Australia for “overreacting,” while an Israeli internet security firm has recently discovered that many “unusual accounts” have retweeted Zhao Lijian’s tweets.
Sino-Australian diplomacy has again hit rock bottom over a social media tweet, with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison criticizing the picture Zhao Lijian tweeted as a fabrication and demanding an apology from China, triggering a war of words between the two sides. According to a Dec. 4 Reuters report, Israeli cybersecurity firm Cyabra found that the tweet was part of an orchestrated propaganda campaign to amplify the impact of Zhao Lijian’s tweet, pointing out that 57.5 percent of the accounts that retweeted Zhao Lijian’s tweet were fake accounts, and after analyzing 1,344 of those accounts, Cyabra found that a large number of them were created in November. And it’s only used once, to retweet Zhao Lijian’s tweets. However, Cyabra did not reveal any details about who was behind the tweets.
Reuters also noted that Timothy Graham, a scholar at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia, analyzed 10,000 replies to Zhao Lijian’s tweets and found that accounts from China were the most active, with 8 percent of them newly created on the same day or within 24 hours and containing much of the same content.
Graham told Reuters that if there were a large enough number of accounts, these violations would indicate that they were set up for a specific campaign. He added that the accounts were not just about Afghan children, but about Hong Kong.
In the middle of this year, the Chinese government was revealed to have used a large number of bot accounts to amplify disinformation campaigns, particularly against the public opinion on the Xin Guan epidemic. Jordan Schneider, an adjunct researcher at the Center for a New American Security, a U.S. think tank, told the station that the Chinese government has a history of using zombie accounts to guide public opinion, including Hong Kong and Taiwan have been affected, but compared to the use of anonymous zombie accounts between, this time the practice is a step up.
“This kind of amplification of Chinese diplomats is actually novel …… In a way, the Chinese government is getting smarter and learning that not all of their previous tactics have worked,” Sima Jordan said.
In June, Twitter deleted 170,000 accounts used to promote Chinese influence and information favorable to the Chinese government. U.S. State Department officials also discovered in May that the social media accounts of China’s foreign ministry and diplomats were followed by a large number of bot accounts designed to help spread misinformation about China’s big outreach campaign.
However, Twitter declined Australia’s request to delete Zhao Lijian’s post this time.
In an interview with Australian media on Friday (December 4), China’s Minister to Australia Wang Qining criticized Morrison for “overreacting” and wondered why a national leader would react so strongly to a young Chinese artist’s artwork. He also criticized the Australian media for oversimplifying the diplomatic issues between the two sides in order to explain the Chinese Embassy’s “14 sins” of dissatisfaction with Australia’s China policy. Last month, the Chinese Embassy in Australia released a document listing 14 counts of Chinese government dissatisfaction with Australia’s “anti-China” behavior.
The Chinese government chose this time to make a big deal out of the Australian military incident, no doubt hoping to undermine Australia’s prestige,” Cai Rongfeng, a policy analyst at Taiwan’s National Institute for Defense and Security Studies and a non-resident researcher at the Pacific Forum, a Hawaii-based think tank, told Taiwan.
“If he (China) can deal with Australia (Australia) well, others can see Australia down the road and it can have a chilling effect,” He said.
In addition, Cai Rongfeng also analyzed the Chinese cognitive warfare model, in addition to the use of infiltration with a big outreach approach to Australia to threaten and entice, and take advantage of the timing of the release of the report on the Australian military investigation incident, a stitch in time, trying to attack the Australian government’s mistakes to achieve the effect of dividing Australia’s internal.
“I’m sure he (China) has been waiting for a long time to throw this stone while the Australian (Australian) government is making a mistake,” he said. He said.
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