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 Chinese narrative that is gaining ground in the Thai media, academia, political and business circles. Thai people from all walks of life have expressed concern about this phenomenon.
“What’s wrong with America?”
In this violence-filled 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 belly is broken and blood is all over the floor.
The video, which is not attributed to a source, has been hyped up 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 communication software, accompanied by a common misleading narrative – “What’s wrong with America?”
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! Black and white people in California kill Chinese people, turn to the whole country!” , “A Chinese man died in vain, but 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 have caused quite an uproar 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 Bangkok-based board member of the Thai Journalists Association, said such fake videos portraying “anti-American” and “anti-American” sentiments have been commonplace in Thailand for more than a year, but he said with a smile. He said with a smile that young Thais don’t eat this at all, but older people may not.
We searched for the source of the video and its distribution path and found that it was from a prison riot that took place in Ecuador on February 23rd of this year. The original video was first 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 messaging software and social media in China, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia; it also appeared on the U.S. forum Reddit, where it was misrepresented as a violent incident in Los Angeles, although the account that uploaded it has since deleted it.
What are 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 China’s governance model is better than the West’s since the epidemic; and second, to use recent incidents of discrimination and hate crimes against Asians in the United States to promote China’s role as the guardian of order.
“To create a narrative that China 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.
But unlike Russia’s direct government-led information warfare, China’s information warfare is often characterized by outsourcing to different departments and even commercial companies, making the products uneven and easily detectable. 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 about hatred of the U.S. has become 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 emerging progressive political 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: the dissolution of the junta-dominated parliament, an end to the crackdown on dissidents, and amendments to the new military-drafted constitution of 2017. At the same time, protesters also demanded reforms to the Thai royal family to limit the excessive power of the Thai emperor.
The fires of democracy on Thailand’s streets have temporarily fallen silent after the outbreak of the new crown epidemic and the authorities’ suppression with mass arrests.
“I think the most unfortunate thing is that these (information wars) are very distracting.” TeeranaiCharuvastra, 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.”
China expands “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 Chinese official media are strictly required to pledge allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party 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 it 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 entirely 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 Chinese official media conspiracy theories 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 the information was the official Chinese controlled state media.” TeeranaiCharuvastra 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 China’s ambition to try to dominate the direction of public opinion.
“Thai government departments and elites have close ties with China in order to gain economic, military or political benefits. So they don’t criticize China, let alone use the term ‘intervention by forces outside the country’ to describe China. I think that’s the problem – (those in power) are not willing to face the influence caused by China dominating the narrative on the ground.” Gomez said.
“‘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 official and private, and between the upper class and the lower and middle classes in this figure. There are concerns about China’s growing influence in Southeast Asia, in Thailand, about the quality of high-speed rail, about a possible debt trap, and about Chinese 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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