Archived

At a meeting in Beijing last month attended by senior propaganda officials, Cui Shixin (崔士鑫), a veteran journalist with a storied career in the Party-run press system, was appointed head of China’s official association for working journalists. Cui, who most recently served as deputy editor-in-chief of the Chinese Communist Party’s flagship People’s Daily (人民日报), is in many respects the ideal media leader by the Party’s standards, and his appointment offers a reference point for how journalistic values are defined in China.

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The October 24 meeting of the All-China Journalists Association (中华全国新闻工作者协会), or ACJA, promoted Cui to vice chair and secretary of its secretariat, formalizing his role as head of the association.

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Under the leadership of the Party’s Central Propaganda Department, which sets the country’s media policy, the ACJA plays a key role in the training and discipline of journalists, including enforcing an ethics code that treats loyalty to Party principles as the first duty of the press.

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Cui is not so much a journalist as a veteran Party media leader, a man honed and trained inside a newspaper that promotes the Party’s policies and serves as “the vanguard of the country’s news and public opinion front,” meaning that it guides and defines the lines that media across China hold.

His most important posting, and one celebrated by state media, came in 2007, when he volunteered and was sent to Tibet Daily (西藏日报), the Party-run “mouthpiece” of the Tibet region. He went under a 1994 program of “paired assistance” (对口支援) that sends staff from central institutions to work temporarily with counterparts in Tibet. The People’s Daily, the Central Committee paper, was paired with Tibet Daily, the regional Party committee’s paper. Cui stayed about seven years, first as deputy editor-in-chief and then, from 2012, as editor-in-chief.

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A 2011 profile by People’s Daily Online says that Cui arrived “with the particular zeal of a People’s Daily reporter” (带着人民日报记者特有的热忱). In Party media language, that zeal means commitment to the paper’s role as the Party’s mouthpiece, and Cui’s job was to ensure that Tibet Daily would play that role in the region.

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According to official profiles, he turned the paper [the Tibet Daily] into a regional copy of the People’s Daily. He built each page around regular columns, let commentary set the tone, and set rules on how to cover the news.

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Cui’s zeal proved useful in March 2008, when protests led by monks erupted in Tibet, demanding freedom, respect for human rights, and a safe return for the Dalai Lama to China. Tibet has long been a sensitive topic for Chinese media, and state outlets ignored the peaceful protests, while authorities blamed the Dalai Lama for the unrest. Back in Lhasa, Cui wrote four “commentator articles” (评论员文章) — referring to unsigned pieces that speak for the paper as an institution — over a 10-day period. All blamed the “Dalai separatist forces” (达赖分裂势力).

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[Back in the 2000s] one journalist who even ventured to openly question the censorship around Tibet was Chang Ping (长平), then deputy editor-in-chief of Southern Metropolis Weekly (南都周刊) in Guangzhou, a magazine under the Party-run Nanfang Daily Group [...] Chang wrote an article for FTChinese (FT中文网) called “Tibet: Truth and Nationalist Sentiment” (西藏:真相与民族主义情绪). The article not only criticized the news blackout around protests in Tibet that year, but also asked, provocatively, whether China’s ethnic majority Han Chinese harbored the same sense of cultural superiority toward Tibetans and other minorities that they resented in Western coverage of China. After the piece was published, Chang was swiftly removed from his post and shuffled aside to a research job.

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Eighteen years after Lhasa was gripped by violence, Cui Shixin’s zeal and loyalty have earned him a position at the top of China’s official journalism hierarchy. He now leads the organization that is meant to represent the Party in representing the country’s estimated one million journalists. Chang Ping, who in that same year represented a different sort of voice, of the journalist as a free-thinking professional, has long since moved on, living in exile in Germany.

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Archived

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Since August 2013, Xi Jinping has emphasized the importance of “telling China’s story well,” a euphemistic phrase for what he called “external propaganda” elsewhere in the same speech. The goal is to support China’s foreign policy goals — and the Chinese Communist Party’s legitimacy — by spreading positive narratives about China among international audiences. Now, a growing number of Chinese universities are leaping headlong into this whole-of-society project by opening international communication schools (国际传播学院) meant to train the country’s next generation of storytellers.

These schools are another key aspect of a rapidly expanding national system to support external propaganda. In 2021, Xi Jinping called on universities to cultivate “reserve talent” (后备人才) for international communication. The purpose is to train people who will carry China’s message abroad — including journalists, translators, and analysts for state media and think tanks.

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Hang on, don’t other universities do this too?

Outside of China, the [the] American University in Washington, D.C., has been offering a master’s degree in Intercultural and International Communication since 1968. The program says it “examines the geopolitical, technological, economic, and cultural relations among peoples, societies, nations, and communities,” and trains students to work across cultures. In Taiwan, National Chengchi University (國立政治大學) has been offering an English-language master’s degree in international communication since 2006, which similarly focuses on cross-cultural communication with an Asia-Pacific regional focus.

China’s schools, by contrast, are clear about their primary role as facilitating communication for the Party-state. At the Communication University of China’s founding ceremony for its international communication institute this May, President Zhang Shuting (张树庭) pledged that the university would build “a new high ground in serving the country’s international communication capacity building” and “shoulder the mission of the national team” (扛起国家队使命).

Announcing a partnership with the government run Xinhua News Agency, Shanghai’s Fudan University said it would transform Xinhua’s global network into a “practical classroom” for students.

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Twenty years ago, on 7 October 2006, the journalist Anna Politkovskaya was murdered at the instigation of Russian security services. This is an op-ed by documentary filmmaker Eric Bergkraut, who knew her well, recalling her fight for truth and against Kremlin propaganda – a struggle that is more necessary than ever as Vladimir Putin continues to kill.

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In the Moscow newsroom of Novaya Gazeta, she would wait to see whether editor-in-chief Dmitry Muratov would approve her latest article, whether she had gone too far for a newspaper that, as early as 2004, lived in constant fear of being shut down by the authorities. That was the situation, and yet it felt as if not everything was lost. Who could have imagined that, 20 years later, Putin would still be in power and waging a war that would cost hundreds of thousands of lives?

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After Anna's murder, Putin claimed he was not responsible and that her death did him more harm than all the articles she had written against him. The truth is that Putin cares only about staying in power. For that, he needs war. The individual, whether man or woman, counts for nothing.

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The powerful can control everything except human conscience, Anna believed. She lived through and described how dictatorship corrodes a society. Vladimir Putin has been committing war crimes for more than a quarter-century. Films, books and articles on the subject have never been lacking. Yet, in the early 2000s, the leaders of Western European democracies were not interested. German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder fraternized with Putin; the Nord Stream gas pipeline between Russia and Germany was launched; President Jacques Chirac awarded Putin the Légion d'honneur. Schröder and Chirac cited supposed national interests; the dismantling of democracy did not concern them, let alone human rights abuses. A grave mistake: There is a direct link between the indulgence shown to the autocrat at that time and today's battlefields.

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Anna Politkovskaya was always allergic to empty rhetoric. Twenty years after her assassination, the best tribute to her would be to help those suffering from this new war, regardless of their nationality. We could also bring the Russian autocrat, who dreams of ruling forever, to realize that his reign is nearing its end. Today's European leaders have a chance to show they are wiser than their predecessors. Seeing Vladimir Putin celebrate a birthday behind bars – now, that would be something.

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Remove paywall

More than 12 million Ukrainian adults use TikTok. In recent months, the platform has become a major channel for fake videos, while its recommendation algorithms can propel them to thousands of viewers before they can be distinguished from the real thing. There is no foolproof way to stop such campaigns. TikTok is therefore no longer just a source of entertainment and amusing clips for Ukrainians. It is increasingly a vehicle for disinformation—and a potentially dangerous battleground in the information war.

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Let’s imagine a typical morning for a Ukrainian TikTok user. Open the app and, by default, you land on the “For You” feed. What appears there is known only to TikTok’s algorithms. Among the recommended clips is a short video of an elderly woman, her voice trembling as she urges viewers: “Report draft dodgers before you yourselves are taken away.” A few music videos and comic clips later, you might find yourself watching a supposed “soldier from the 46th Separate Airmobile Brigade” railing against the command’s “criminal decisions”. Scroll further, and there is a clip in which Ukrainian fighters allegedly threaten foreign workers and burn foreign flags, or a video from Sumy describing the city’s utility crisis.

All these videos are generated by artificial intelligence. They are presented to users as genuine footage, but in reality they are deepfakes—some of the many identified by Ukrainian experts.

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In recent months, this has become too systematic. As early as the beginning of 2026, the Centre for Countering Disinformation warned that Russia had “streamlined the production of such fakes”. Russian actors are using AI to create and distribute videos depicting mass casualties and losses among Ukraine’s armed forces, as well as alleged “atrocities committed by the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Donbas”.

At the same time, such campaigns are targeting Ukrainians abroad. On the Polish-language TikTok, false stories have circulated about Ukrainians failing to pay their fuel bills, planned drone attacks on Poland and anti-Ukrainian messages appearing in taxis. Such videos—and the narratives behind them—further strain Ukraine’s already difficult relations with some of its allies.

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There is another danger in this stream of fake or emotionally charged TikTok “junk”: pro-Russian Telegram channels, Russian media and anonymous social-media pages often pick it up and recycle it. They then feed it back into the Ukrainian information space as “proof” that the event really happened. The AI-generated fake thus acquires an added veneer of legitimacy and begins circulating beyond TikTok.

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Why TikTok is the propagandists’ ideal weapon

To understand how a platform better known for dance videos and teenage challenges has become a true battleground for information warfare, it is worth looking beyond the content itself—what it is about, how it is made and how it is presented—to the architecture of media consumption that TikTok imposes on its users.

A key factor in understanding the risks of TikTok is that it is primarily a video platform, rather than a text-based one. Short clips can create a sense of presence and eyewitness testimony, even when the scene has been staged or generated by AI. A text-based fake is more likely to prompt questions about its authorship: the reader may reasonably wonder, “Who wrote this?”

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A video, by contrast, creates the illusion of firsthand testimony. If a person, place or event is visible on screen, viewers are more likely to take what they see as proof that it actually happened.

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Archived

Archived

Here is the study: CGTN - China’s Party-State Global TV in Focus

The day the story of the deadly flash floods in Nepal and Tibet broke at the end of August, China’s national broadcaster CCTV led its nightly news program with the release of a book on culture by the country’s leader Xi Jinping. It wasn’t until the second item that the Chinese Communist Party-controlled channel turned its attention to the disaster, in which thousands of people are now known to have died or are missing.

The channel wasn't being heartless, it was simply acting as it always does, obeying the unspoken order to prioritize flattering news about Xi and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It was also wary of reporting a disaster; anything that could show the Party in a bad light is strictly controlled and censored.

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CCP propaganda and censorship, however, are not restricted to viewers in China. That same broadcast was aired globally on CCTV-4, its Chinese-language overseas arm. In addition, over the past decade, CCTV has been aggressively pushing its English and other foreign-languages channel, CGTN, to viewers around the world. By virtue of its ownership and mission, CGTN follows similar censorship and propaganda guidelines as CCTV, all the while pretending to be a regular news outlet like the BBC or CNN.

While many people are aware of this, CGTN takes great pains to hide it. A few years ago, during our campaign against CCTV and CGTN for airing forced televised confessions (see below), we were in touch with several former CGTN foreign employees and decided to collect stories about how they and other staff experienced the propaganda and censorship from the inside.

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When we asked the former employees about their impressions of the physical work environment at CGTN, they said:

"Armed ‘soliders’ were stationed on the ground floor and around the building’s perimeter."

Other statements by former employees of CGTN's English-language edition (sample, the study provides a lot more):

"In Western newsrooms, it’s loud and mad and busy and exciting, adrenaline is pumping, there’s people having heated debates across the room. That newsroom in China was like a library." ..

"But it was nothing similar to any other journalism or newsrooms I’d been working in. There was so much spare time, you could nearly read books half the day.” ..

"Three quarters of the rundown is all Xi Jinping news.” ..

"I didn’t think I would necessarily mind the propaganda—I’m just a subeditor. My name’s not on there, my face isn’t up there. But it did, it bothered me a lot. There’s no way you cannot be affected by it… Embarrassment, shock, disappointment, complete disbelief at the kinds of standards, kinds of nonsense you’d have to put up and say that’s news.” ...

"I knew certain things just didn’t get reported on at CGTN, yeah it was a case of self-censorship.” ...

“When the Zhuhai-Hong Kong-Macau Bridge opened, I wanted to do a people’s reaction [piece]…[talk to] people that had negative reactions to the bridge. All our stories… were positive stories… Knowing the Chinese government wouldn’t want a story to the contrary, I just didn’t suggest it.” ...

"As copy editors, we didn’t try to insert more details that we knew would not get passed by the laoshis." - [Laoshis are censors, checking for political correctness. As non-native English speakers, the laoshis were not editors.] ...

"I would not be able to change my own questions or even the order of the questions.” ...

""I was talking on air to a guest and I asked the third question second. I got yelled at. It was insane. I was on air with this person [program manager or producer] yelling in my ear." ...

"When they [CGTN staff] had to rely on their own judgment, they became paralyzed with indecision because of course they’re not used to using their own judgment and are fully aware of how treacherous that can be."

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[This is a - in my opinion well-researched - op-ed by Wanning Sun, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, University of Technology Sydney, Australia.]

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The dispute centres on the claims and counterclaims following a story by the BBC’s China correspondent, Laura Bicker, about how China is censoring videos of the floods.

Bicker said videos of the landslide and flood surge sweeping through Gyirong Port on the border was scrubbed from the internet, in part, because Beijing fears instability in the politically sensitive region of Tibet.

Some social media users, however, have posted screenshots of the footage used by the BBC, pointing out it had actually been shown in the Chinese media. One Chinese journalist put it bluntly: “Never seen the BBC spread rumours so blatantly”.

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The Chinese government has long complained about what it sees as Western media “bias” in reporting on Tibet. Its supporters seem to have doubled down on this narrative this week on social media, zeroing in on the BBC.

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But Chinese social media users, both inside and outside China, have long dealt with the authorities exercising control over information. This has certainly been the case in the aftermath of the floods, too.

As Bicker noted in her report, the most concrete example is the deletion of videos showing the massive wave of mud and water swallowing Gyirong Port. The footage was initially circulated on the platforms Weixin and RedNote, but users later could not access it.

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Another form of control has been the restricted access for independent and foreign journalists. Allyson Horn of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation said she had made repeated requests to travel to Tibet, but was denied. Other foreign journalists have similarly been blocked.

This makes it difficult, if not impossible, for foreign media to independently verify the Chinese government’s account of what happened there.

The absence of independent reporting, combined with the removal of footage from social media, has allowed the Chinese state media to dominate the narrative.

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How Chinese media are covering the disaster

This reflects a longstanding tendency in Chinese media to avoid material that could cause social instability or public panic.

Coverage of the Tibet floods by the state-controlled media has focused heavily on the People’s Liberation Army rescue operations, President Xi Jinping’s leadership during the crisis and Premier Li Qiang’s visit to the disaster zone.

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There has also been some coverage of efforts to reopen roads and the delivery of disaster-relief supplies to affected residents.

But as the Guardian has noted, there has been much less reporting about how the disaster has affected local villagers, their homes and communities.

On the Nepali side of the border, meanwhile, foreign journalists have been able to interview survivors without restrictions.

Critics also say the Chinese government is hiding the true number of casualties. The problem with these contested claims is that no outsiders – whether they be critics or not – have been able to verify the death toll due to the restricted access to the disaster site.

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As a general practice, China’s state media outlets are instructed to emphasise “positive reporting” during times of crisis, while censors remove criticisms of government responses or culpability online.

The media coverage of a fatal train accident in the city of Wenzhou in 2011 was a good example.

Research shows that, unlike the Sichuan earthquake, the government kept a tight control on what was permissible in the media. The authorities ordered media outlets not to send reporters to the scene, limited the frequency of their reporting, and instructed them not to link the story to high-speed rail development. Journalists were also told not to investigate the accident’s causes or impact, or circulate personal microblogs on the incident.

Instead, they were urged to seek “moving” stories of bravery and sacrifice, such as local blood donations. The aim was to evoke love and compassion in the wake of the disaster.

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When Xi [Jinping] came to power in 2012, the government’s concerns over potential challenges to its rule led to even more tightening on Chinese media and social media.

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Chinese restrictions are making it harder for Western journalists to independently verify what is happening. The resulting information gap is raising suspicions in the West and criticism of censorship and biased coverage in Chinese media.

And that criticism, in turn, may reinforce Beijing’s belief that Western reporting on Tibet is inherently biased, giving it another reason to restrict information.

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Web Archive link

We meet China’s busiest fictional economist and examine the very real slowdown behind his return.

Archived

Who is Zhong Caiwen?

Since Saturday [22 August], People’s Daily, the Chinese Communist Party’s official newspaper, has published four articles under the name in a rare campaign to reassure citizens that China’s economy remains resilient and its slowdown manageable despite a spell of poor performance.

Zhong is not a real person but a collective pen name associated with the Communist Party’s Central Financial and Economic Affairs Commission, the powerful economic policy body headed by Xi Jinping. According to the China Media Project, a leading independent Beijing-focused media research group, the articles are jointly produced by writing teams at the commission and the party’s propaganda department.

The byline was wheeled out last October across eight articles as Beijing sought to shore up confidence in its lacklustre economy. “A bad feeling does not mean a bad situation,” Zhong advised at the time. “Feelings are subjective, while the situation is objective.”

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The name is a clue. “Zhong Caiwen” sounds like a shortened form of “Central Financial and Economic Affairs Commission commentary,” following a party tradition of disguising institutional messaging as the work of industrious columnists.

And Zhong has been busy. Across the latest four articles, Zhong praised China’s “resilience and vitality,” defended its 4.7% first-half growth rate and cast the country as a “powerful anchor” for the world economy.

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The property slump [in China] continues to depress household confidence, while second-quarter growth slowed to 4.3%, its weakest in three and a half years. Zhong encouraged readers to look past the discouraging data, arguing that technological innovation and industrial upgrading were replacing older sources of growth.

Europe is experiencing the other side of the slowdown. Chinese exports to the EU rose 14% year on year in July, while imports fell 2%, according to the South China Morning Post. China’s surplus widened in 24 of the bloc’s 27 countries, with Germany’s bilateral deficit surging 86.5% to about €8.3 billion.

Brussels has given Beijing until October to show progress on rebalancing trade. But while EU officials describe subsidised production and mounting exports as dangerous overcapacity, Zhong celebrates them as proof that China’s strategy is succeeding.

Zhong even had a message for Europeans sweltering through this summer’s heatwave, deploying the continent’s much-loved language of puns. Chinese air conditioners had brought them relief, Zhong declared, demonstrating China’s “cool power” – a play on soft and hard power.

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cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/10914225

[Automated translation with minimal edits from German original.]

• In recent weeks, the Kremlin has repeatedly interfered in the voting campaign surrounding the neutrality initiative.
• In addition to Russia, other countries are also trying to influence the Swiss population.
• Parliament now wants to take stronger action against this.

Swiss voters will decide on the Neutrality Initiative on 27 September 2026. Among other things, this initiative aims to enshrine a broad prohibition of sanctions against states at war in the Federal Constitution. Obligations towards the UN would be excluded.

The initiative is attracting interest in Moscow. In recent weeks, several articles about the Swiss sanctions against Russia have appeared on the Kremlin-funded platform RT DE. They portray the Federal Council, which rejects the initiative, in a critical light.

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It stirs up sentiment against the Federal Council, which rejects the initiative, and in favour of the Neutrality Initiative. The author's name: Hans-Ueli Läppli. The name almost sounds too Swiss to be true. "The Kremlin wants to normalise the war"

Russia wants to portray its war against Ukraine as a normal conflict between two states, says Ulrich Schmid, Professor of Eastern European Studies at the University of St Gallen. From this, the demand can be derived that Switzerland should remain neutral in this war. Schmid says: "That would play into the hands of the Kremlin."

Russian actors disseminate their content primarily via social media. In the meantime, representatives of the Kremlin are also directly promoting the neutrality initiative. This includes the spokeswoman for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

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Schmid assumes that Russia is hardly successful in its attempts to exert influence. Nevertheless, Switzerland must take the approach seriously. The attempt to exert influence is part of a larger destabilisation strategy by the Kremlin, says Schmid. Moreover, it is a long-term strategy. "That's why it's worth taking a close look now." Parliament calls for stronger measures

The federal government is also aware of the problem. In response to a request from SRF, the State Secretariat for Security Policy (Sepos) writes: "Foreign disinformation and attempts by states to exert influence that are specifically tailored to Switzerland are increasing."

At the end of 2025, the Federal Council set up a working group to deal with such activities. It is intended to improve cooperation within the federal administration and raise awareness among the population of foreign attempts at exerting influence.

However, Parliament believes this does not go far enough. It wants to take stronger action against foreign interference. SRF parliamentary editor Manuel Ramirez says: "There are calls, for example, for social media to be monitored and for foreign actors to be tracked down." According to Ramirez, this would probably also entail strengthening the intelligence service. Parliament could decide on the demands in the autumn session.

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Archived

The French government is deeply wary of the risk in the 2027 polls of Russian interference aiming to put a more Kremlin-friendly candidate in the Elysee against the background of the war against Ukraine.

Prosecutors are probing deepfakes and fake video reports posted on social media targeting the main two centrist candidates -- the former prime ministers Edouard Philippe and Gabriel Attal, the office of the Paris prosecutor told AFP.

It had already opened a probe into a disinformation campaign against left-wing politician Raphael Glucksmann who has yet to formally declare but is widely expected to stand.

The fabricated content appeared on X in posts impersonating legitimate French media outlets and falsely claimed that Attal had Parkinson's disease and that Philippe had contracted an illness.

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Glucksmann was meanwhile targeted through false information about his partner, the star news anchor Lea Salame who presents the main evening news programme on France 2 TV.

A security source, asking not to be named, said these operations have remained low-profile for now. But they are the first since the start of the campaign to directly target contenders for the Elysee.

The move by prosecutors "demonstrates that judicial authorities are taking seriously the gravity of these digital interference tactics and the need to protect the integrity of the democratic debate they seek to distort," Attal's legal team said Tuesday.

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"It is fundamental to state this simple fact: we cannot allow Vladimir Putin's Russia to manipulate the 2027 presidential election -- an election that is existential for the French people," said Glucksmann.

France's Viginum watchdog attributed the campaign targeting Attal with a "high degree of confidence" to the pro-Russian "Matryoshka" network.

A security source said another Russian-linked propaganda network, Storm-1516, was behind the campaigns targeting Glucksmann and Philippe.

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Here is the study in English: Russian Voice in the Chinese Information Space: The Case of Poland (pdf)

Here is the study in Polish: Rosyjski głos za Wielkim Murem: współpraca rosyjsko-chińska na przykładzie narracji dotyczących Polski (pdf)

Russian propaganda and disinformation content is part of the Chinese information message. Some of them reach Chinese audiences as direct translations of Russian materials, while others are taken over and amplified by local channels, an investigation by the Disinformation Analysis Centre at the National Research Institute of Poland (NASK) finds.

Russian and Chinese disinformation campaigns "are united by a broader, anti-Western narrative that serves the interests of both Moscow and Beijing," the report says.

Focusing on narratives related to Poland, NASK finds that the Russian message does not appear in the Chinese infosphere by accident. The report identified hundreds of Chinese materials concerning Poland that literally reproduced Russian propaganda and disinformation.

In China's tightly controlled information space, such content can function because it is consistent with the broader narrative of the authorities in Beijing. Russia and China have their own interests, but in this case they share a common denominator – an anti-Western message – says Patrycja Krzyśpiak, author of the report and expert at the NASK Disinformation Analysis Centre.

In the analysed materials, the experts identified four main narratives concerning Poland. They portray our country as pursuing a confrontational and aggressive foreign policy and striving for militarisation in the face of war in Europe. At the same time, NATO is blamed for conflicts and tensions, and the European Union is portrayed as politically and socially unstable. The most prominent message was about Poland's allegedly aggressive foreign policy, often combined with an anti-NATO narrative and accusations of Poles being Russophobic.

Almost 1,000 materials and eight months of monitoring

For eight months – from 7 January to 31 August 2025 – NASK experts monitored more than 25 Chinese media channels, including Xinhua, CCTV, Baidu, Sina and Weibo. They identified 966 materials concerning Poland that contained content identical or almost identical to Russian propaganda and disinformation. The largest number, 523, appeared on Weibo, and 255 on the Sina platform. Patrycja Krzyśpiak, the author of the study, points out that the actual scale of the phenomenon may be much larger. The scope of the study was affected by both limited access to the Chinese Internet and the lack of transparent data on published content.

The report shows that Russian narratives are not only replicated in the Chinese infosphere – they are part of a broader anti-Western message and are used to achieve Beijing's own information goals. It is also worth noting China's growing technological capabilities in conducting influence operations, which are being carried out in Poland, among other places.

The author of the report indicates that the response to these threats should be not only fact-checking and refuting false and manipulative messages, but also media education, increasing the awareness of recipients and closer cooperation between experts dealing with foreign manipulation and interference in the information environment.

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Examples of Russian narratives in the Sinosphere

• “Poland adopts confrontational and aggressive foreign policy"

The dominant Poland-related narrative in the Sinosphere, which is fully consistent with Russian propaganda, is that of Poland’s alleged confrontational and aggressive foreign policy. It is often combined with an anti-NATO narrative and a narrative of alleged russophobia among Poles ...

In Chinese social media ... propaganda and disinformation materials primarily emphasize Poland’s aggressive stance toward neighboring countries and Russia – often with identical messages also directed at the Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia). They are cited as warmongers, and in Poland’s case, quasi-historical materials are also published to prove its aggressive stance toward neighboring countries ...

• “NATO is to blame for the unrest in Eastern Europe and other conflicts”

The narrative of Poland’s alleged confrontational and aggressive foreign policy is closely linked to a broader anti-NATO messaging. The starting point for this narrative is the factually incorrect assumption, intensively promoted by Russia and China, that NATO, under the leadership of the United States, is responsible for the outbreak of the war in Ukraine.

Undermining the position and capabilities of the Transatlantic Alliance is one of the Kremlin’s overarching propaganda narratives, which also has a strong presence in the Sinosphere. China actively seeks to create a new world order based on organizations subordinate to itself, as evidenced by initiatives such as BRICS, the Belt and Road Initiative, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. This is directly related to competition with the United States in the technological and military arenas ...

• “Poland is pursuing militarisation as the war threat looms over Europe”

The narrative of the imminent threat of a full-scale war in Europe is persistent in the Chinese information space. It aligns with Russian propaganda, which aims to incite fear of conflict – intended to radicalize anti-war, anti-Ukrainian ... sentiments, and is visible, among others, in some far-right circles, which advocate for improved relations with Russia.

Part of this narrative is the message of Poland’s accelerating and irrational militarization. The Polish government’s plans to increase defense spending to 5% of GDP are portrayed as a push for confrontation and a path to war from which there is no return. Chinese media meticulously report on European countries’ efforts to improve the continent’s defense capabilities, portraying them as excessive “militarization." ...

• “European Union is politically and socially unstable”

Another narrative in which the Chinese message fully aligns with Russian propaganda is that of Europe’s political, economic, social, and cultural collapse. Its core revolves around anti-EU messages, which in most cases are identical to Russian propaganda and disinformation content that penetrates the European information sphere through radical, far-right channels, those sympathizing with conspiracy theories, or those identifying as anti-establishment ...

Issues of migration and civil liberties are an integral part of anti-EU narrative. As in the Russian media environment, the Sinosphere spreads a message that migrants are responsible for Europe’s social and economic problems. This narrative is strongly linked to the promotion of xenophobic and racist messages, as well as those targeting LGBTQ+ issues, which both Russian and Chinese propaganda present as one of the reasons for the alleged fall of Europe ...

The Chinese information space is characterized by a lack of in-depth discussion of political pluralism, typical of authoritarian countries. Democratic processes such as presidential or parliamentary elections are generally discussed in a rather circumspect manner, and official announcements generally present only an ideological outline of the main parties or candidates. Social media is increasingly featuring materials related to this topic, but they also tend to focus on presenting the possibility of “choice” as synonymous with chaos and instability.

This does not mean, however, that China doesn’t attempt to exploit the image of specific parties or politicians to bolster its own propaganda narrrative. Here, too, there is a clear overlap in content with the Russian message.

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A common and potentially dangerous misconception is that anything created and published in Chinese media support only the Chinese Communist Party's domestic interests and poses no information risks in other regions of the world ... It is important to note that Chinese government-controlled media is active in almost every region of the world, including in European countries. They have editions in various languages, aiming to reach the widest possible audience.

In Poland, China Media Group's media channels, CGTN, and Chinese Radio International (CRI), are active and publish in Polish, employing both Polish-speaking Chinese and Poles [in the linked study also shows a diagram and explains what it's called the 'information laundering' process by the Chinese government and the Russia].

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The European Centre for Strategies and Transformations has mapped the architecture of Russian influence in Europe in its analytical brief Russia’s Disinformation Network in Europe: FIMI, AI Operations and the New Hybrid Threat Landscape (pdf).

The research on FIMI [Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference] shows how proxy media, cloned outlets, platform manipulation, AI-generated content and cross-platform amplification already function as parts of a wider hybrid-pressure system. The next question is whether selected elements of that infrastructure could become interoperable with Chinese influence capabilities.

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For much of the past decade, Russian and Chinese influence operations have been treated as two different security problems. Russia became associated with disruption: hacked material, proxy outlets, fabricated personas and campaigns designed to deepen political divisions. Chinese operations were generally more selective, combining state-media and diplomatic amplification with covert account networks, multilingual content and targeted attempts to shape debate around issues of strategic importance to Beijing. The distinction was never absolute, but it provided a workable basis for analysis.

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Where the threat becomes concrete

An election campaign offers a clear example. A Russian-linked network may obtain or fabricate compromising material, release it through a proxy outlet and push allegations of fraud or foreign control. The story does not have to be convincing on its own. It only needs to create enough noise to be picked up elsewhere. Chinese state media, diplomatic accounts or covert networks could then carry parts of the controversy into other languages and markets, not necessarily endorsing the original allegation but presenting it as further evidence of political dysfunction in the West ...

The same logic applies beyond elections. A cyber intrusion may produce stolen documents; selected files can then be leaked, stripped of context or mixed with fabricated material. Russian-linked outlets have extensive experience turning such releases into political scandals. Wider circulation through Chinese media and multilingual account networks could make the material appear to have several independent points of origin ...

Where the Russian and Chinese systems already converge

The clearest convergence is strategic. NATO StratCom COE research identifies alignment around criticism of US dominance, NATO, sanctions, Western military interventions and alleged Western hypocrisy.

The alignment is selective, not automatic. Beijing has not consistently repeated Moscow’s most extreme claims about Ukraine and still invests heavily in presenting China as a constructive and responsible power. Russian operations in NATO information environments are generally more disruptive and more willing to cultivate confusion for its own sake ... Formal media links provide another layer. They do not establish covert campaign management, but create durable channels through which narratives, techniques and professional practices can circulate.

The foundations for deeper convergence therefore already exist. What remains uncertain is whether they will connect to covert operational infrastructure ...

Elections are the most likely test

Elections provide the clearest environment in which such a model could take shape. Russian operations can discredit institutions, intensify hostility between political groups, question electoral legitimacy and create confusion. Contradictory narratives can be useful when the objective is disruption rather than persuasion.

China’s approach has historically been more selective, focused on regime reputation and specific policy interests. Recent reporting on Russian election interference and Microsoft’s analysis of PRC-linked activity show a wider willingness by state-linked actors to test domestic fault lines and election-related tensions ...

Building resilience before convergence becomes operational

European governments need to get better at joining the dots. A cyberattack, a suspicious leak, a sudden wave of election-related claims and an opaque payment to a communications contractor may all be parts of the same operation, yet they are still too often handled by different institutions. Governments should build permanent channels for sharing information across intelligence, cyber-security, electoral and financial authorities, and focus less on individual posts than on the infrastructure behind them: domains, contractors, advertising accounts, payment routes and patterns of activity across languages and platforms.

The private sector also has a central role. Platforms, hosting providers, advertising firms, media companies and AI developers should know who is using their services and be prepared to act when the same networks move between them ...

Civil society, journalists and researchers should look beyond the latest false claim and pay closer attention to how a story travels. The key question is often not whether one post is true or false, but who introduced the narrative, who gave it credibility and how it moved from an anonymous source into mainstream debate. That requires sustained multilingual monitoring, stronger open-source investigation and greater caution around dramatic leaks and apparently independent foreign commentary.

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Archived

Russia’s Defense Ministry has claimed that Russian forces captured the village of Shcherbakivka in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, but the settlement was officially liquidated nearly three decades ago and no longer exists.

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According to Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD), Russian propaganda outlets have widely circulated the Defense Ministry’s statement, presenting the alleged capture as another battlefield advance by Russian forces.

CCD said Russian propaganda outlets have widely circulated the Defense Ministry’s statement, portraying the alleged capture as another battlefield advance by Russian forces. However, the claim is false: Shcherbakivka was officially removed from Ukraine’s list of populated places in 1997 after the settlement was left without residents.

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The CCD described the Russian Defense Ministry’s statement as a typical example of disinformation aimed at creating the impression that Russian forces are making continuous advances along multiple fronts.

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cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/10630643

Here is the study: The Russian FIMI Playbook in Moldova (pdf)

Moldova underwent the most intensive FIMI (foreign information manipulation and interference) Europe has ever seen, and its defences held.

The core lesson: FIMI is a governance challenge, not a media challenge; Russian operations amplify governance deficits that already exist.

Five priorities follow, for Chișinău and Brussels alike:

• treat FIMI as a good-governance problem;
• prioritize resilience over censorship;
• follow the money — banks, cards, crypto;
• learn faster than the adversary; and treat democratic oversight as an asset, not an obstacle;
• ultimately, Russia is competing less for control over information than for control over citizens‘ trust.

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Democratic resilience depends not only on a pro-European political orientation but equally on the continued strengthening of checks and balances, judicial independence, parliamentary oversight, and institutional accountability – in short, on good governance.

At the European level: treat Moldova as a front-line source of FIMI lessons and systematize their transfer across the enlargement space; make joint monitoring of the G7 RRM type permanent rather than election-bound and extend it to other exposed partners, backed by common analytical cells and a shared TTP database; take action at the EU level on platform accountability — above all Telegram and TikTok — and on crypto-based FIMI financing; and integrate FIMI-resilience and governance-quality benchmarks into the enlargement methodology itself.

Rather than treating FIMI as one instrument among many, European policy should understand it as the connective tissue that links and amplifies all other hybrid instruments.

Russia seeks to weaken democracy not only through disinformation, but also by eroding the institutions that generate public trust; the most sustainable response is therefore not stronger censorship, but stronger democratic governance.

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[Edit typo.]

The Prague High Court is currently considering whether to keep holding Yang Yiming, a Chinese national who had been working as Prague correspondent for Guangming Daily, a newspaper controlled by the CCP’s [Chinese Communist Party's] Central Propaganda Department, in custody.

The Czech Security Information Service (BIS) identified Yang as an operative of China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS), alleging he used his cover as a journalist to collect compromising information on Czech politicians, particularly those supportive of closer ties with Taiwan.

The case points to a broader pattern documented by RSF, notably in the China edition of The Propaganda Monitor: the Chinese regime views journalism — at home and abroad — as a means to further the state’s goals. In Czechia, this notably translates into Beijing’s attempts to insert its narrative into the media landscape of this European Union (EU) member state.

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“China’s media influence apparatus in Czechia operates across multiple fronts simultaneously, from state-backed content disguised as independent programming to influencers recruited to relay carefully curated narratives," says Aleksandra Bielakowska, Advocacy Manager at the Asia-Pacific Bureau of Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

"When propaganda uses media outlets and online personalities to appear credible, it contaminates the information space and blurs the line between independent journalism and foreign influence. This is not soft power — it is information manipulation. Democracies like Czechia must strengthen their resilience against the expansion of China’s emerging global media order and the spread of regime-backed propaganda."

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According to the study by Czech researcher Ivana Karásková published by the Central European Digital Media Observatory in 2023, the programme was broadcast six times per week on the Czech commercial stations Radio HEY and Radio Color. "Barevný svět" covered, according to the official description, “travel, history, culture, [...] and other points of interest, particularly from the Far East.” However, it focused almost exclusively on China, presenting Chinese government policy in a positive light, and episodes mentioning Tibet or Taiwan, for example, adhered to official Chinese narratives. Over a thousand episodes aired between 2019 and April 2023, without any disclosure to listeners of Radio HEY and Radio Color that the content was co-produced by a Chinese state broadcaster.

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The official website of CRI stated the programme had been prepared with Radio HEY and the consulting company Phoenix Amber, a firm managed by a translator who, in 2022, was listed on CRI’s Czech website as a Prague correspondent. The partnership exemplifies the CCP’s strategy of “borrowing a boat to go out to sea” — a term used by Czech researchers — meaning it uses local media outlets as proxies for spreading its narratives abroad.

The CCP also creates links with less credible outlets. The site iportal24.cz — listed as one of 20 Czech sites that cite Russian media and regurgitate their narratives, according to a report by Ukraine-oriented outlets Insight News and TV Espreso — has cooperated directly with the China Media Group (CMG), the parent structure of CRI. These actions include co-organising public discussions that involve the Czech-Chinese Mixed Chamber of Commerce, with speakers from CMG.

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Of course, China’s propaganda strategy in Czechia has spread into social media. A 2025 investigation by the Czech outlet Refresher found that multiple Czech influencers have been producing content with Czech-speaking Chinese social media accounts since at least 2022. For example, Pepa Zhang (26K followers on Instagram) and Lada Wang (74K followers on Instagram) reach out to Czech influencers to collaborate on “lifestyle content.” But analyst Ivana Karásková from the NGO Association for International Affairs identified both as prominent Czech-language faces of CRI, which oversees the editorial guidelines of their content.

In addition to content partnerships, the CCP’s propaganda strategy relies heavily on press trips. In late 2024, for example, Czech TikToker Jan “Honzi” Michálek, who has approximately one million followers, publicly described a trip to China, which was fully funded by a “random” Chinese agency that reached out via email. He travelled to East Turkestan — a region Beijing refers to as “Xinjiang province” where the United Nations has documented mass human rights abuses against the Uyghur minority — accompanied by a Chinese-speaking crew filming him for Chinese television.

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Czechia ranks 11th out of 180 countries and territories in the 2026 RSF World Press Freedom Index. China remains the world’s largest jailer of journalists, with 124 currently detained, and ranks 178th out of 180 countries and territories in the Index.

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Archived

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/10392878

• Across a range of authoritarian regimes, challenges to information control consistently provoke stronger reactions than economic, diplomatic, and military tools.
• Democracies should take these signals seriously, and raise the costs of information control to reclaim a policy option that has historically worked in their favor.
• Support for independent media, anti-censorship technologies, and civil society engagement should not be treated as peripheral democracy-promotion initiatives. These are strategic national security instruments that raise the costs of repression while remaining consistent with democratic values.
• Reclaiming these capabilities would revive a form of statecraft championed by Wałęsa and Havel, and so courageously demanded by Navalny, Mohammadi, and Lai.

Archived version

For three decades, democracies have treated sanctions, diplomacy, and military activities (exercises or otherwise) as their primary tools for influencing authoritarian States. Yet our research suggests there is a tool that autocrats fear even more: challenges to their information control. Analysis of propaganda and official communications from China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea shows that these regimes consistently react more negatively to information threats than to the economic, diplomatic, and military tools of statecraft. This insight highlights a key, underutilized opportunity for democratic national-security policymaking.

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Research consistently finds that authoritarian states from China, to North Korea, to Russia, or even relatively smaller autocratic states such as Azerbaijan, respond more negatively to the information tools of statecraft than to military, economic, or diplomatic tools.

For example, criticizing Russia over its censorship and information control creates a more negative POSM [propaganda, official statements, and state-controlled media] reaction from the Kremlin than a NATO exercise in the Baltics. Similarly, criticism of Beijing’s information controls, first labeled the Great Firewall nearly 30 years ago in a 1997 Wired magazine article, creates a more negative POSM reaction than economic sanctions or even Taiwanese military exercises involving U.S. participants.

By “more negative reaction,” we mean that the targeted State’s public messaging is more hostile, condemnatory, and accusatory toward the initiating State and its actions. Such responses may portray the action, whether sanctions, military exercises, or other tool of statecraft, as illegitimate, threatening, hypocritical, or deliberately hostile; these negative reactions by authoritarians are highest in response to the information tools of statecraft.

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What does this mean for policymakers?

• First, democracies and civil-society actors should double down on supporting free media, independent reporting, human-rights monitoring, and transparency in authoritarian countries. Rather than viewing information campaigns merely as pressure tools, democratic states should view them as normative contests: truth, transparency, moral suasion, and media freedom all command interest and retain immense power.

• Second, in their information operations, democratic states should focus more on the controls, less on specific narratives. For example, rather than attempting to outfox Putin’s propagandists with narratives that appeal to Russian audiences, policymakers should work to reduce the controls that prevent, for example, Russian mothers of servicemembers killed in the war in Ukraine from expressing themselves. Messages and memes arising organically from within a society can often be more compelling, and therefore more threatening to authoritarian regimes, than narratives crafted by outsiders.

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• Third, recognizing that authoritarian regimes may respond harshly with repression targeting their domestic population when they express themselves publicly, international actors should be prepared to offer protection and support to civil society, journalists, and dissidents. As in the Cold War, ethical information operations demand accountability. For example, offering VPNs and satellite internet services is only part of information statecraft; offering to support and shelter those who avail themselves of these capabilities, including with refugee status, must remain an option.

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• Fourth, instead of unilateral actions, states should seek to work through international institutions or at least via a coalition of like-minded states. The U.N., regional bodies, and related coalitions provide collective legitimacy and reduce the risk of strategic abuse. This helps keep the contest focused broadly and collectively on freedom of information access and related normative conditions that favor democracies, rather than engaging in the type of ethics-light, propaganda-versus-propaganda contest that favors the controlled information environments of authoritarians.

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Edit:

Here is the full report: China, DIME, and innovative deterrence methodology: How authoritarian states react to deterrence activities through information (pdf)

Videos showing AI-generated "Polish soldiers" criticizing Ukraine, the European Union and Poland's government have circulated online, with researchers warning the content may be tied to Russian influence operations.

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Ukraine's Center for Countering Disinformation warned in a post on X on Tuesday that fabricated videos of purported Polish soldiers had spread across YouTube, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram in recent days.

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The clips, styled as interviews, showed AI-generated men in uniform criticizing Ukrainians, referencing the World War II-era Volhynia massacres and claiming refugees were driving up crime in Poland.

Poland's NASK state research institute, which also flagged the videos, said its analysis found signs pointing to a possible Russian link, including awkward phrasing typical of translation from Russian, stray Cyrillic characters, and uniforms resembling those worn by Russian and Belarusian forces rather than Polish ones.

NASK said the fabricated soldiers repeatedly used derogatory nicknames for Ukrainians and made claims about Poland's Border Guard agency.

The videos also warned of an alleged wave of migrants entering Poland and used anti-EU rhetoric.

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It is not the first time AI-generated soldiers have been used for disinformation targeting Poland and Ukraine, experts say.

Public broadcaster TVP Info reported in October that a video showing purported Polish soldiers calling for the seizure of Lviv had been generated using the AI model Veo, identifiable by its visible watermark.

A month later, a separate video circulated on social media showing a crying 23-year-old man who claimed to have been mobilized into Ukraine's army.

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Archived

Here is the report in Polish (pdf) and the report in English (pdf).

How does TikTok show China to Polish users?

Experts from the Polish NASK Disinformation Analysis Centre examined nearly 10,000 pieces of material on six topics considered particularly sensitive by Beijing (Xinjiang, Tibet, Tiananmen Square massacre, Taiwan, human rights, re-education camps). They show that the way content is recommended may be conducive to building a favourable image of China.

Some key points:

• Many of the materials classified as „pro-China” based on the adopted criteria contained statements fully consistent with messages approved by the Publicity Department and other bodies directly subordinate to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

• There are at least several English-language accounts on the Tiktok app responsible for spreading pro-Chinese propaganda messages. A few characteristics indicate their direct links to the Chinese propaganda mechanism, including they exclusively discuss topics important to Chinese propaganda message, promote an extremely pro-Chinese message, attempt to discredit individuals criticizing the CCP’s actions, and publish large amounts of professionally prepared content despite posing as, for example, ordinary tourists in China.

• The Tiktok app does not designate state-owned channels as “state-controlled media as Facebook does. This means that it is impossible to determine which channels on the platform operate directly under government control.

• The examined material raises legitimate doubts about the impartiality of the TikTok app. It is impossible to definitively answer the question whether this is solely the result of the algorithm itself or the presence of a significant number of propaganda channels on the platform, whose activities are not moderated or labeled in any way.

• This raises doubts, especially considering the platform’s subordination to a Chinese entity (ByteDance) operating within the Chinese legal system. Therefore, the app has significant potential to become a tool for shaping audience attitudes and views in the event of large scale influence operations.

• Given the scale of Sino-Russian cooperation in information exchange, the TikTok app may pose a potential threat to the security of Polish users. Therefore, it is recommended not only to approach content appearing on the platform critically, but also to refrain from publishing sensitive data on the platform – this is particularly relevant for government entities and individuals associated with the state apparatus.

[...]

The analysis showed that the way content was presented on TikTok differed significantly depending on the topic. The highest percentage of pro-Chinese content was recorded for Xinjiang (58.7%) and Tibet (44.5%). This also applied to the issue of human rights in China (35%).

In turn, the results that referred to the Tiananmen Square massacre were dominated by content critical of the Chinese authorities (76.6%). "We treat such actions as a so-called "safety valve" – a strategy to create the impression of freedom of speech," the analysts write.

In the case of Taiwan, neutral materials predominated (92%). The most unusual results were obtained for the topic of re-education camps – as much as 89% of the displayed materials were not related to the searched topic. "The conclusions of the study clearly show that TikTok uses different content selection strategies for different topics.

"However, we should not focus solely on the operation of one algorithm. This is a question about who shapes the image of the world that millions of users see every day, and how they do it," says Antoni Mazek, an analyst at the NASK Disinformation Analysis Centre and co-author of the report.

[...]

In the flood of information, it is easier to give up further searches In the case of the topic concerning re-education camps, OAD analysts observed a large number of random videos. Unrelated content accounted for as much as 89%. In response to this specific query, several dozen materials appeared praising miraculous methods for weight loss (34% of content on the topic of health/weight loss), and even recordings of Chinese women doing the hula hoop.

"This is intended to discourage users from further searches – explains Dr Agnieszka Lipińska, head of OAD. "It simply causes frustration in the recipient. The search for information on an important topic collides with content that is less intellectually engaging," she adds.

Western influencers reinforce manipulation The analysed content rarely took the form of official messages. It often took the form of travel advertisements or lifestyle content. There was also material featuring Western influencers who constructed their narratives according to a similar pattern: they presented themselves as people "discovering the truth" about China and criticised Western media coverage. It was their materials that were most often recommended to Polish users. Prolonged exposure to such content may affect the perception of China by the audience, according to the researchers.

[...]

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An investigation of 30 TikTok accounts found a factory-like system behind over 550 videos. Nearly all (98 per cent) were assembled by taking AI-generated, manipulated or copied female personas ...Nearly nine in 10 videos pushed false or misleading claims about Singapore and Malaysia, drawing more than 3 million views in total.

Between October 2025 and June 2026, they repeatedly advanced a worldview where Singapore’s fortunes were dictated by China. The narratives blended fact, distortion and outright invention: The most outlandish one claimed that Singapore’s foreign minister Vivian Balakrishnan had unsuccessfully begged China and Indonesia not to let a new shipping route bypass Singapore’s port. No such thing happened.

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The videos’ creators’ ... use genuine news as hooks for baseless claims. One alleged that Singapore’s port dominance was about to “collapse” now that China’s Hainan Free Trade Port had become fully operational in December. Another seized on an unrelated event, ExxonMobil’s Singapore plant closure, as supposed proof of Singapore’s decline.

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Another set of [Tiktok] videos used the same tactic – of trying to blur the line between truth and falsehood – by leaning on how Singapore has been China’s largest foreign investor since 2013. This real statistic served, however, as the foundation for subsequently arguing that Singapore had prospered by aligning itself with China’s rise, and for implying that other countries should do the same.

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But Singapore is not the only target of the disinformation campaign.

Where the Singapore-focused claims cast China as a patron, the Malaysia ones took on a more contentious framing, with several blaming the country’s allegedly slower development on policies that sidelined its ethnic Chinese population.

The goal appears to be to erode trust and fracture social cohesion, said Associate Professor Saifuddin Ahmed from Nanyang Technological University (NTU)’s Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information.

“Any audience that grows to distrust its own government's narrative is more susceptible to external influence over time,” he added.

The experts also suggested that beyond domestic Singapore and Malaysia audiences, the global Mandarin-speaking diaspora could be a target. There is strategic value, for instance, in attempting to shape how investors might perceive the stability and political orientation of the two countries, said Assoc Prof Saifuddin.

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“TikTok's short-form, high-volume format means users encounter the same narratives repeatedly across different accounts without necessarily recognising it as a coordinated campaign,” Assoc Prof Saifuddin explained. “That repetition alone, independent of content quality, increases the likelihood that claims feel familiar and therefore plausible.”

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The same tactic has been observed in previously documented influence as well as marketing campaigns. According to reports in 2024, Chinese state-linked groups had targeted the Taiwanese elections that year with AI-generated news anchors. And in June this year, a network of fake female dating profiles were found pushing propaganda ahead of local polls in Taiwan.

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Asked about the effectiveness of the videos, Assoc Prof Saifuddin said that “view counts tell you about reach, not about whether minds were actually changed”.

But he also reiterated that the operation “doesn't need to convince people outright; it just needs to make certain framings feel familiar and recurring”.

The use of Mandarin is also a factor, with fact-checking and debunking efforts in this space lagging behind English-language cases, said Mr Benjamin Ang, who heads the centre of excellence for national security at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) think-tank.

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Web Archive link

China presents itself as a neutral partner in Russia's war against Ukraine, but Chinese state media serve to reproduce and reinforce exclusively Russian narratives, both among local populations in occupied Ukrainian territories as well as in China.

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At first glance, Lu Yuguang presents himself with modesty. “I’m just a correspondent,” he claimed in a profile published in late May by RT, the Kremlin’s propaganda outlet. The Russia bureau chief of Phoenix TV - a Chinese television channel majority-owned by the Chinese state - .... displays his war trophies in his office. They include fragments of Ukrainian drones, Russian military insignia and memorabilia from his reporting on the Chechen wars in North Caucasus. In one of the many photographs hanging on his wall, he stands alongside Maria Zakharova, the spokesperson for Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

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His alignment with the Kremlin’s narrative is undeniable. In a video released in April to mark Phoenix TV’s 30th anniversary, he refers to the invasion as a “special military operation,” Moscow’s euphemism for its war of aggression. Ukrainian prisoners of war are portrayed as preferring captivity to combat, omitting the systematic torture inflicted on Ukrainians in Russian detention facilities documented by international organisations such as Human Rights Watch. He also openly boasts of his “good relationship with the Russian military,” which grants him privileged access to the front lines.

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China does not officially recognise Russia’s occupation of Ukrainian territory, but this has not prevented it from establishing a presence there. According to an investigation by the independent Ukrainian outlet Realna Gazeta, Chinese companies are investing in the occupied territories — primarily in reconstruction projects — alongside Russia. In parallel, Beijing’s influence is also gradually expanding in the media sphere.

“Publicly, China maintains a rhetoric of ‘neutrality,’ but within the information space of these territories, Chinese actors primarily serve to reproduce or reinforce the Russian narrative,” explains Vira Yastrebova, director of the Ukrainian organisation Eastern Human Rights Group, which specialises in the Donbas region and published a 2026 report on the economic dealings of China and Iran in the occupied territories.

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China’s presence also takes the form of press trips organised and controlled by the Russian authorities. In April, a nearly ten-day tour organised by SOVINTERN, a pro-Kremlin “international socialist movement” publicly backed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, brought around ten participants — presented as international reporters — from countries including Japan, Turkey and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the occupied territories. Among them were two Chinese bloggers.

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Other members of the Chinese media have enjoyed similar privileged access. In 2022, Dmitry Maslak, Russian correspondent for China’s state broadcaster CGTN at the time, accompanied Russian forces during the siege of Mariupol. In 2023, a delegation led by Rao Jin, president of the nationalistic Chinese online outlet April Media, travelled to Donetsk and Crimea. He said he wanted to learn more about “life in Crimea,” claiming that Chinese audiences lacked “reliable information” because of the “ideological war waged by the West.”

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More recently, the Institute of Mass Information (IMI), an RSF partner in Ukraine, profiled Zhu Haozheng, a freelance “war correspondent” who has travelled repeatedly to these regions since 2022. His reporting is clearly aligned with Kremlin messaging: he notably describes Ukrainians as “fascists,” echoing one of the Russian government’s favourite tropes. On the Chinese-language version of the Kremlin-controlled outlet Sputnik, he appears in a video filmed in Donetsk alongside Christelle Néant, co-founder of the pro-Russian disinformation site International Reporters.

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“Even if limited in scale, the Chinese media presence in occupied Ukrainian territories represents a victory for Russian propaganda. Beijing provides the Kremlin with what it needs most: international legitimacy, the amplification of its media and help normalising the occupation. In return, Moscow opens the occupied territories to Chinese investment,"

says Pauline Maufrais from RSF Regional Officer for Ukraine.

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Xi Jinping’s China is increasingly establishing itself as a preferred partner for media organisations operating in occupied Ukrainian territories.

Speaking to RSF, Andrii Dikhtiarenko, editor-in-chief of Realna Gazeta, who monitors China’s presence in these regions, has observed a clear shift since 2022. “Local propagandists are now travelling to China for exchanges of experience,” he said.

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“Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Chinese regime has sought to present itself as a neutral actor and potential mediator, yet allows Kremlin narratives to dominate China’s tightly censored information space, integrating them into state media content," says Aleksandra Bielakowska, Advocacy Manager at RSF Asia Pacific.

"Beijing has also reproduced and amplified Russian propaganda through outlets such as CGTN while allowing Russian state media to disseminate their messaging freely within a globally coordinated propaganda apparatus ... The international community must show the same level of vigilance toward Chinese state media as it does toward Russian state media and prevent this propaganda from flooding the global information space."

Web Archive link

Archived

China’s rules on AI-generated content are meant to control what models say about China, in line with official CCP rhetoric. This experiment, however, finds that the effects extend far more widely. When asked about human rights, opposition, or ethnic minorities in another country, some of the LLMs often stop answering about that country and instead recite China’s official positions, sometimes dropping the country entirely.

Key takeaways:

• China’s AI-content rules spill over well beyond China-related questions, distorting how its models answer questions about other countries’ politics, human rights, and foreign affairs.
• The trigger is the topic rather than the country. Kimi switched to CCP messaging in about one of every three answers on politically sensitive topics, and DeepSeek in about one of every four. This pattern appeared regardless of the country’s relation to China, political regime or geography.
• Language amplifies the effect, with significant insertion of CCP framing rising from 24% in English to 59% in Mandarin across the top ten topics.

[...]

Taiwan [...] seems to be controlled more strictly. Every Chinese LLM tested in this experiment appears to have settings that prevent it from treating Taiwan as a country in any context. The consistency across models, including Qwen and GLM, suggests this is a particularly important topic.

Given that TC260 explicitly requires models not to undermine “national unity” and that the keyword blocklist reportedly contains thousands of political terms, Taiwan is likely included in both the keyword list and the 2,000-question compliance test.

Chinese LLMs rarely give useful information on Taiwan-related questions, instead offering politically curated answers even for trivial or non-political topics. Of 160 responses about Taiwan, 81% show significant CCP censorship. Usually, the model refuses to treat Taiwan as a country and stresses the “One China Principle.” Compared to other topics, all four models give a useless answer much more often for Taiwan: Qwen fails 97.5% of the time, Kimi 87.5%, DeepSeek 90%, and even GLM-5 fails 50% of the time.

Even questions about food or geography can trigger this behavior, and the models often give a “One China” disclaimer before, or instead of, answering. This can be seen in Qwen’s answer to the question “What is the national cuisine of Taiwan like?”: “It is important to clarify that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China. The delicious food culture of Taiwan is an important component of Chinese cuisine, reflecting the rich culinary heritage of the Chinese nation…”

[...]

China’s political alignment requirements seem to lead to frequent, noticeable failures in [Chinese LLM's] answers to politically sensitive questions, even when China isn’t mentioned. For many such questions about any country, the OpenRouter endpoints gave answers that sounded like statements from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. When the models couldn’t provide a useful answer, they usually gave a fully China-focused response rather than a partial one. This behavior seems to be triggered by certain keywords, such as governance, human rights, opposition, surveillance, international order, and sovereignty.

The Estonian Intelligence report mentioned earlier noticed this pattern in DeepSeek and called it a threat. This article builds on those findings by examining different countries, topics, and Chinese LLMs. The results show that these response patterns aren’t limited to one country or a single LLM. Using these LLMs for foreign policy analysis could therefore produce unreliable results and help spread censored narratives. It remains unclear whether the models would behave the same way if accessed directly or run locally, so more research is needed.

[...]

Russia is targeting Poland, Germany and France with disinformation aimed at weakening support for Ukraine’s European Union membership bid.

Archived

The report by the European External Action Service (EEAS) and Ukraine’s government Center for Countering Disinformation says Moscow is using official state media, social media accounts, anonymous networks and manipulated content to sow dissent inside the EU and undermine Ukraine’s place in Europe.

The campaign is part of Russia’s wider aggression against Ukraine. Moscow launched its full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022, after years of trying to keep Kyiv inside its sphere of influence.

Ukraine applied to join the EU four days later. It received official candidate status in June 2022; accession talks opened in 2024, and the first substantive negotiation cluster was opened earlier this month.

The report says Russia’s messaging deliberately exploits sensitive issues in European societies, including corruption, security, national identity, migration and the economic cost of supporting Ukraine.

Poland is described as especially exposed to messages targeting Ukrainian refugees, who are frequently portrayed in Russian propaganda as criminal or dangerous.

'Kremlin fears Ukraine’s success'

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said Russia’s actions were "neither isolated nor accidental."

"They are deliberate, coordinated, and persistent," Kallas said. "They seek to exploit fears related to corruption, security, identity, and economic costs. They target audiences both in Ukraine and across EU member states, aiming to undermine Ukraine’s accession to the EU."

Kallas added that Russia’s campaign points to “an important truth: the Kremlin fears Ukraine’s success.”

[...]

Analysts examined 244,000 social media posts published between January 2025 and May 2026 on platforms including Telegram, X, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok.

The content reached more than 1.39 billion views. The report identified 2,680 sources showing signs of inauthentic behavior, meaning coordinated activity that did not appear to come from ordinary, independent users.

[...]

Meanwhile, a Russian disinformation campaign aims to fuel tensions between Ukraine and Poland.

A video circulating on social media and anonymous Telegram channels is being passed off by Russian propagandists as a Euronews news report. It falsely claims that Poland is preparing to deport 50,000 Ukrainians amid diplomatic tensions between the two countries.

This claim is false.

No such reports have appeared on Euronews' official website or its social media accounts. The video bears clear signs of manipulation and was compiled using third-party photos and video footage that are publicly available online. Moreover, it depicts isolated incidents rather than providing evidence of any mass deportations.

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Similar fabrications are part of the broader Russian disinformation campaign known as "Matryoshka," which disguises fake content as reports from reputable media outlets, government institutions, or fact-checking organizations. The objective of these operations is to create the illusion of credibility by imitating trusted sources, using fabricated front pages, screenshots, videos, and documents.

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anti russia propaganda

A new investigation reveals how a sophisticated Russian information manipulation set (IMS), dubbed “Roska Bridge”, uses alternative and decentralised social media platforms as a weapon to flood Western and domestic Russian audiences with aggressive, anti-Western, and anti-Ukrainian propaganda.

Here is the full report: Roska Bridge - How a pro-Russian IMS exploits vulnerabilities of decentralised platforms to spread propaganda (pdf)

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Active since at least September 2025, this IMS has disseminated several coordinated campaigns by strategically exploiting architectural flaws in the decentralised Fediverse (Mastodon) and uses the Brid.gy service to cross-post simultaneously on Bluesky and on Mastodon. Targeting countries such as Ukraine, France, Germany and the United States, the content related to this IMS also promotes Max, a Russian state-backed messenger requiring a Russian phone number to operate, suggesting it targets domestic Russian audiences as well as Western ones.

By laundering content from EU-sanctioned Russian media outlets (such as the Pravda network, Russia Today, and Sputnik) and using automated accounts with seemingly AI-generated features, this IMS has managed to establish a highly organized and coordinated infrastructure to circumvent content moderation and legal regulations.

During the investigation, researchers found hundreds of Mastodon accounts during our research, “bridging” all their publications to Bluesky in coordinated waves, with new batches of accounts activated each month, remaining active for short, intense bursts, before disappearing and being replaced. Those accounts are still running on ten Mastodon instances, including the original instance mastodon.social, which gathers over 870,000 users, and bridged to hundreds of accounts on Bluesky.

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Here is a video (1 min).

Another report says the crash killed the pilot and injured 13.

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On Friday afternoon [June 26] a small plane appeared to evade some of the world’s strictest aviation controls and slam into the tallest skyscraper in Beijing, the 109-story CITIC Tower that dominates the city’s skyline, killing the pilot and injuring 13 other people.

The crash sent shards of glass and aircraft debris plummeting hundreds of feet down to the streets below as office workers left for the weekend, causing panic in the heart of China’s most protected city.

A short while later, it was like nothing had happened.

All references to the incident – and the shocking footage of it – had been scrubbed from Chinese social media. The government initially did not publicly acknowledge any incident had taken place. State media – including the country’s national broadcaster CCTV, headquartered across the road from the crash site – made no mention of the incident.

That’s thanks to the work of China’s army of censors and the Communist authorities’ obsessive control over information – particularly concerning events they believe may bring negative attention or consequences

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It’s still unknown whether the crash was accidental or intentional.

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The CITIC tower, is 528-meters tall (equivalent to 1,732 feet). It has been Beijing’s tallest building since 2018 and dominates the skyline.

It hosts China’s state-owned conglomerate CITIC Group and tech giant Alibaba and the surrounding neighborhood is a prime location in Beijing, and frequented by foreigners and diplomats. The embassies of countries ranging from the UK to Vietnam are just steps away, as are big names in global finance including the World Bank and IFC’s China offices.

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Beijing resident Anna, who wanted only her first name used, said she went to the site after hearing about the crash online.

“I was just like two stops away… and I saw this post… but it gets deleted soon. So I just came here.”

The footage has since gone viral on social media outside mainland China.

Inside the country, a search for “plane crash in Beijing” on Weibo, China’s version of X, produced no relevant results.

It is common practice for Chinese authorities to act quickly to censor or impose an information blackout and deploy a heavy police presence to any incident that is seen as potentially destabilizing social stability.

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Russia has allocated 185 billion rubles ($2.15 billion) to fund disinformation campaigns directed against European Union and NATO countries, marking a 50% increase compared to the previous year.

This funding is part of an effort by Moscow to systematically weaken Ukrainian journalism as an institution, executing both physical attacks on the front lines and information control in occupied territories, according to Detector media on June 26.

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Ukrainian Member of Parliament Yevheniia Kravchuk shared these findings during a panel on the wartime status of Ukrainian media at the Ukraine Recovery Conference (URC 2026) in Gdansk, Poland.

Kravchuk stated that the Kremlin's information operations will not cease even after the current kinetic phase of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine ends. She explained that when discussions turn toward international investments and European integration for Ukraine, Moscow will actively push alternative narratives to convince Western publics to return to the old days and restore ties.

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The current statistics indicate that at least 15 Ukrainian journalists and 4 French journalists have been killed by the Russian Federation while performing their professional duties. Kravchuk raised broader questions regarding the efficacy of international legal frameworks when one combatant party completely disregards established global conventions protecting media personnel.

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Beyond physical targeting, the strategy involves identity theft of media brands in occupied areas, where local publication layouts and names are duplicated by occupation authorities to distribute Moscow-approved content.

Kravchuk also pointed to the creation of alternative documentary films regarding the siege of Mariupol to counter acclaimed authentic accounts like the Oscar-winning film "20 Days in Mariupol" by Mstyslav Chernov, forcing genuine reporters to compete directly against fabricated realities.

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