'Though China’s disinformation network has received less global attention than Russia’s, the country’s officials have, over the last decade, built a machinery of online controls that far exceed any other country’s.''Many overseas websites are blocked in China. Censors embedded within its internet companies delete anything unacceptable. The police have arrested people who speak out of turn in chat groups, or who share sensitive content online.'
'In recent days, China has more aggressively stirred up nationalist and anti-Western sentiment using state and social media, and it has manipulated the context of images and videos to undermine the protesters. Chinese officials have begun branding the demonstrations as a prelude to terrorism.
The result, both in mainland China and abroad, has been to create an alternate version of what, seen from Hong Kong, is clearly a popular demonstration movement. In China’s version, a small, violent gang of protesters, unsupported by residents and provoked by foreign agents, is running rampant, calling for Hong Kong’s independence and tearing China apart.
..
The disinformation has clearly been aimed at undermining sympathy for the Hong Kong protesters’ goals, which now include demands for greater democratic freedoms for the territory’s seven million residents.
Propaganda in the traditional sense, Mr. Pomerantsev said, would try to win over an audience, while disinformation is meant simply to sow confusion and fuel conspiracies.
“You have to smother everything with doubt, and conspiracy is very effective in creating that,” Mr. Pomerantsev said in a telephone interview.
Though China’s disinformation network has received less global attention than Russia’s, the country’s officials have, over the last decade, built a machinery of online controls that far exceed any other country’s.
Many overseas websites are blocked in China. Censors embedded within its internet companies delete anything unacceptable. The police have arrested people who speak out of turn in chat groups, or who share sensitive content online.'
- Steven Lee Myers and Paul Mozur,
China Is Waging a Disinformation War Against Hong Kong Protesters, August 13, 2019
Context'..China’s problem. The problem isn’t capitalism. It’s power.'