Disinformation is fundamental strategy of China’s Cyber warfare
Disinformation has emerged as one of the most critical threats to Asian States. As States persist to bring in solutions, there is still a persistent gap among varied countries in terms of their capabilities to address misinformation campaigns. Asia has a vast lead in the usage of Social Media due to which it is most vulnerable to misinformation.
Over the past decade, the Politics of Southeast Asian nations has been altered by the spread of the Internet and Social Media usage. But over time Social Media has also opened up its darker side as a source of propagated campaigns that has tangled up the philosophy of objective truth.
There are few key States who have been centers of such misinformation campaigns. They are India, China, Russia, Taiwan, North and South Korea. All stated countries have varied but considerable offensive and defensive Cyber fronts including Media warfare practices.
Media warfare and misinformation have been fundamental to China’s objective of accomplishing authoritarian deliberation control in its pursuit of global dominance. Media Warfare includes the usage of all forms of media to shape community estimation to fade its adversaries.
China’s Social Media Warfare armory embraces Cyber Attacks, Artificial Intelligence, and a form of Online Terror and threats that consists of Trolls who aggravate controversy. The Chinese Nation attacks those who get targeted by the CCP, Sock Puppets, which are social media accounts, formed under forged personas that support China’s intention.
Over the past 2 years, China executed a misinformation campaign against Canada’s in 2020 Elections. Canadian Expert consensus that a propagated operation formulated in Beijing was in process during the campaign, and it primarily targeted Chinese- Canadians.
China also ran a covert operation against Hong-Kong protests and the Coronavirus by using Russian diplomacy to spread Pro- Beijing messaging. Propaganda campaigns involved fake accounts signals used to spread disinformation among social media users.
China targeted Taiwan for developing attack vectors using disinformation on social media. Prof Kerry K. Gershaneck., author of the influential book, “Win without Fighting” stated about China’s Media Warfare in the interview with ‘The Sunday guardian’ that “China’s media warfare against Taiwan is extensive, as it efficiently serves Online terrorism, military psychological warfare, election interference, subversion of the education system, purchase of key opinion leaders, and coercion of the business community. Beijing escapades media across these wide fronts to proliferate a broad array of propaganda, misinformation, covert disinformation, and fake news”.
Apart from running its own campaigns, China has also supported Pakistan in Cyber Security and Cyber warfare assistance. An information Security lab is being associated under the National Electronics Complex of Pakistan in the Cyber warfare province. By backing Pakistan, China aspires to restore its long-stained image.
On the other hand, Pakistan too has assisted China, with the help of its firm ‘AlphaPro’ by playing pro-china chronicle. During the Galwan Valley clash, Pakistan instigates disinformation against India, expanding that only a few Chinese militias were wounded during the clash.
In scrutiny of the escalating social media propaganda from the bordering adversaries, India too has launched various misinformation campaigns with the help of private agencies like Srivastava Group. For instance, India was exposed for launching 750 fake media outlets, was intended to “disgrace Pakistan internationally”.
Indian Private Firm, Srivastava Group owned by Ankit Srivastava had come under the lime light in 2020 for arranging a visit-of-far right Members of the European Parliament to the Indian-administered Kashmir that had been running a worldwide function for nearly 15 years, intended at targeting Pakistan and China.
To prevent the propaganda’s of Chinese authorities, Twitter had taken a step in 2020 by shutting down tens of thousands of accounts that were a part of manipulative disinformation campaigns run by the Chinese government
However, China was exposed to its disinformation campaigns; China is still a major cyber player when it comes to media warfare. Social media warfare has given its state-controlled media sites. As it is both a menace and key to success for China from its adversaries. It censors Social Media quite greatly within and, more progressively globally to diminish the threats.
