A Different Kind of Army: The Militarization of China’s Internet Trolls

[SQ8]

fairness for them: I win you lose and you can't say anything about it.

its simple: if they were truly just and righteous, then they wouldn't need to lie and silence. they know that they're on the side of evil and revel in it.

Great projection

 

[FairAndUnbiased]

Great projection

who started trying to silence others: Chinese, or Indians/ex-Pakistanis?

did any Chinese ever tell you to stop posting?

nope. we only strike back at provocation, which is just and righteous.

 

[aziqbal]

Don't think you are fooling anybody by pretending to be "concerned" about a discussion's fairness when you simply lose debates because your views are dead wrong.

are you saying China does not have a image problem and doesnt employ internet bots to pass the fake narrative ?

 

[Amaa'n]

A Different Kind of Army: The Militarization of China’s Internet Trolls
Publication: China Brief Volume: 21 Issue: 7
By: Ryan Fedasiuk
April 12, 2021 12:57 PM Age: 2 weeks

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Figure 1. How the Party Views its Trolls (Image source: Central CAC, April 2020).
Introduction
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) believes it is engaged in a global struggle for China’s “image sovereignty” (形象主权 xingxiang zhuquan).[1] Party leaders recognize that “the main battlefield for public opinion” is on the internet, and are adamant that “the main battlefield must have a main force” (Central CAC, April 4, 2017). For China, that force is embodied in an array of “internet commentators”—trolls tasked with artificially amplifying content favorable to the CCP. Their mission is to “Implement the online ideological struggle” (落实网络意识形态斗争; luoshi wangluo yishi xingtai douzheng).[2] Their tactics are well-known to anyone who has spent time on the internet: “Quickly and accurately forward, like, and comment on relevant information on Weibo, blogs, websites, forums, and post bars, to effectively guide online dynamics” (Huailai County CAC, 2020). Still, English-language information about China’s internet trolls remains discordant and contradictory.[3]

This article illuminates the shifting size and mission set of the forces behind China’s struggle to control online public opinion. It finds that, in addition to 2 million paid internet commentators, the CCP today draws on a network of more than 20 million part-time volunteers to engage in internet trolling, many of whom are university students and members of the Communist Youth League (CYL; 共产主义青年团, gongchan zhuyi qingnian tuan). It concludes that although internet commentators are primarily concerned with shaping China’s domestic information environment, they are growing in number, and the scope of the Party’s public opinion war (舆论战; yulun zhan) is broadening to include foreigners.

Raising China’s Internet Troll Army
Shortly after taking office in 2013, China’s paramount leader Xi Jinping began a drastic shift in the CCP’s approach to governing cyberspace.[4] The CCP had experimented with public opinion management throughout the 2000s and early 2010s, with local and provincial Party committees establishing teams of several hundred commentators (Hefei Municipal Propaganda Department, May 24, 2006; Gansu Provincial CAC, January 20, 2010; Zhejiang Provincial CAC, November 30, 2012). At his first Propaganda and Ideological Work Conference as CCP General Secretary in 2013, Xi emphasized the importance of China’s “public opinion struggle” (舆论斗争; yulun douzheng) and stressed the need to “tell Chinese stories well” (China Media Project, September 24, 2013). That fall, the CCP announced the “seven baselines” (七条底线; qi tiao dixian), which became the foundational political and moral principles underscoring Chinese censorship (China Media Project, August 27, 2014).

The most momentous shift in China’s internet ecology came in 2015. After a sweeping ban on foreign VPNs, the Ministry of Education and the Central Communist Youth League issued a notice requiring Chinese universities to recruit teams of network commentators, called “network civilization volunteers” (网络文明志愿者; wangluo wenming zhiyuan zhe), and mandated quotas commensurate with the number of students enrolled in each province (China Digital Times: January 19, 2015, January 20, 2015). The guidelines began with modest requirements, remanding teams of commentators that represented just 0.5-1.5 percent of each university’s student body. But in September the Central CYL released new guidance clarifying that Provincial CYLs would have to supply 10 million volunteers—3.8 million of whom were to be students at Chinese colleges and universities.[5] The effect was to raise an army of internet trolls at breakneck speed. In Zhejiang province, what began as a team of 800 commentators in 2012 ballooned to more than 500,000 in 2016 (Zhejiang Provincial CYL, May 5, 2016). Contemporary reports from CYLs in Anhui, Guangdong, and Yunnan indicate similar surges and reveal that each manage hundreds of thousands of commentators, consistent with the Party’s requirements.[6]

Figure 2. Number of “Network Civilization Volunteers” Required in Each Province in September 2015 (Source: Compiled by author based on data from the Central CYL).

Today, the CCP relies on an expansive network of more than 20 million “network civilization volunteers” to serve as “an ‘amplifier’ of positive online voices, a ‘collector’ of online public opinion information and a ‘reducer’ of negative voices on the Internet.”[7] They operate in concert with a professionalized corps of 2 million internet commentators (评论员; pinglunyuan), employed directly by Cyberspace Affairs Commissions (CAC) and Propaganda Departments nationwide (China Brief, January 12).[8] By drawing on complementary systems of “professional” and “grassroots” internet trolls, the CCP harnesses the organic nationalism of young Chinese netizens while maintaining a tight grid of hired hands capable of responding to public opinion “emergencies.”

Defending Forward on Social Media
Although paid commentators tend to attract more attention from foreign analysts, the CCP’s network civilization volunteers form the backbone of its struggle to control public opinion inside and outside of China. The charters of network commentator teams at numerous universities specify that applicants should be CCP members, have high-quality writing ability, and acutely grasp the Party’s political theory and propaganda work (Guizhou University, September 29, 2017; Zhengzhou University of Light Industry, April 17, 2019).[9] A list of 100 volunteers mobilized by a college in Anhui province reveals that the average volunteer is just 19 years old.[10] They are mechanics, nursing students, preschool class monitors—all politically zealous young Chinese who, in their spare time, are supposed to “stop the spread of various illegal and harmful information on the internet, and contribute to the construction of a clean cyberspace.”[11]

Despite their youthfulness, China’s teams of internet trolls are surprisingly militant in character and structure. The budget justification documents of CYLs, CACs, and Propaganda Departments routinely refer to internet commentators as a “young cyber army” (青年网军; qingnian wang jun) and describe them as a “reserve force” capable of “resolutely resisting false statements and rumors, and fighting online public opinion wars.”[12] In Shandong province, for example, volunteers are organized into a five-tier command structure designed to “resolutely resist, actively refute, and actively report erroneous statements on the internet”:[13]

Table 1. Command Structure of Network Civilization Volunteers in Shandong Province (Source: Adapted from Qingdao CYL, 2015).

Each commentator team follows unique guidelines, but volunteers are generally asked to post between 1–25 comments per month and are governed by a merit-based point system that determines whether they may be promoted or fired.[14] They coordinate closely with paid internet commentators, internet companies, Public Security Bureaus, and CACs to “monitor online speech and discover illegal activities” so that “uncivilized behaviors in cyberspace and real space will have nowhere to hide” (Legal Evening News, November 20, 2020). The end goal is to “create a diversified network team consisting of online commentators, public opinion officers, and network civilization volunteers” that are “seamlessly connected.”[15]

The Party views its deployment of these volunteers as a defensive measure against hostile foreign forces looking to smear the good name of China. Yet applications for these positions clarify that volunteers are expected to launch “targeted public opinion struggles” in response to unflattering web content that the CCP views as an attempt to “falsely split the motherland” (PLA Daily, May 2017). They also participate in “public opinion actual combat drills” (舆情实战演练; yuqing shijian yanlian), which simulate PR crises and train commentators in online public opinion management, press relations, and “credibility restoration” (Huzhou Municipal CYL, 2019; China Youth Net, July 26, 2015; People’s Daily, May 19, 2017).

Figure 3. The Pledge Taken by Chinese Internet Commentators (Source: Propaganda and United Front Work Departments of the Jiangxi Teachers College).

Waging Global Public Opinion War
Chinese netizens bear the brunt of the CCP’s online influence operations. Based on data from CYLs in four provinces, the Party likely employs at least 120 “network civilization volunteers” for every 10,000 Chinese internet users.[16]They have harassed Weibo users into silence on important social issues and flagged—at a minimum—tens of thousands of Chinese social media accounts for company censors to close based on moral and ideological grounds (The Diplomat, April 3, 2020; RestofWorld, October 22, 2020). As the CCP has made strides in quashing dissent at home, it has also pivoted toward shaping public opinion in other countries—and seems to be growing more comfortable with using its army of internet trolls as a weapon of foreign influence.

CCP offices and state media outlets are not shy about describing what they perceive to be a “public opinion war” (舆论战; yulun zhan) with the United States, and they emphasize the value of internet commentators in winning that war. The phrase originated as a way of describing China’s longstanding, asymmetric approach to information warfare, even before the internet became mainstream in China (China Brief, August 22, 2016). However, in the Xi era, Chinese authors have been more forthright in describing an actual, ongoing conflict with much of the Western world, and are applying the lens of “public opinion war” to cyberspace (China Brief, September 6, 2019). Various issues of New Media, the journal of the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission, have discussed how China should win a “soft power competition in which countries seize international discourse power and lead international public opinion.”[17]Observers in the People’s Liberation Army believe that, “in the face of the powerful online public opinion manipulation capabilities of the United States and other Western countries,” China should “construct a network discourse system with the characteristics of our military” to “exert public opinion influence on the enemy and even third-party countries in the wartime online public opinion struggle” (Military Reporter, May 2017). Newspapers such as Xinhua and People’s Daily likewise view themselves as being on the front lines of a “China-U.S. Public Opinion War” (中美舆论战; zhong mei yulun zhan), and—by their own admission—seek to frame foreign audiences’ perceptions of current events (most recently including COVID-19 and trade tensions) in ways that benefit the state and Party (People’s Daily, January 6, 2018).[18] The task before internet commentators is to amplify that content and to refute foreigners who would question or criticize the Party’s worldview.

Figure 4. Number of People’s Daily Articles Mentioning Public Opinion Struggle and War (2000–2020) (Source: Compiled by author).[19]
Considering the immense capacity for trolling it has developed over the past six years, the CCP so far seems to have directed its army of internet commentators relatively sparingly against foreign social media networks. Internet commentators have selectively mobilized around China’s core interests, such as promoting the Hong Kong National Security Law and China’s handling of COVID-19, as well as most recently defending against allegations of forced labor in Xinjiang (WSJ, October 16, 2019; NYT, December 19, 2020; March 29). For example, the Guangdong Provincial CYL operates a “young cyber army team consisting of 100 internet commentators, nearly 5,000 internet propagandists, and over 800,000 internet civilization volunteers” who “take the initiative to speak up during major public opinion events.”[20] The organization lists two examples of when volunteers spoke up in 2018: supporting China’s interpretation of the Hong Kong Basic Law and opposing deployment of the THAAD missile defense system in South Korea.

Conclusion

By many accounts, the CCP is failing in its mission to sway global public opinion of China. The country’s botched handling of the COVID-19 outbreak; military aggression in the Himalayas and maritime Southeast Asia; and ongoing detention of more than a million Uyghurs have placed indelible stains on its reputation abroad (China Brief, December 6, 2020; Pew, March 4). On the few occasions that the Party has mobilized trolls to meddle on foreign platforms, they have been thwarted—with disastrous consequences for its broader propaganda apparatus.[21]Simply put, by starting to swing around its bully pulpit, the CCP has spurred foreign social media platforms—already on guard against domestic and foreign disinformation campaigns—to respond forcefully, hurting the Chinese state’s global reputation and its ability to “tell Chinese stories well.”
But it would be a mistake to discount the CCP’s struggle to control foreign public opinion. On the contrary, China’s global influence apparatus is learning and evolving, as it has done for the past two decades. The Central CAC is studying how information propagates in the American media environment, and is learning to maximize the reach of its propaganda by studying NowThis viral videos, Cambridge Analytica’s microtargeting strategies, and Russia’s disinformation campaign during the 2016 election (Central CAC, January 23, 2017; Central CAC, January 23, 2017). The Party has experimented with large-scale botnets to compensate for language deficiencies among its internet trolls, and communication experts are identifying ways to “choose information sources intelligently, hide opinions in facts, package content carefully, and dilute ideological colors” (ChinaTalk, October 29, 2020; New Information, April 4, 2020).
State-owned news agencies are likewise beginning to recognize that the heavy handed approach to propaganda at home—literally “report the good, but not the worry” (报喜不报忧; bao xi bu bao you)—is counterproductive abroad, because it only invites criticism from skeptical consumers (People’s Daily, January 10, 2018). Instead, they have begun “replacing the original propaganda tone with the language organization of ‘storytelling,’” so as to “reduce the traces of propaganda, allowing foreign audiences to subtly change their impression of China, without causing disgust” (People’s Daily, January 10, 2018). The bottom line is that China’s internet trolls are here to stay. And if the past twenty years are any indication, foreigners should expect the CCP’s influence operations to continue growing in size and sophistication, alongside the objectives of its public opinion war.
The author is especially grateful to Ben Murphy for translating essential documents; and to Dakota Cary, Lindsay Gorman, Andrew Imbrie, Igor Mikolic-Torreira, Matt Schrader, Etienne Soula, Lynne Weil and Emily Weinstein for their suggestions on style and content.
Ryan Fedasiuk is a Research Analyst at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET). His work focuses on military applications of emerging technologies, and on China’s efforts to acquire foreign technical information.

A Different Kind of Army: The Militarization of China’s Internet Trolls

Introduction The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) believes it is engaged in a global struggle for China’s “image sovereignty” (形象主权 xingxiang zhuquan).[1] Party leaders recognize that “the main battlefield for public opinion” is on the internet, and are adamant that “the main battlefield must have...

jamestown.org

Social Media has been weaponized in today's time & age. Cyber Ops are being carried out for influence over the target audience, everyone is doing it so am not surprised if chinese start to do it too.....
In our case lets take example of India & US Intelligence Operations using NGOs i.e Aurat March, AWPs & other leftists....

 

[aziqbal]

Social Media has been weaponized in today's time & age. Cyber Ops are being carried out for influence over the target audience, everyone is doing it so am not surprised if chinese start to do it too.....
In our case lets take example of India & US Intelligence Operations using NGOs i.e Aurat March, AWPs & other leftists....

absolutely brother and we must be careful of all of them

 

[Amaa'n]

How do we fight this, for them if their propaganda turns even 5% of their audience to believe them they have succeeded. We are not just fighting them but fighting our own who believe them.

If there is Propaganda - there are two ways to address it - Run either a counter propaganda campaign against the adversary- which might have it's own pros & cons OR you can just counter their narrative with facts & figures.