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China’s Communist Party opens social media as new front in long war to shape global public opinion • Source: Associated Press
China’s ruling Communist Party has opened a new front in its long, ambitious war to shape global public opinion: Western social media. China s rise on Twitter has been powered by an army of fake accounts that have retweeted Chinese diplomats and state media tens of thousands of time, a seven-month investigation found. Source: istock.com
Liu Xiaoming, who recently stepped down as China’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, is one of the party’s most successful foot soldiers on this evolving online battlefield. He joined Twitter in October 2019, as scores of Chinese diplomats surged onto Twitter and Facebook, which are both banned in China.
By ERIKA KINETZ
Associated Press
BRUSSELS (AP) â Chinaâs ruling Communist Party has opened a new front in its long, ambitious war to shape global public opinion: Western social media.
Liu Xiaoming, who recently stepped down as Chinaâs ambassador to the United Kingdom, is one of the partyâs most successful foot soldiers on this evolving online battlefield. He joined Twitter in October 2019, as scores of Chinese diplomats surged onto Twitter and Facebook, which are both banned in China.
Since then, Liu has deftly elevated his public profile, gaining a following of more than 119,000 as he transformed himself into an exemplar of Chinaâs new sharp-edged âwolf warriorâ diplomacy, a term borrowed from the title of a top-grossing Chinese action movie.
Erika Kinetz
FILE - In this Nov. 30, 2016 file photo, Chinese Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Liu Xiaoming, left, speaks with Britain s Prince William, Duke of Cambridge during the Tusk Conservation Awards at Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Much of the popular support Liu, who recently stepped down as Chinaâs ambassador to the U.K., and his colleagues seem to enjoy on Twitter has, in fact, been manufactured, an AP and Oxford Internet Institute investigation found. More than one in ten retweets of Chinese diplomats came from accounts Twitter suspended for breaking platform rules, which bar manipulation. (Stuart C. Wilson/Pool Photo via AP, File)
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