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進入《TAIPEI TIMES》 Chinese media target HK using tools Beijing bans
Protesters sit outside City Hall in Hong Kong yesterday. Photo: Reuters
/ AFP, BEIJING
More than 78 million Facebook users follow the page of the state-run China Daily, where they are served a diet of largely positive — and Beijing-approved — stories about the authoritarian nation.
Not a bad fan base, considering that Facebook is banned in China.
The huge and growing social media presence of Beijing-run organizations pushing a decidedly pro-China line came under the spotlight this week when Facebook and Twitter announced that they had uncovered a propaganda campaign to shape global opinion on Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests.
The two platforms — neither of which is legally accessible in China — said that they were closing accounts they believed were linked to a government campaign to spread disinformation.
Twitter said it had suspended nearly 1,000 users originating in China, while Facebook removed seven pages, three groups and five accounts it said were involved in “coordinated inauthentic behavior” focused on Hong Kong.
The territory has seen months of unrest as citizens protest what they have said is an erosion of freedoms under Beijing’s tightening grip.
As well as peaceful rallies of up to 2 million people, there have been clashes with police and temporary shutdowns of the airport.
High-school students thronged a square in central Hong Kong yesterday. Hundreds of teenagers, wearing black and holding umbrellas in the oppressive heat, turned out for the rally, chanting: “Liberate Hong Kong” and “Revolution of our times.”
Hong Kong student leaders yesterday announced a two-week boycott of university lectures from the upcoming start of term.
Leaders representing most of the territory’s major universities said that students would miss lectures from Sept. 2 — the planned start of the new term — to Sept. 13.
They threatened further action if the Hong Kong government does not adequately respond to the protesters’ five demands, which include spiking an extradition bill, universal suffrage and an independent inquiry into alleged police abuses during the protests.
“Two weeks should be enough for the government to really think through how to respond,” said Davin Wong （黃程鋒）, acting president of the Hong Kong University Students’ Union. “As the situation has gotten more intense, we believe the social situation will bring more students into the boycott.”
Students will be encouraged to take time to “understand what happened in our society ... what we can do for our city’s future,” Wong said.
While Beijing has not intervened directly, its powerful media machine has steadily ramped up a war of words.
“From destroying government buildings to ... lynching, the Hong Kong rioters are standing on the brink of terrorism,” the China Daily — which, along with other state media, was not included in Facebook’s cleanup — wrote on its page on Wednesday.
There have been no credible reports of lynching during the protests.
Beijing wants to “shape international perception of what is happening in Hong Kong,” said Anne-Marie Brady, a professor at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand who researches Chinese politics and media.
“The [Chinese Communist Party’s] propaganda tradition is to use every possible medium, so it is no surprise to see them operating on Twitter and Facebook too,” she told reporters.
While Western media traditionally reliant on advertising dollars have struggled to adapt to the free-for-all of the Internet, well-funded Chinese state media outlets have ramped up their global footprint in recent years.
Their growing physical presence has been matched by a virtual expansion — the Xinhua news agency has one of the largest Twitter followings among state media at more than 12 million followers.
The party’s mouthpiece the People’s Daily has 6.7 million Twitter followers and the nationalist state-run Global Times has almost 1.5 million.
In addition to the videos of cute pandas and whacky rural inventors, the accounts push China’s official line, especially on issues where Beijing faces international criticism.
Key personalities are also given free rein on platforms that most Chinese are not allowed to read.
Chinese Ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai （崔天凱）, who only joined Twitter two months ago, this week hinted to his 15,000 followers that Hong Kong’s protesters were a fifth column supported by Western governments.
“Hong Kong should never be used for infiltration into and sabotage of the mainland,” he tweeted in English.
One of the Chinese Twittersphere’s most outspoken commentators is Global Times editor-in-chief Hu Xijin （胡錫進）, whose 77,000 followers are given his opinion on Chinese and international politics.
“Is the US partly responsible for the Hong Kong unrest? Yes,” he tweeted earlier this month. “Unrest needs irrational emotion to keep on going, the US and the West have provided spiritual support to HK radical protesters.”
Additional reporting by AP
新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES
