The broadcast of a documentary about Chinese disinformation campaigns by the British public broadcaster BBC has made the latter the target of criticism from the Chinese embassy in London.
There has also recently been a series of denials from Beijing regarding reports of forced detention of its Uyghur minority population – prompting Chinese authorities to launch a series of unfounded accusations against the media and human rights organizations.
In the latest attack, a Chinese official falsely claimed that one of the Uyghur interviewees on a BBC program was an actress.
But what tactics does China use to spread misleading and false information?
The rise of anti-BBC propaganda
Since mid-February, there have been anti-BBC articles aired on Chinese state media almost every day.
This has led the UK broadcasting regulator Ofcom to make a decision to revoke the license of China's state broadcaster CGTN.
For years, China has widely criticized Western media outlets for reporting on issues in Xinjiang and elsewhere in China, saying they should not interfere in China's "internal affairs."
But these recent attacks have seen an escalation of attacks by Chinese authorities on Western media.
Chinese media have welcomed their government's decision to ban the BBC's News World channel, even though the program was only available in some international hotels and residential buildings where foreigners live.
Reports from mainstream media outlets such as China's Global Times have criticized the "Cold War" mentality when it comes to China - on topics ranging from the Hong Kong case, the Uyghur population in Xinjiang, and the Covid-19 pandemic.
When China was facing a backlash for its handling of the early stages of the pandemic last year, and some US officials were floating the theory that the virus could have escaped from a Wuhan lab, CGTN began pushing its own conspiracy theory.
Despite the lack of evidence, this Chinese media outlet suggested that the virus was created at a military base in Maryland in the US and was brought to China by American soldiers during an athletics competition.
"Wolf Warrior" on social media
In recent months, China experts have noticed dozens of new official and highly active social media accounts representing Chinese embassies and top diplomats.
This has become known as “wolf warrior” diplomacy. The most well-known account belongs to Zhao Lijian of the Chinese foreign ministry.
He caused controversy in March after writing articles on Twitter suggesting that the coronavirus originated in the United States.
These tweets have been shared more than 40,000 times and referenced in 54 different languages, according to research by the Digital Forensic Research Lab, part of the Atlantic Council research organization.
The hashtags with these posts have also been shared with ordinary users at home and have been viewed by users of the Chinese social network Weibo more than 300 million times.
In December, Zhao Lijian was widely criticized for distributing a fake image of an Australian soldier killing an Afghan child, for which China refused to apologize.
"The Keyboard Army"
China is recruiting millions of citizens to monitor the internet and influence public opinion on a massive scale. These recruits are known as the “50 Cent Army” – based on the profits these citizens make from their posts, as they are paid 0.5 Chinese yuan per post.
This “keyboard army” has long been active on Chinese social media platforms. Their goal has been to aggressively protect China’s image abroad.
When this army posts in English via Twitter, the messages are directed at a Western audience, including groups known as “troll farms” in Russia that “plant, cultivate, and disseminate disinformation” targeted at Western audiences.
To the unsuspecting reader, these accounts may appear to be patriotic citizens acting independently, but they will be unaware that they often receive instructions from Chinese authorities.
An example is the way in which footage of violent protests in Hong Kong in 2019 was promoted on social media through this “keyboard army” using terms such as “terrorism,” while coverage of peaceful protests was censored.
In August 2019, Facebook and Twitter announced that they had removed accounts linked to a Chinese state-backed disinformation campaign.
Facebook said: "Although the people behind this activity attempted to conceal their identities, our investigation found links to individuals affiliated with the Chinese government."
Twitter identified more than 900 accounts from China. But these were only the most active members of the campaign, which consists of about 200,000 other accounts that may be more passive.