China wolf warriors go after BBC on Uyghur human rights reporting

After hitting Australia in a trade war, it appears the Chinese Communist Party is now setting its sights on the UK, according to a new report.

Australia is not the only country being targeted by China’s “wolf warrior diplomats”, despite taking the lead on standing up to Beijing over issues including the coronavirus inquiry and human rights abuses against the Uyghur people.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute has released a report titled “Trigger Warning”, suggesting the Chinese Communist Party is running a “co-ordinated information campaign” to attack UK public broadcaster the BBC after it aired revelations of the systemic sexual assault of female prisoners in China’s Uyghur internment camps.

The report on the CCP’s campaign against the BBC comes just days after Chinese diplomat Wang Xining’s complaints about the Australian media and veiled warnings. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

“CCP diplomatic accounts, Chinese state media, pro-CCP influencers and patriotic trolls on Silicon Valley’s social media networks are spreading messages and narratives that seek to undermine critical reporting by international media,” the report said.

The report comes just days after revelations in a speech given in Canberra by senior Chinese diplomat Wang Xining complaining about the Australian media and threatening those who “choose to make enemies” with Beijing will be “cast aside by history”.

Clive Hamilton, Charles Sturt University academic and author of Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World, said that the report further underlined the nature of the regime and its behaviour.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and members of the government gather during the opening session of the National People's Congress at the Great Hall of the People on March 5. Picture: Kevin Frayer/Getty

“China under Xi Jinping has taken bullying to the next level; any nation that stands up to Beijing now gets the treatment,” he said.

“We are now in a fight for the future of democracy.

“If the West loses, we will end up doing Beijing’s bidding on everything.”

The report also found strong connections between Chinese troll accounts on ­social media that amplified COVID-19 origin conspiracy theories and those that attacked the British broadcaster.

According to the ASPI, of the 500 pro-China Twitter ­accounts that had previously pushed the idea the coronavirus was actually invented in an American biowarfare lab, some 110 of them “shifted to criticise the BBC, repeating the same narratives pushed by Chinese diplomats and state media”.

Nationals Senator Matt Canavan has lashed out at China.

“While the West is consumed by whether Dr Seuss is racist, China is cancelling anyone who dares criticise them,” Mr Canavan said.

“The BBC’s groundbreaking first hand accounts of the genocide that is occurring in Xinjiang reveals the moral bankruptcy of the Chinese Communist Party.

“The CCP’s attempt to cancel the BBC should encourage all the more people to read the BBC’s reports and push back against China’s appalling treatment of the Uyghur people.”

The report warns that Western nations will need to be on guard against the CCP’s “propaganda and disinformation apparatus”.

Originally published as China wolf warriors go after BBC on Uyghur human rights reporting