China amplifies Russian propaganda on its war with Ukraine to millions worldwide

China stands accused of conducting a massive news amplification program to bring Russia’s war messaging to millions across the globe.

Anti-propaganda body NewsGuard says China is conducting a massive news amplification program that’s bringing Russia’s war messaging to millions across the globe. This was nullifying attempts in Europe to quell Russian propaganda.

NewsGuard’s research includes a social media posting by China Xinhua News that Ukraine experimented with bat coronavirus with US support in order to produce biological weapons. The news agency has more than 92 million followers on Facebook.

While scientists say Ukraine has conducted bat research, NewsGuard says there has never been evidence of a link to the production of biological weapons.

NewsGuard said China state media not only propagated Russian messaging to Chinese communities across the globe, but also to other language groups through its translation services.

Western governments and social media companies have concentrated on warning the public about pro-war messaging by Russian sites including RT.com, Tass and Sputnik. Russia pumps out its news in more than 100 languages. However China’s participation in this across the world is less documented.

NewsGuard said China state-run news organisations together command more than half a billion followers on Facebook alone – even though the social media platform is blocked within China.

It said these audience numbers were many times those of western outlets.

“The English-language Facebook page of the Chinese state television broadcaster CGTN has 117 million followers. Its French-language counterpart, CGTN Français, has 20 million followers. China Daily and The Global Times, both English-language Chinese newspapers, have 104 million and 67 million Facebook followers, respectively,” said NewsGuard.

“For context, (US-based) NPR has fewer than 8 million followers, and The Daily Mail, which is consistently one of the most engaged publications on the platform, has 21.7 million followers.

“By far the most prominent narrative pushed by these sources has been that the US operates biological labs in Ukraine that are developing bioweapons — a claim that the Kremlin has repeatedly used to justify its invasion of Ukraine.”

NewsGuard said that since February 24, it had identified 74 English-language posts on Chinese state media Facebook accounts that mentioned biolabs, including videos, articles and cartoons. Their purpose was “the creation of [a] mechanism for the covert spread of deadliest pathogens”.

Multiple posts on this topic had been found in French and Italian language counterparts.

It said Facebook had flagged one post as “partly false information” but many were not flagged.

NewsGuard said YouTube’s “lax moderation practices” had allowed China, Belarus and Venezuela to easily circumvent Europe’s crackdown on Russian news channels and fill the media void with pro-Russian content, including in English.

NewsGuard examined 10 YouTube English news channels pumped out by the three countries. Ironically, YouTube is banned within China and periodically censored within Venezuela.

“Many of the channels have large audiences, such as the China-based channels China Global Television Network and New China TV, which have 2.79 million and 1.28 million global YouTube subscribers, respectively.”

While the West struggles to quell the flow of Russian misinformation, Russia’s grip on its news coverage remains iron-clad.

NewsGuard did not find any use of the word ‘war’ in an examination of Russian state TV content between April 11 and April 22, nor any mentions of death in the Russian military.

“Russian soldiers were victorious ‘defenders’, the Ukrainians were ‘Nazis’ and the West’s military support for Ukraine was hypocritical and pointless,” said NewsGuard.

“Coverage was largely focused on four themes: the heroism and strength of the Russian army, the aggression of the Ukrainian army, Russia‘s humanitarian assistance to Ukrainians, and Western military aid to Ukraine.”

NewsGuard translated and summarised the 9am news on Russia’s most widely watched news station, Channel One, over a 12 day period.

You can read NewsGuard’s research here.