Chinese Twitter trolls target women in West

A campaign of intimidation against prominent women of Chinese backgrounds, including Australian writer and researcher Vicky Xu, has been linked to Beijing.

Vicky Xu says ‘I am constantly worried about being targeted by a super power’. Picture: Aaron Francis

A campaign of intimidation against prominent women of Chinese backgrounds, including Australian writer and researcher Vicky Xu, has been linked to Beijing.

Researchers at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra uncovered a campaign of abuse, disinformation and propaganda aimed at shutting down a group of outspoken women who had criticised China.

The social media bombardment in English and Mandarin comes mainly during office hours in Beijing, and the professional trolls even take a lunch break, pausing between noon and 2pm.

ASPI researchers Danielle Cave and Albert Zhang identified the misogynistic campaign aimed at prominent women of Chinese heritage living in Western democracies, including their colleague Ms Xu, a senior fellow at ASPI who wrote a major report in 2020 on human rights abuses being perpetrated against the minority Uighur people in Xinjiang. That report was highly embarrassing for the Chinese government.

An image used in a post by Chinese trolls attacking Vicky Xu.

Other prominent women targeted include Britain-based activist Jane Wang, who is campaigning for the release of Zhang Zhan, a journalist jailed in China for reporting on the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan, and US-based journalists including New York Times’ Muyi Xiao, Washington-based video journalist Xinyan Yu and New Yorker writer Jiayang Fan.

“Graphic online depictions of sexual assault, homophobia and racist imagery (sometimes involving Australian politicians) and life-threatening intimidation (includ­ing calling for targets to kill themselves) is a growing part of the Chinese Communist Party’s toolkit of digital transnational repression,’’ Ms Cave and Mr Zhang noted in a report obtained by The Australian.

“Such imagery, and associated threats, characterise ongoing co-ordinated information operations the CCP is running online against women of Asian descent living in democracies around the world, including in Australia, the UK and the US.

“This strand of cyber-enabled foreign interference – targeting both overseas public debates and key women within those debates – continues without consequential intervention from policymakers or social media platforms.

“For Australia, this type of foreign interference needs to be a major part of our new national cyber strategy and our inter­national collaboration.’’

The research, building on work the pair released in June, shows the CCP-aligned trolls on social media platform Twitter try to inflate their attacks by using popular hashtags to draw attention, including #auspol and #metoo.

The researchers made eight recommendations to counter the threats, including requiring social media platforms to better enforce their rules prohibiting harassment and threats, better resourcing their enforcement capabilities against inauthentic accounts, and becoming more proactive in targeting fake accounts.

An image from a social-media post by Chinese trolls.

They also called for parliamentary commissioned inquiries into Chinese cyber-enabled foreign ­interference activities, and the development of an Indo-Pacific hybrid threats centre modelled on the existing NATO–EU Hybrid Centre of Excellence in Finland.

In escalating attacks on Ms Xu, a co-ordinated campaign on Twitter saw 199 accounts post 582 tweets in just 10 days, accusing her of being a traitor and making physical threats against her.

“I am constantly worried about being targeted by a super power,” Ms Xu said.

“The Chinese government is determined to make an example out of me because I wrote one influential report, and then I had to endure all this.’’

Cyber Security Minister Clare O’Neil said the threats were “unacceptable and anti-democratic”.

“Bullying behaviour like this has a chilling effect on research and harms open discussion about critical national security problems that country faces,’’ she said.

“Asian women seem to be particular targets of this bullying. It is not only anti-democratic, it is also racist and misogynistic.’’

Opposition cyber security spokesman James Paterson said “the world’s largest techno-­authoritarian state, China, cannot be allowed to intimidate, coerce and attempt to silence researchers, journalists and activists using platforms headquartered and regulated in the West’’.