Is Beijing planning to weaponise social media?

It feels that an adversary’s political, social, and economic institutions should be targeted before a war even begins

Ever since the 2016 US presidential election, with its revelations about Russian meddling, European officials have been on the lookout for similar attacks. But Europeans aren’t the only ones paying attention. So, too, are China’s leaders, who are considering what they might learn from the Kremlin’s successes. For Chinese President Xi Jinping, maintaining domestic stability is a top priority, a point underscored by China’s annual budget for internal security.

For example, China is exploring how artificial intelligence (AI) and big data can be used to monitor everything from social media to credit-card spending, and it plans to assign all citizens a social reliability rating to weed out potential troublemakers. The regime’s Orwellian strategy is focused squarely on social media and controlling not just what is said, but also how information flows into and around the country.

Moreover, the authorities are bringing technology companies into line with tough new laws and cyber-security investigations. For Xi, the ease with which the Kremlin has manipulated Facebook and Twitter demonstrates the need for a tighter grip on China’s own social-media platforms. The Chinese government is now requesting seats on the boards of companies such as Wechat, Weibo, and Tencent, and demanding access to their users’ personal data.

Chinese cyber spies are also studying Russia’s success. To be sure, Chinese hackers do not lack technical savvy. They have launched cyberattacks against US presidential campaighina ns, expatriate Tibetan movements, and Uighur activists. They have burrowed into Western think tanks and universities that study China. They have even hacked into western news outlets that published embarrassing stories about Chinese leaders’ wealth. Still, the Chinese may have something to learn from Russia’s well-choreographed online army of trolls and bots.

Similarly, strategists at the People’s Liberation Army are likely poring over the Kremlin’s handiwork to inform their own cyberwar tactics. Chinese strategic thinking about “political warfare” holds that an adversary’s political, social, and economic institutions – particularly the media – should be targeted before a shooting war ever begins.

To that end, Russia’s diffusion of bogus news and conspiracy theories through its State-funded media outlets RT and Sputnik could prove instructive.

This raises an obvious question: If Russia could roil a US presidential election without such intimate business relationships, what will China be able to do in the years ahead? To think that China’s only interest is making money, one Hollywood executive recently acknowledged, would be “very naive and dangerous” indeed.