Social media alignment with Russian narrative revealed in US research

Social media posts by Chinese official sources echoing the Kremlin’s line that Nato’s expansion is the cause of tensions between Russia and Ukraine have surged in recent months, according to data released by United States analysts.

The new data comes to light amid a dispute between US and Chinese officials over who bears responsibility for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including allegations by Washington that Beijing has taken Moscow’s side.

German Marshall Fund (GMF) fellow Bret Schafer and Georgia State University professor Maria Repnikova outlined in a briefing organised by the US State Department the data that shows a convergence of Chinese and Russian official and media narratives of the conflict, as well as differences.

“The most mentioned country in the context of war from Chinese officials in 2022 is the United States, not Ukraine or Russia,” said Schafer, who runs an online open-source dashboard developed for GMF called Hamilton 2.0. The platform tracks the outputs of Russian, Chinese and Iranian state media outlets, diplomats and government officials.

GMF is a public policy think tank that advocates for closer cooperation between the US and Europe on advancing democracy and human rights worldwide.

Schafer’s research turned up 366 posts through official Chinese accounts on the subject of Nato expansion in the first four months of this year so far, compared with 36 for the whole of last year.

The research counted mentions of Ukraine with the word “Nazi” on these accounts 108 times this year so far, compared with only twice last year.

The numbers reflected a closer alignment between Beijing and Moscow, Schafer said.

In addition to criticism over Nato enlargement and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s allegations of Ukrainian “Nazi-ism”, convergent messages include US military conflicts like its 20-year war in Afghanistan, which ended violently last year.

“This is an entirely new narrative that … China has really adopted from Russia since the start of the war,” Schafer said, adding the mirroring of messages went both ways.

“We have seen almost three times as many retweets of Chinese diplomats from Russian sources that we saw in the same period in 2021,” he said. “This is largely driven by amplification of Russian state media outlet RT, but we’ve also seen this occur at the diplomatic level.”

However, Repnikova noted Chinese messaging was not in total alignment with the Kremlin. “For example, there hasn’t been official endorsement of Russia’s invasion in Chinese state media, or Chinese official narratives,” she said, adding coverage of the conflict was not uniform across Chinese state media outlets.

This is an entirely new narrative that … China has really adopted from Russia

BRET SCHAFER, SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYST

“Domestic media primarily neglects the Ukraine position,” Repnikova said. But, she added, state media international outlets like CGTN – which are tasked with “becoming an instrument of soft power” and are trying to compete with the likes of Al Jazeera, CNN and the BBC – were forced to take a more balanced approach on the Ukrainian perspective and used direct footage from Ukraine.

Repnikova also noted there were tensions in how Chinese officials talked about the conflict.

“Voices from the foreign ministry, like [its spokesman] Zhao Lijian, tend to amplify some pro-Russia narratives and disinformation,” she said. “But then other voices like the ambassador to the United Nations, for instance, and other officials will take much more neutral positions. So we see some frictions even across the officials speaking for China internationally.”