Washington
According to researchers, misinformation campaign unleashed on social media in support of the Chinese government has now spread from Twitter, Google and Facebook in new languages to several countries.
A report by Rand Corporation published earlier had found that China has been treating Taiwan as a "test bed" for developing attack vectors using disinformation on social media.
"China's control over the Chinese-language social media platform WeChat and a general belief among China authors that the global ethnic Chinese diaspora is a favourable vector of influence for Beijing to leverage," the Rand report had said.
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FireEye and Alphabetâs Google had earlier identified accounts on social media in English and Mandarin which sought to cast doubt on Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement which had broken out in mid-2019.
The Rand report had earlier acknowledged China's "disinformation" campaign during the coronavirus crisis and had warned that "Chinese disinformation campaigns will likely be used to target the United States in the event of a crisis or conflict".
Reports say there were several accounts circulating on social media in various countries which sought to convey that the virus first emerged in the United States before Wuhan in China and that it was developed by the US military taking aim at US Army's Fort Detrick installation in Maryland.
In fact, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lijian Zhao in a tweet last month had said: "Open the door to Fort Detrick, shed light on tightly held secret, This RAP song speaks our minds" as several tweets sought to draw attention to Fort Detrick.
"Open the door to Fort Detrick,
Shed light on tightly held secret..."
This RAP song speaks our minds. pic.twitter.com/YWRL0s4EE0
â Lijian Zhao èµµç«å (@zlj517) August 11, 2021
In fact, Rand had recommended that the US Air Force should incorporate "adversary social media disinformation into wargaming" due to the increased level of threat from Chinese disinformation.
FireEye in its report said it had witnessed "extensive promotion" of German, Spanish, Korean, Russian and Japanese-language content on US and non-US-based platforms".
The report said some posts asked protesters to demonstrate against racism in the United States with the disinformation campaign deploying videos to further their message.
YouTube has reportedly been removing several thousand channels each month linked to the disinformation campaign.
(With inputs from Agencies)