Citizen Lab, a digital watchdog, has uncovered a widespread influence campaign where over 100 websites posing as local news outlets in Europe, Asia, and Latin America are disseminating pro-China content. The campaign is connected to a Beijing-based public relations firm.

The propaganda material, spanning websites across 30 countries, is intricately woven with news gathered from local news outlets and Chinese state media, as outlined in a research report released on Wednesday by the Toronto-based group.

"While the campaign's websites enjoyed negligible exposure to date, there is a heightened risk of inadvertent amplification by the local media and target audiences, as a result of the quick multiplication of these websites and their adaptiveness to local languages and content," researcher Alberto Fittarelli said in the report.

The content on these websites fluctuates between conspiracy theories, frequently targeting the United States or its allies. For instance, there are pieces attributing the "leak" of COVID-19 to American scientists, alongside articles that criticize Beijing's critics.

Linking such operations to specific entities is a rare occurrence among researchers. Citizen Lab has identified that the campaign, initiated in mid-2020, is connected to the public relations firm Shenzhen Haimaiyunxiang Media Co., Ltd., also known as Haimai.

"As a principle, it is a typical bias and double standard to allege that the pro-China contents and reports are 'disinformation', and to call the anti-China ones 'true information,'” a spokesperson for China's embassy in Washington said in an emailed statement.

According to Citizen Lab, Roma Journal is one of the websites involved in the campaign. Despite its appearance as a local Italian news outlet, its headlines cover topics such as the Italian prime minister's political future, a hot air balloon festival in a northern province, and a book launch.

But a "press releases" button at a corner of its homepage leads to a range of Chinese state media articles on topics such as China's contribution to the global economic recovery and its push towards technological innovation.

A major portion of the content discovered by Citizen Lab on these sites was obtained from a press release service named Times Newswire. Cybersecurity firm Mandiant's analysts had identified Times Newswire as the focal point of a distinct Chinese influence operation targeting U.S. audiences last year.

Online influence campaigns have become increasingly prevalent, with powerful individuals and governments worldwide attempting to manipulate public opinion. Experts monitoring such operations note that China, along with Russia and Iran, ranks among the major sources of these influence drives.

Chinese influence operations have increased and expanded well beyond Asia, social media giant Meta said in a report in November, calling it "the most notable change in the threat landscape" since 2020.

Citizen Lab dug deeper into the network it found after a series of such websites popped up in South Korea and Italy.

In a November report, South Korea's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), which is a part of the country's national intelligence agency, revealed 18 of the sites and linked the operation to Haimai. Additionally, Italy's Il Foglio newspaper reported that Roma Journal was not legally registered as a news outlet in Italy.

It was not unusual the campaign was found to be low-engagement, said Dakota Cary, a China-focused consultant at cybersecurity firm SentinelOne.

"I think that's really important because they still think that it's worthwhile to fund these campaigns," he said. "And so I think, if anything, we should expect to see this continue."

Image source: Reuters