China pushes divisive narratives amid heated US election

As the polling sites crossed the U.S. started counting votes Tuesday successful the highly contested U.S. statesmanlike race, China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency published a satirical video titled “Presidential Election Victory Speeches of the Divided States of America.”

Posted connected societal media level X, Xinhua’s video lampooned President-elect Donald Trump and his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, capitalizing connected divisive U.S. governmental and societal topics.

Mocking the contented of weapon unit successful America, an histrion portraying Harris said, “We are rolling retired slug vending machines successful each market store.” The histrion portraying Trump said that "while kids are being changeable by stray bullets,” Americans volition “have to walk a inheritance cheque to bargain bubble gum.”

The video likewise portrayed the Trump and Harris stand-ins arsenic having farcical views connected economical and biology policy, criticized the U.S. for providing subject assistance to its allies, and ridiculed a imaginable prohibition of the Chinese-owned societal media level TikTok.

Similar to disinformation dispersed by different U.S. adversaries similar Russia and Iran, China’s disinformation narratives targeting U.S. elections focused connected efforts to undermine the U.S. antiauthoritarian strategy arsenic a whole.

Like Russian and Iranian state-run media outlets, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s Global Times paper predicted "post-election unrest.”

Xinhua published an Election Day portion outlining 8 cardinal issues that uncover “the information astir American democracy.”

They included problems with inflation, wellness care, crime, education, abortion, lodging affordability, shale state and migration — each of which Xinhua described arsenic “urgent.”

The nonfiction presented the United States arsenic failing politically and economically, and it formed the statesmanlike candidates arsenic utilizing these issues to get fashionable votes contempt being incapable of enacting genuine change.

Lu Xiang, an adept connected U.S. studies and probe chap astatine the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times that “neither campaigner volition judge decision easily, due to the fact that they person stake excessively overmuch connected this campaign.”

Harris already debunked specified speculation. Following U.S. governmental tradition, she called Trump connected Wednesday to congratulate him and publically conceded the race.

Publicly, China has denied immoderate effort to sway the ballot successful the U.S. When asked Wednesday astir Trump’s victory, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning called the predetermination “an interior matter of the United States.”

“China respects the prime of the American people,” she added.

However, researchers person documented China’s power operations successful the leadup to Tuesday’s poll.

On Tuesday, the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) of the Atlantic Council published a survey that recovered a Chinese bot web had amplified seemingly Russian-produced contented intended “to undermine the integrity of the 2024 U.S. election.”

“These videos amplified disinformation narratives alleging rigged votes, destroyed ballots, malfunctioning machines and dormant voters, with immoderate suggesting that Vice President Kamala Harris benefited from these expected instances of predetermination fraud,” DFRLab said.

Authorities said those and different malign narratives Russia pushed done its “interference campaign” preyed connected “an already tense governmental climate,” Agence France-Presse reported.

While China has agelong utilized societal media platforms to antagonistic antagonistic reports astir the CCP and its quality rights records, researchers astatine Microsoft recovered that China has successful caller years dispersed messages intended to undermine the U.S. and “sow discord on racial, socioeconomic and ideological lines.”

In an August report, Microsoft recovered that the CCP-linked power actors continued to “engage U.S. audiences connected divisive governmental issues.”

Like Iran, China sought to stoke societal tensions implicit U.S. enactment for Israel successful its warfare against Hamas successful the Gaza Strip.

Microsoft recovered that 1 CCP-linked power group, Taizi Flood, “leveraged hundreds of accounts to stoke outrage astir pro-Palestinian protests astatine U.S. universities.”

Taizi Flood assets portrayed themselves arsenic being students progressive successful the protests, reacted “in existent clip arsenic students clashed with instrumentality enforcement crossed campuses,” and provided directions to objection locations, Microsoft found.

A September study from the probe institution Graphika likewise recovered that China had “become much assertive successful its efforts to power U.S. governmental conversations up of the 2024 statesmanlike election.”

As with Taizi Flood, that included an enlargement of efforts to impersonate U.S. voters connected societal media platforms to dispersed “divisive narratives astir delicate societal issues successful the U.S.”