‘We are very free’: How China spreads its propaganda model of actuality in Xinjiang

Written by Jeff Kao, Raymond Zhong, Paul Mozur and Aaron Krolik
Recently, the proprietor of a small retailer in western China got here throughout some remarks by Mike Pompeo, the previous U.S. secretary of state. What he heard made him offended.
A employee in a textile firm had the identical response. So did a retiree in her 80s. And a taxi driver.
Pompeo had routinely accused China of committing human rights abuses within the Xinjiang area, and these 4 folks made movies to precise their outrage. But they did so in oddly comparable methods.
“Pompeo said that we Uyghurs are locked up and have no freedom,” the shop proprietor stated in his video. “We are very free now.”
“We are very free,” the retiree stated in her video.
“We are very, very free here,” the taxi driver stated.
“Our lives are very happy and very free now,” the textile firm employee stated.
These and hundreds of different movies are supposed to seem like unfiltered glimpses of life in Xinjiang, the western Chinese area the place the Communist Party has carried out repressive insurance policies towards Uyghurs and different predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities. Most of the clips carry no logos or different indicators that they’re official propaganda.
But taken collectively, the movies start to disclose clues of broader coordination — such because the English subtitles in clips posted to YouTube and different Western platforms.
A monthslong evaluation of greater than 3,000 of the movies by The New York Times and ProPublica discovered proof of an affect marketing campaign orchestrated by the Chinese authorities. The operation has produced and unfold hundreds of movies through which Chinese residents deny abuses towards their very own communities and scold international officers and multinational firms who dare query the Chinese authorities’s human rights document in Xinjiang.
It all quantities to one in all China’s most elaborate efforts to form world opinion.
Beijing is attempting to make use of savvier and extra forceful strategies to broadcast its political messages to a worldwide viewers. And Western web platforms like Twitter and YouTube are taking part in a key half.
Many of those movies first appeared on a regional Communist Party information app. Then they confirmed up on YouTube and different world websites, with English subtitles added.
On Twitter, a community of linked accounts shared the movies in ways in which appeared designed to keep away from the platform’s methods for detecting affect campaigns.
China’s more and more social media-fluent diplomats and state-run information retailers have since unfold the testimonials to audiences of thousands and thousands worldwide.
Western platforms like Twitter and YouTube are banned in China out of concern they is perhaps used to unfold political messaging — which is precisely how Chinese officers are utilizing these platforms in the remainder of the world.
They are, in essence, high-speed propaganda pipelines for Beijing. In only a few days, movies establishing the Communist Party’s model of actuality could be shot, edited and amplified throughout the worldwide web.
How the Videos Work
The dialogue in tons of of the Xinjiang movies accommodates strikingly comparable, and infrequently similar, phrases and buildings. Most are in Chinese or Uyghur. The topic introduces herself, then explains how her personal glad, affluent life means there couldn’t probably be repressive insurance policies in Xinjiang.
In one clip, a person frolicking within the snow along with his kids says, “I’m a Uyghur born and raised in Xinjiang.”
A four-character Chinese phrase that means “born and raised” seems in no less than 280 of the greater than 2,000 movies attacking Pompeo that The Times and ProPublica discovered on YouTube and Twitter.
“You’re speaking total nonsense,” the person later says.
That expression and shut variations of it seem in additional than 600 of the movies.
Establishing that authorities officers had a hand in making these testimonials is typically only a matter of asking. In one other clip, the proprietor of a used automotive dealership in Xinjiang says: “Pompeo, shut your mouth.”
When reached by cellphone, the person stated native propaganda authorities had produced the clip. Asked for particulars, he gave the variety of an official he known as Mr. He. “Why don’t you ask the head of the propaganda department?” he stated.
Multiple calls to He’s quantity weren’t answered. Seven different folks within the movies whose contact data could possibly be discovered both declined to be interviewed or couldn’t be reached. The title of the automotive dealership proprietor is being withheld to guard him from retribution by Chinese officers.
The clips’ effectiveness as propaganda is available in half as a result of they’ll most likely be most individuals’s solely glimpse into Xinjiang, a distant desert area nearer to Kabul than to Beijing.
The Chinese authorities have thwarted efforts by journalists and others to achieve unfettered entry to the indoctrination camps the place tons of of hundreds of Muslims have been despatched for re-education.
On government-led excursions of the area, international diplomats and reporters have been allowed to talk with locals solely underneath Chinese officers’ watchful eyes, usually in settings that appear staged and scripted.
For Western platforms internet hosting the Xinjiang testimonials, the truth that they don’t seem to be instantly apparent as state propaganda poses a problem.
To promote transparency, websites like YouTube and Twitter label accounts and posts which can be related to governments. The Xinjiang movies, nonetheless, carry no such tags.
YouTube stated the clips didn’t violate its neighborhood pointers. Twitter declined to touch upon the movies, including that it routinely releases knowledge on campaigns that it may “reliably attribute to state-linked activity.”
How the Videos Spread
The video marketing campaign began this yr after the State Department declared on Jan. 19, the ultimate full day of the Trump presidency, that China was committing genocide in Xinjiang.
“I’ve referred to this over time as the stain of the century — it is truly that,” Pompeo advised Fox News.
Within days, movies criticizing Pompeo started showing on an app known as Pomegranate Cloud, which is owned by the regional arm of the official Communist Party newspaper, People’s Daily.
The movies usually jumped onto different Chinese platforms earlier than making their approach to websites like Twitter and YouTube.
On Twitter, The Times and ProPublica discovered, the clips had been shared by greater than 300 accounts whose posts strongly prompt they had been no extraordinary customers.
The accounts usually posted messages that had been similar however for a random string of characters on the finish with no apparent that means, both 4 Roman letters, 5 Chinese characters or three symbols resembling proportion indicators or parentheses.
Such strings had been present in about three-quarters of the accounts’ tweets. They brought on the textual content of the posts to range barely, in an obvious try to bypass Twitter’s automated anti-spam filters.
These weren’t the one indicators of a coordinated operation.
All of the Twitter accounts had been registered in current months. Many of them adopted zero different customers. And the majority of their tweeting befell between 10 a.m. and eight p.m. Beijing time.
Twitter suspended many of those accounts in March and April, earlier than The Times and ProPublica inquired about them. Twitter stated the accounts had violated its insurance policies towards platform manipulation and spam.
The accounts didn’t add clips on to Twitter. Rather, they tweeted hyperlinks to movies on YouTube or retweeted movies that had been initially posted by different Twitter accounts.
Those YouTube and Twitter accounts usually posted copies of the identical Xinjiang movies at roughly the identical time, in accordance with the Times and ProPublica evaluation. Nearly three-quarters of the copied clips had been posted by completely different accounts inside half-hour of each other.
Most of those accounts — seven on Twitter and almost two dozen on YouTube — posted dozens of movies that initially appeared on Pomegranate Cloud. The accounts appear to have served solely as warehouses to retailer the clips, making it simpler for different accounts within the community to share them.
How the Campaign Changes
The effort continues to evolve. In some instances, state media and authorities officers have begun to overtly unfold the clips attacking Pompeo. Other movies have discovered new points and other people to focus on.
In one clip, a lady denies accusations of pressured labor.
“I have five greenhouses, and no one forces me to work,” she says.
She then turns the digital camera towards a number of different ladies behind her. “Friends, is anyone forcing you to work?” she asks.
“No!” they cry in unison.
The clip was posted by Global Times, a state-controlled newspaper, on the Chinese platform Kuaishou on Jan. 25. Two days later, the video was posted on Twitter and YouTube by the warehouse accounts inside half-hour of each other.
Just over every week later, two representatives for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted the clip on Twitter as nicely.
The ministry didn’t reply to a faxed request for remark, nor did the Xinjiang workplaces of the Communist Party propaganda division.
Two months later, one other wave of movies, shot in the identical type and distributed in an analogous manner, raged towards H&M and different worldwide clothes manufacturers which have expressed concern about potential labor abuses in Xinjiang’s cotton and textile industries.
In one video, a Uyghur girl sporting a polka-dot high sits on a sofa along with her husband and younger son.
“Mom, what’s H&M?” the boy asks.
“H&M is a foreign company that uses our Xinjiang cotton and speaks ill of our Xinjiang,” she says. “Tell me, is H&M bad or what?”
“Very bad,” the boy says stiffly.
The clip was posted on Pomegranate Cloud on March 29. Six days later, it was posted on Twitter and YouTube, 20 minutes aside, by two warehouse accounts. As with the opposite clips that appeared on these platforms, English subtitles had been added someplace alongside the way in which, seemingly for the advantage of worldwide audiences.
New movies are being uploaded to Pomegranate Cloud almost each day. That means the marketing campaign, which has already enlisted hundreds of individuals in Xinjiang — lecturers, shopkeepers, farmhands — may continue to grow.
The viewers outdoors China for the movies may additionally maintain increasing.
The warehouse accounts on YouTube have attracted greater than 480,000 views in whole. People on YouTube, TikTookay and different platforms — customers with no obvious connection to the affect marketing campaign — have cited the testimonials to argue that each one is nicely in Xinjiang. Their movies have acquired tons of of hundreds of extra views.
In a cellphone interview, Pompeo stated pals, and infrequently his son, had come throughout the Xinjiang testimonials on-line and despatched them to him.
As clumsy because the movies appear, he stated, their affect shouldn’t be dismissed: “In places that don’t have access to a great deal of media, that repetition, those story lines have an ability to take hold.”
How the Videos Divided a Family
For one Uyghur activist dwelling in exile within the United States since 2005, the movies have had a extra private impression.
Several of the Xinjiang movies characteristic relations of Rebiya Kadeer, 74, whom the Chinese authorities has accused of abetting terrorism. In one clip, two of Kadeer’s granddaughters lash out at Pompeo whereas out purchasing for a marriage.
“Grandma, I recently saw online that Pompeo’s making reckless claims and talking nonsense about our Xinjiang,” one granddaughter says. “I hope you won’t be fooled again by those bad people overseas.”
Kadeer stated the movies had been the primary time she had heard her kinfolk’ voices in years.
“I have been crying in my heart about my children,” she stated in a cellphone interview.
“Some people will believe these videos and believe Uyghurs are living a happy life,” she added. “We can’t say they have locked up everyone. But what they’re saying in these videos — it’s not true. They know they’re not speaking the truth. But they have to say what the Chinese government wants them to say.”