Trump has launched an information war against China during his presidency - Reuters
The CIA used fake accounts in China's social media to spread negative materials about Xi Jinping and his government
During his presidency, US President Donald Trump instructed the CIA to launch a covert campaign to discredit the Chinese government on Chinese social media, according to former officials briefed on the intelligence service's operation.
Source. This was reported by Reuters.
According to them, the CIA created a small team that used fake accounts on Chinese social media to spread negative materials about Xi Jinping and his government, while passing them on to foreign media.
In particular, the CIA promoted claims on social media that high-ranking members of the Chinese Communist Party were hiding ill-gotten gains abroad. They also called Xi Jinping's One Belt, One Road project "corrupt" and "wasteful".
At the same time, the information disseminated by the intelligence service was based on facts, although it was published from fake social media accounts, Reuters sources said. These efforts were intended to force the Chinese authorities to spend more resources on restricting the Internet.
"We wanted them to chase ghosts," said one of the agency's sources.
The CIA's operation, launched in 2019, was a response to China's growing global influence, the sources said. According to them, the campaign was aimed at public opinion not only in China but also in Southeast Asia, Africa and the South Pacific.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said that the news of the CIA operation confirms that the US government is using "the public opinion space and social media platforms as a weapon to spread false information and manipulate international public opinion". The CIA refused to comment on this information.
Background. As a reminder, the NYT wrote about 12 secret stations built by the GRU and US intelligence to intercept Russian airwaves.
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