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hours later Russia invaded Ukraine On February 24, the Global Times, the tabloid newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, reported a video He said that many Ukrainian soldiers laid down their weapons. Source: Russian state-controlled television network, RT.

Two days later, China’s state broadcaster Central Television Station (CCTV) issued a breaking news warning from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, quoting Russia’s parliament speaker. fled from Kiev. CCTV then created a related hashtag that was viewed 510 million times on the Twitter-like Weibo platform and used by 163 media outlets in the country.

On February 28, as Russia became an international pariah, Russian state news agency Sputnik shared a message of power with its 11 million Weibo followers. Russian foreign ministry spokesman Sputnik said Russia still has friends in the world, especially a “true giant” like China.

Sputnik’s Weibo follower @fengyiqing chanted, “Add oil, Russia,” using a Chinese expression of support. “All the people who love justice in the world are friends of Russia.”

Aspect European and American authorities are cracking down on Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and other online platforms. compress China has embraced Russia’s propaganda and lies about the war based on Russian disinformation. China’s state-owned media outlets have helped to amplify disinformation on the Chinese internet by uncorrecting the stories of their Russian counterparts. they put in russian officers with little response on state television networks claims.

When it comes to information, the Chinese government is a control freak, dictating and censoring what its 1.4 billion people consume. There is Beijing muzzled and imprisoned critics and journalists. It forced and partnered with the largest Chinese online platforms to enforce censorship guidelines. it blocks Almost all major western news and information sites, including Google, Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the BBC.

Yet as the world faces one of its most serious geopolitical crises since the end of the Cold War, China has lowered its digital defenses and allowed the Kremlin’s propaganda machine to help shape the public’s perception of the war. No wonder the Chinese internet is overwhelmingly Pro-Russian, pro-war and pro-Putin.

If China wants to remain officially vague about whether it supports Vladimir V. Putin’s war – it refuses to call it an invasion and abstained from a UN vote to condemn the invasion – its state-controlled media nevertheless makes it very clear where China stands.

The Sino-Russian information alliance is shaped by the shared worldview of two leaders, Xi Jinping and Vladimir V. Putin, who are determined to challenge Western dominance in public competition because of his deep distrust of the United States.

In a speech in 2013, Mr. Xi referred to the country’s propaganda workers as “the country’s “international discourse powerUnder the concept of “telling China’s story well”. During a visit to the headquarters of RT in the same year, Mr. Putin said, said the network was created to “break the Anglo-Saxon monopoly on global information flows”.

In 2015, Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin agreed that the two countries should strengthen their cooperation in the field of media. Since then, they have been holding a Sino-Russian media forum every year.redefine map of international discourse.”

Last November, an RT manager said It’s on the forum that China’s leading media outlets quoted RT.com an average of 2,500 times a week in 2021.

Many Chinese media outlets admire RT and Sputnik, which they believe are breaking the West’s information monopoly, or at least muddying the water. Many media experts have analyzed what China’s state-owned media can learn from its successes. an academic paper He detailed RT’s coverage of the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 to show how he carefully planned his reporting strategy to increase the apparent credibility and accessibility of the Russian network so that it could set its own agenda.

When Russia invaded UkraineThe Kremlin’s media machines have worked well in China. Combined with Beijing’s censorship of pro-Ukrainian content, they have created a web of disinformation that has proven difficult for most Chinese online users to evade.

The message they are trying to take home: Russia’s military actions are anti-Western, anti-NATO enlargement, and anti-Nazi – hence justified and popular.

There is little in the Chinese state media about international condemnation of Russia; Ukraine’s success in the battle for public opinion led by President Zelensky; or the anti-war protests in Russia.

A punch or two that adds confusion while keeping the Chinese people away from the truth works.

Many on Chinese social media platforms have adopted the language of Putin and the Russian media, calling the Ukrainian side extremists and neo-Nazis.

continued to raise the issue. Azov Battalion as if representing the whole of Ukraine. A unit of the Ukrainian National Guard, the battalion is known for having neo-Nazi sympathizers, but remains an edge presence in the country and its military.

President Zelensky is himself Jewish and won the 2019 presidential election with 73 percent of the vote. The approval rate for wartime leadership has recently risen to over 90 percent.

The fog of disinformation intensifies when Chinese state media portray Russia’s war as an anti-fascist effort. After Russia’s defense minister announced this week that his country will host its first international anti-fascism conference in August, CCTV ran a one-paragraph story and then created a Weibo hashtag. It was watched 650 million times in 24 hours and used by 90 media outlets. Many commentators called Ukraine and the USA fascist countries.

Chinese media is also spreading Russian disinformation that Ukraine is using civilians as human shields. at its best news On February 26, CCTV reported that President Putin made this claim. A few days later, the nationalist news site guancha.com released a banner. title That said, the Russian military is only going after military targets, while the Ukrainian military is using civilians as human shields.

Taken collectively, Chinese online users are seeing a war quite different from most of the world.

While videos circulating outside of China showing the courteous treatment of Ukrainians towards Russian prisoners of war, a popular social media topic in China was that captured Russians were subjected to Nazi-like torture. Both CCTV and the Communist Party’s official newspaper, the People’s Daily, created hashtags that repeat the same thing, based on a briefing given by the Russian defense ministry. They combined over 200 million views.

Sputnik, which has 11.6 million followers on Weibo, has been posting more than 100 a day lately, filling its timeline with words like “criminal Zelensky”, “empire of lies”, “fake news” and “Nazi”.

“We must be on the side of Russia!” Weibo user @qingdaoxiaowangzi commented on one of Sputnik’s posts using a popular line on the Chinese internet. “If Russia falls, NATO and neo-Nazi USA will bully China!”

At the same time, Weibo and other platforms are censoring pro-Ukrainian content. The Weibo account of actor Ke Lan, who has 2.9 million followers, was suspended after he retweeted a video and photo of the anti-war protest in Russia with the phrase 🌹. So was the account of a transgender celebrity, Jin Xing, with 13.6 million followers. “Respect all living things and stand firm against war!!!” said his last post.

But as the war continued and China readjusted its position, some Chinese online users began to scrutinize Russian news media reports. A user named @jialalabadededashen asked under a Sputnik Weibo post claiming that the Ukrainian military had killed civilians, “Is this just another piece of news prepared specifically for China by the Russian news agency?” Wrote.

In a social media discussion, some people urged Russia to wage an information war on China. “Russia’s foreign propaganda has completely leaked into China,” wrote a Weibo user @juediqiangshou. “This is why all the excuses to justify the invasion are popular here.”

Some people also question whether the flood of pro-Russian information will harm the interests of China and its people.

Even the famous nationalist writer Wang Xiaodong suggested on Weibo that the Russia-Ukraine war is more complex than it seems. “The Chinese people should have access to comprehensive and diversified information,” he wrote on Wednesday.