The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) last week published a report titled Truth and Reality with Chinese Characteristics that reveals how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is using its propaganda system to brainwash people in other countries.
For instance, it invests in emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, mobile gaming and immersive technologies to shape and distort people’s perceptions of reality, with the aim of boosting the CCP’s cultural, technological, economic and military influence.
It also uses commercial companies to collect data on their users and build databases, and uses the data to gain a thorough understanding of its target audience, with the aim of exercising greater control over the global information environment and systems.
Living as we do in democratic Taiwan, we need to know what methods the CCP uses to indirectly control and brainwash people around the world.
China’s lists of national key cultural export enterprises and projects for 2021–2022 and 2022–2023 name dozens of mobile games and gaming companies whose interests are interwoven with those of the party, such as receiving state subsidies that enable them to continue to enjoy global success, which in turn advances the CCP’s mission of boosting the nation’s cultural soft power.
In the field of e-commerce, for example, the China-related e-commerce platform Temu — the most-downloaded free iPhone app in the US last year — collects large amounts of user data that can be shared with China’s propaganda system. While Temu is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, the company is owned and operated by Ireland-based PDD Holdings, which also owns Chinese e-commerce platform Pinduoduo.
In the field of gaming, some game developers have close mutually beneficial connections with the CCP, which might help to publicize the developers’ products while unlawfully obtaining personal data. Due to the strategic value of the user data they collect and generate, online games pose similar security risks to those of e-commerce platforms.
Under the leadership of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the CCP has renewed its emphasis on a national strategy of media convergence that brings together traditional and emerging media.
This is closely connected with people’s insufficient understanding of the CCP, which puts their rights in danger.
The party uses digital media — notably data resources that digital media can generate — to use media more effectively in its communications strategy and create feedback loops in the international sphere.
The task of blocking CCP infiltration would depend on the joint efforts of democratic governments and a more thorough institutional understanding of the risks posed by new technologies.
Such an understanding should guide the authorities as to how to set new standards for emerging technologies and help businesses to commercialize such technologies with the goal of safety and security.
They should also help users learn to distinguish between real and false information, and gain a broader awareness of foreign information campaigns that might be present in their everyday lives. Armed with such knowledge, people would be more able to identify the potential risks.
Chen Chun is an international affairs observer.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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