Chinese media mocks Australia and Prime Minister in WeChat posts

[Mighty AU]

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and the Coalition Government have been targeted by online propaganda coming from social media accounts affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The findings come from a paper, prepared by cyber propaganda researchers Dr Michael Jensen, Dr Titus Chen and Tom Sear, which will be delivered to the Safeguarding Australia Summit in Canberra today.

"Our evidence suggests that accounts aligned more closely with the Government in Beijing have a clear anti-Liberal (Government) story coming out of them," said Dr Jensen, a senior research fellow at the University of Canberra's Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis.

Across a period of five months from November 2018 to March 2019, the researchers analysed the Australian content on 47 of the most visited WeChat Official accounts in mainland China, 29 of which were aligned with the CCP.

...

"The top topic in articles mentioning Australia was the criticism of the Liberal Government and specifically Scott Morrison," Dr Jensen said.

One post from February mocked the Prime Minister for joining WeChat in the lead-up to the election campaign.

"There is a country whose head has been kicked hard by kangaroos, and now seeks to befriend us," a post by commercial media site Tiexue Junshi said.

The site, which is 1.5 per cent owned by Chinese state media, targeted the timing of Mr Morrison's take-up of WeChat.

"On 28 January, Australian media, the Sydney Morning Herald, quoted Australian experts as saying that WeChat used by the Chinese may be exploited by the Chinese Government to interfere in the Australian general election … just after four days, on 1 February, the Australian Prime Minister Morrison unbelievably activated a WeChat official account."

"What the Australian Prime Minister Morrison is doing is nothing more than to win over the support of the Chinese in Australia."

When contacted, Mr Morrison's office said: "We don't have anything to add."

The researchers say there is little evidence of attacks on Bill Shorten and the Labor Party across their dataset.

This may have something to do with the policy decisions relating to China made by the Liberal party in its last term, and that the CCP may not be keen to mention that other countries actually have opposition parties.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-09/pm-targeted-by-chinese-communist-party-related-wechat-accounts/11092238

[Clovis]

God, that's depressing. Imagine having so little access to information that this is a surprise.

[Azza]

Hate to say it because I voted labor, it seems like China is a lot more fond of the labor party, and has been for a while now, which worries me.

[Patrick]

i'd be willing to bet there are more compromised members of the labor party than the liberal party