Hacked Russian Files Reveal Propaganda Agreement With China
Source: (
https://bit.ly/3Z2wkF4)
Soon after Russia invaded Ukraine, a Russian defense ministry
spokesperson resuscitated debunked claims about a U.S.-funded
bioweapons program in the region, accusing Ukrainian labs of
experimenting with bat coronaviruses in an attempt to spark "the
covert spread of deadliest pathogens."
Disinformation is an old Russian government tactic. But this time
Russia had help. Within days, Chinese officials and media outlets
had picked up the lies and were amplifying and expanding on the
biolabs yarn. The Chinese Communist Party tabloid Global Times
created two splashy spreads, one sourced in part to Sputnik News,
the other featuring a quote from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"What is the U.S. hiding in the biolabs discovered in Ukraine?"
it screamed.
"China jumped on the biolabs conspiracy theory," said Katja
Drinhausen, an analyst with the Mercator Institute of China Studies
in Berlin. Chinese officials and media outlets had spent the
preceding months pushing the notion that the pandemic might have
originated in a lab accident outside China. "It was like, here's the
perfect conspiracy theory coming out of Russia to support our
'everywhere but China' main talking point of the last year," she
said.
Since the war broke out in February, experts have been struck by
a convergence in Russian and Chinese media narratives. While
some of the convergence was likely happenstance, occurring when
storylines aided both governments' goals, documents found in
a trove of hacked emails from Russia state broadcaster VGTRK
show that China and Russia have pledged to join forces in media
content by inking cooperation agreements at the ministerial level.
A bilateral agreement signed July 2021 makes clear that cooperating
on news coverage and narratives is a big goal for both governments.
At a virtual summit that month, leading Russian and Chinese
government and media figures discussed dozens of news products
and cooperative ventures, including exchanging news content,
trading digital media strategies, and co-producing television shows.
The effort was led by Russia's Ministry of Digital Development,
Communication and Mass Media, and by China's National Radio
and Television Administration.
In the propaganda agreement, the two sides pledged to "further
cooperate in the field of information exchange, promoting objective,
comprehensive and accurate coverage of the most important world
events." They also laid out plans to cooperate on online and social
media, a space that both countries have used to seed disinformation,
pledging to strengthen "mutually beneficial cooperation in such
issues as integration, the application of new technologies, and
industry regulation."
"This is a master document of cooperation on media between the
countries," said David Bandurski, director of China Media Project,
an independent organization that researches Chinese-language media.
"The document allows us to see the process behind the scenes of how
cooperation is planned and discussed by these particular ministries."
In 2020, the independent Russian-language news outlet Meduza
reported the existence of such propaganda agreements, which have
resulted in a proliferation of pro-Beijing stories in Russian media.
But this is the first time that the text of an agreement has been
published. The Ministry of Digital Development did not respond
to a request for comment, and the Chinese embassy in Washington,
D.C., did not respond to a request for comment.
VGTRK's email system was hacked earlier this year when, in the
wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, hackers targeted more than 50
Russian companies and government agencies. The transparency
collective Distributed Denial of Secrets has published more than
13 terabytes of documents from the hacks on its website. The
Intercept and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project
formed a consortium of news organizations to examine the files;
previous stories that emerged from the documents include articles
on Putin associate Evgeny Prigozhin, who founded and runs the
Wagner Group, a Russian mercenary organization that is fighting
in Ukraine.
The signatories to the 2021 agreement include large state media
outlets as well as online media companies and businesses in the
private sector. Among those who signed were the Chinese
telecommunications giant Huawei, which has a streaming service;
Migu Video, a gaming company under the state-run China Mobile;
and SPB TV, a streaming service headquartered in Switzerland and
owned by a Russian national.
The agreement lists 64 joint media projects that had either been
launched or were in development. Some of these are lighthearted.
In early 2021, CCTV and Riki Group launched a saccharine cartoon
called "Panda and Krash," about a panda and a rabbit in a toy store
who zip off on adventures with a robot and an elephant in tow.
"I encourage you and you help me," they sing.
Other projects were more substantial. State news agencies TASS and
Xinhua pledged to exchange reporting, and other state outlets agreed
to publish supplements promoting the other country.
Chinese and Russian news reports suggest that the two countries have
held annual media cooperation meetings since 2008. The partnership
appears largely aimed at domestic audiences. But both China and
Russia have massively expanded their overseas media presence in the
past decade, and the agreement names outlets with a large
international presence, including BRICS TV, RT, and Sputnik
(all headquartered in Moscow), and the state-run Chinese outlets
China Daily, Global Times, and CGTN. "The ambition is certainly
global," said Drinhausen, who added that despite notable differences
in their foreign policies, both countries share a common cause.
"In terms of an ideological pushback against the U.S. as the joint
enemy, they are brothers in arms."
Sources say that such agreements are inked partly for show, and that
China has the upper hand in the partnership. "The Chinese control all
the big projects," said a Russian source with knowledge of the
meetings, who declined to be named because of possible repercussions
from their employer. "So far, they haven't even figured out some
basic issues like broadcasting our channels on Chinese cable."
Indeed, some of the products discussed appear to be mainly
of interest to China. TASS agreed to run interviews with Chinese
leaders Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang and to organize events
commemorating the 100th year anniversary of the Chinese Communist
Party. "What possible real interest can Russian audiences have in
a photography exhibition to celebrate the CCP's centennial?" said
Bandurski. "What the Chinese government seems to be doing here
is throwing a bunch of external propaganda products onto a giant wish
list, hoping that Russia will help it tell its story."
Meduza earlier reported that Russian state media, including the
government paper of record Rossiyskaya Gazeta, was publishing
more than 100 articles a month sourced from China Media Group,
a state-owned media conglomerate whose coverage is mentioned
several times in the agreement.
Some of those articles, such as a rote defense of the Chinese
government's actions in Xinjiang, appear out of place in the Russian
media landscape. Russian state media coverage is generally less
censored and more sophisticated than its Chinese counterpart, said
Maria Repnikova, director of the Center for Global Information
Studies at Georgia State University. "The propaganda genre is more
dynamic in Russian state media, especially on TV, with
a sophisticated play on emotions and disinformation appealing
to many average Russian viewers," she wrote in an email.
A month after the 2021 agreement was signed, a journalist from China
Media Group wrote VGTRK's general email address to pitch
a partnership. "We can conduct corresponding interviews or reports
according to your needs," the journalist wrote in English, in one
of the hacked documents. "At the same time, we can also transform
your content accordingly and spread it widely in China."
Hacked emails show that some journalists working for Russian state
media helped amplify Chinese narratives. In March 2021, Alexander
Balitskiy, Beijing bureau chief for RTR, VGTRK's international
service, sent a script for an upcoming segment on how people in China
were boycotting foreign brands that had taken stances on forced labor
in Xinjiang. "Global companies played on the same team with Western
politicians, accusing China of the genocide of Uyghurs," the script
reads. Then, in parentheses, is a production note: "ZOOM OUT TO
BEAUTIFUL VIEWS OF COTTON FIELDS BEING HARVESTED."
The script also outlines plans to include a quote from an earlier
interview with Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal, who has denied
Russian atrocities in Ukraine and defended Chinese state repression
in Xinjiang; a quote from him did not make to the final cut of the
news item available on VGTRK's flagship news site Vesti.ru.
In an email, Balitskiy said he could not comment on the news
segment because he doesn't control how segments are edited when
they are broadcast in different regions.
The payoff for Russia may have come after the invasion of Ukraine,
when Chinese media echoed Russian government talking points on
the war. "The coverage oftentimes didn't even mention that it was
Russia carrying out the attacks," said Repnikova. Chinese outlets,
she added, "adapted slogans directly from the Russian discourse."
The hacked emails end in the spring of 2022. But over the past few
months, the Russian government repeatedly brought the biolabs
conspiracy theory to the United Nations Security Council, asking it
to establish a commission to investigate. Amplifying its efforts was
the Chinese press.
That may have been merely because the biolabs story aided China's
goals. The agreement does not chart detailed plans for sophisticated
information operations. Such documents "are signed to publicly
bolster the partnership, but the actual particulars are not worked
out," said Repnikova. "The vague wording might be deliberate, as
it makes it harder to track the projects and to hold anyone
accountable."
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