How a tweet about the Voice became part of a Chinese influence campaign
Save articles for later
Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time.
The tweet by the son of a former Liberal premier seemed innocuous enough at first.
“The marriage equality survey was brutal for the LGBT community. I dread what First Nations people may go through,” Rob Baillieu, son of former Victorian Liberal premier Ted Baillieu typed in December 2022.
It was an earnest reflection from a gay Australian on the divisiveness of national votes and their impact on the people who are put at the centre of them.
Rob Baillieu, son of former Victorian Liberal premier Ted Baillieu.Credit: Simon Schluter
Now it’s part of a Chinese-backed influence campaign that is less concerned about the mental health of the LGBT and Indigenous communities and more focused on entrenching the narrative that Australia is a racist and sexist society that suffers from systemic discrimination.
Baillieu’s words suddenly reappeared in July, tweeted without attribution by Mildred Aldridge or Mildred76846853, then Nicole Coleridge, @NicoleCole94070, then Cecilia Were, @cecilia_we7411. Baillieu declined to comment.
The Tweets were curiously from accounts that had previously focused on US Senator Marco Rubio and attacked prominent female critics of the Chinese Communist Party.
Now they have taken a sudden interest in the Indigenous Voice to parliament.
Mildred, Nicole and Cecilia are bots, linked to a multi-language network of co-ordinated inauthentic accounts on US-based platforms including Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, and Instagram, according to a new report released by researchers Albert Zhang and Danielle Cave at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) on Monday.
ASPI found the Chinese government’s cyber-enabled foreign interference is increasingly disseminating propaganda and disinformation across local issues in the West. The goal is to amplify division and undermine Western claims about human rights abuses in China.
In February, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service revealed an “orchestrated machine” was operating in Canada seeking to influence the outcome of elections. The Five Eyes briefing triggered a warning from Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil that Australia would not tolerate attempts by foreign governments to “secretly influence our democracy”.
Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
The Chinese-backed campaigns are clumsy in their delivery and generate low engagement. But the breadth of issues they cover reveals Beijing is increasingly seeking “to sow division and weaken democratic resilience with increasing confidence,” said Zhang and Cave.
“Many accounts in this campaign switch back and forth between targeting audiences and political topics in Australia and the United States,” the researchers said.
The narratives range from racism and sexism in Australia, the gender pay gap, mortgage stress, and failures in the National Disability Insurance Scheme, to criticisms of national security, the intelligence services, and ASPI itself.
There are now 70 new accounts impersonating ASPI’s official Twitter account. ASPI, which receives funding from the US State Department, has been dismissed by Beijing for being at the “vanguard of a public relations campaign driven by several Western countries”.
The tactics are a well-known tool of Beijing’s cyber influence operations as it looks to shape opinion at home and abroad.
In February last year, this masthead revealed that Chinese government accounts were fuelling the viral rise of chubby Winter Olympics Games mascot Bing Dwen Dwen as the embodiment of a “loveable China” while pushing down more controversial human rights topics such as Xinjiang and Uighurs in online algorithms.
Chinese government documents show agencies have been on a recruitment drive to manage their social media accounts and create new online narratives.
Zhang and Cave said they have now found evidence linking the Chinese accounts to international criminal syndicates. The accounts have been tied to Warner International Casino, a casino owned by the Warner Company and based in the city of Laukkaing in Northern Myanmar near the Yunnan, China border.
“It’s conceivable, for example, that elements of China’s security services are opportunistically acquiring inauthentic accounts from criminal networks, like Warner International, to reinforce their covert influence operations online,” they said.
Get a note direct from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.