Beijing (CNN) --
In their public statements and at international summits, Chinese officials have attempted to take an ostensibly neutral position on the Ukraine war, neither condemning Russian actions nor ruling out the possibility that Beijing could act as a mediator in the war. the search for peace.
But while his message to the international community has raised questions about Beijing's true intentions, much of the domestic media coverage of the Russian invasion tells an entirely different story.
For the 1,400 million inhabitants of China, the invasion is nothing more than a "special military operation", according to the national network CCTV;
The United States may be funding a biological weapons program in Ukraine, and Russian President Vladimir Putin is a victim defending a beleaguered Russia.
To tell that story, the mainstream state media outlets that dominate China's highly censored media space have largely picked up stories from Russian state media or information from Russia officials.
A CNN analysis reviewed nearly 5,000 social media posts from 14 Chinese state media outlets during the first eight days of the Russian invasion, posted on Weibo, a Chinese platform similar to Twitter.
The analysis found that of the more than 300 most shared posts about the events in Ukraine, shared more than 1,000 times each, almost half, some 140, were what CNN classified as clearly pro-Russian, often with information attributed to an official. Russian or collected directly from Russian state media.
The analysis, which focused on the stories that had the most repercussions on social media, may not be representative of all posts shared by state media on Weibo.
But it does provide a glimpse into the information produced by state media that is most visible to the more than 500 million monthly users of the popular platform.
advertising
It is unclear to what extent these posts may be explicitly the result of a coordinated propaganda campaign between the two countries, but it is consistent with an ongoing pattern in which the Russian and Chinese media have amplified and reinforced their talking points, often interchangeable, on issues such as the treatment of Russian dissidents, the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, the origins of the covid-19 pandemic, or the alleged role of the United States in fomenting "color revolutions" against authoritarian regimes. .
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping walk down the stairs upon arrival at the BRICS summit in Brasilia, Brazil, in 2019.
This mutual support also includes the extensive overseas and English-language propaganda operations that both countries have built to promote their views globally, a route made more important by Russia's state media being Banned on air and online in some parts of the West.
In the Chinese media environment, controlled by the government from above, all state-affiliated content is vetted and broadcast according to government directives.
The fact that China has chosen to follow Russia's example, deliberately misrepresenting the war, only serves to underscore Beijing's closeness to Moscow, and virtually ridicules China's self-proclaimed impartiality in collaborating with Russia and ending the violence.
Xi says in call with European leaders that China is willing to mediate in the war in Ukraine
The playbook
Russian assurances that they will not attack civilian sites, despite extensive evidence to the contrary, descriptions of Ukrainian soldiers using "Nazi" tactics, and disinformation about the whereabouts of Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky are all stories that they have been funneled from Russian sources into China's closed media ecosystem, where many Western media outlets are blocked.
That dynamic was brought into play on Monday morning, when China's state broadcaster CCTV published a report on its morning news highlighting Moscow's erroneous claim that Washington had financed the development of biological weapons in Ukrainian laboratories.
That innuendo is used to support the narrative that Ukraine, characterized by Moscow as an American puppet state, threatens Russia, not the other way around.
The fountain?
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov, who on Sunday said Russian forces uncovered "evidence" of "hasty measures to hide any trace of the US Department of Defense-funded military biological program," and he referred to documents that he claimed detailed the destruction of dangerous pathogens at those facilities by order of the Ukrainian Ministry of Health.
In a statement on Twitter on Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki rebutted Russia's "false claims about alleged US bioweapons labs and chemical weapons development in Ukraine," noting the "echo" of those "conspiracy theories" by Chinese officials.
"This is absurd. It is the kind of disinformation operation that we have seen repeatedly by the Russians over the years in Ukraine and in other countries, which have been debunked, and an example of the kinds of false pretenses we have been warning that the Russians would invent," Psaki said, adding that the United States was "in full compliance" with its obligations under the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Biological Weapons Convention and "does not develop or possess such weapons anywhere." .
"Now that Russia has made these false claims, and China apparently supports this propaganda, we should all be vigilant about the possibility of Russia using chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, or creating a false flag operation using them. It's a clear pattern." Psaki said.
The issue was also raised at a Senate hearing on Tuesday, when Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland said Ukraine has biological research facilities, which the US was concerned Russian forces might be trying to to control.
"We are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces, should they come close," Nuland said.
Residents watch a TV screen showing news about Ukraine at a shopping mall in Hangzhou, east China's Zhejiang province, on February 25, 2022.
Minutes after the CCTV report aired, an affiliated media outlet made an online post repeating the Russian Defense Ministry's claims and started a related
hashtag
on Weibo, which started trending.
The
hashtag
was viewed more than 45 million times in a period of hours that day.
The next day, after Russia doubled down on the bioweapons claims with new statements, without evidence, CCTV aired a new TV segment, which was again shared by prominent state media on Weibo, gaining further traction.
The story then moved into the narrative of Chinese officials when a state media reporter, at a regular Foreign Ministry press briefing, asked a question about the labs, prompting the spokesman to read a lengthy prepared response that repeated Russian disinformation.
"We once again urge the United States to fully clarify its biological weaponization activities both inside and outside its borders and accept multilateral verification," spokesman Zhao Lijian said.
Within hours, at least 17 state-run media outlets, including CCTV, Xinhua and the People's Daily, posted Zhao's response on Weibo, where the topic amassed more than 210 million views.
A related
hashtag
became the top trending topic on Weibo in the afternoon of the next day.
OPINION |
What prevents China from stopping Russia's war
This pattern is just one example from a playbook that allows China to cover up the war through Russian rhetoric and disinformation.
Other examples include stories, such as the repeated false claims that Zelensky fled the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, originating from a single Russian lawmaker, which were picked up and amplified by Chinese and Russian state media on their domestic and international platforms.
A CNN analysis sought to understand the role these stories play in China's tightly controlled media ecosystem, first examining nearly 5,000 social media posts from the Weibo accounts of 14 of China's most influential state media outlets, focusing on the first eight days of the invasion and news about events in Ukraine.
CNN then analyzed which of those posts were shared the most, identifying more than 300 posts that were shared on Weibo more than 1,000 times.
Of those more than 300 posts, the analysis revealed that nearly half depicted Russia in a positive light, a category that CNN defined as news coming solely from Russian officials or Russian media, content depicting Ukraine in a negative light, information erroneous Zelensky or pro-Putin coverage.
While some 140 messages portrayed Russia in a positive light, the analysis identified fewer than 15 messages that depicted Ukraine in a positive light.
An examination of other characterizations showed that only about 90 of these messages were neutral, for example purely factual reports from reliable sources, news about humanitarian aid, or updates on the evacuation of Chinese nationals from Ukraine.
Just over a third fell into the anti-Western or anti-American category, for example: stories spreading the view that Russia had been pushed into action in Ukraine by NATO expansion, or criticizing media coverage of the crisis. western media.
CNN journalists classified some messages in more than one category.
A look at the distribution shows that posts describing Russia in a positive light were more frequent than any other category.
Since CNN only studied posts with a high degree of engagement, the results may not be representative of all posts produced by state media.
In response to CNN's request for comment, China's Foreign Ministry said Thursday that the country is a victim of disinformation.
"Some anti-China forces and media have fabricated too many lies, rumors and misinformation about China on issues including the situation in Ukraine," it said in a statement.
"They have tarnished China's image, poisoned the media environment, and misled the world's public. These actions are hypocritical and despicable."
ANALYSIS |
Russia and QAnon have the same false conspiracy theory about Ukraine
The background
The results contrast with the apparent middle ground in which China has tried to situate its international diplomacy.
While Beijing has remained aloof from the Western response to the Russian invasion, with its diplomats refusing to condemn the invasion, or even label it as such, and decrying Western sanctions, it has also frequently repeated that "the legitimate security concerns of all countries."
In a virtual summit with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Tuesday, Chinese leader Xi Jinping called for negotiations to achieve "peaceful results" and highlighted China's promises to contribute humanitarian aid to Ukraine.
"There is a difference between the way China speaks to the international audience and the way it speaks to the domestic audience... For the domestic audience, it is important to preserve this partnership with Russia, because it is a political priority for Xi," said Alexander Gabuev, senior fellow and chair of the Asia-Pacific Russia Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center.
Gabuev points to the increasingly close relationship between China and Russia in recent years, a strategic partnership reinforced, in part, by shared friction with the West.
"So [Chinese leaders] have to shape public perceptions about it, and explain why dealing with Russia is morally justified or the right thing to do, and [the media coverage of China] serves this purpose," said.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian at a daily media briefing in Beijing, China on March 19, 2021.
A glimpse into how China may try to control its coverage came in the days before the invasion, when an internal directive, apparently accidentally shared on social media, showed Chinese state media outlet Beijing News ordering its employees not publish news that was "negative about Russia or pro-Western".
Beijing News did not respond to requests for comment.
Maria Repnikova, director of the Center for Global Information Studies at Georgia State University, said pro-Russian coverage is consistent with historical precedent: "Stories that are critical of Russia or portray Russia unfavorably are often censored," he said.
"As a result, it is convenient to use Russian state media sources because they are the ones that portray the (Ukrainian) conflict in a more favorable light or view from the Russian perspective," he said.
Another example of this is which voices have been able to thrive on China's heavily censored social media platforms after the invasion.
Pro-Russian and anti-Western nationalist voices have dominated, while pro-Ukrainian or anti-war messages have been suppressed on platforms and across the media landscape.
One egregious example came on Friday, when CCTV broadcast a speech by International Paralympic Committee President Andrew Parsons at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Paralympics, in which many parts of the speech were muted and not translated.
The offensive context?
Parsons' "peace message," in which he did not name Russia or Ukraine, but said he was "horrified by what is happening in the world."
Those voices from within China who have tried to speak out, including five history professors who wrote an open letter expressing their strong opposition to "Russia's war against Ukraine" have seen their posts quickly deleted or their social accounts suspended.
"We have seen alternative and critical voices, some subtle criticism or attempts to present scenes from the war zone and talk about humanity and empathy towards Ukraine, but many of these messages have been censored," Repnikova said.
Social media in China has cracked down on nationalist voices in recent weeks.
Sina Weibo "punished" around 75 accounts and blocked more than 1,500 messages, and video
streaming
platform Douyin removed more than 6,000 illegal videos, according to the state-run Global Times newspaper.
However, the nationalist voices that have dominated social media platforms align with what Repnikova describes as "a significant uptick in digital nationalism, [with] the United States and the West [as] the key target of this nationalist sentiment."
break the monopoly
That nationalist sentiment, fueled by a deep mistrust of the United States and concern about its role as the world's leading power, is a fundamental part of the glue that has cemented the relationship between Russia and China in recent years.
It has also seeped into the types of media coverage each has shared abroad, as both Russia and China have tried to deepen their propaganda efforts, launching news brands in English and other languages that suit the networks. social networks, such as the Chinese network CGTN and RT (formerly Russia Today).
Although experts say it is not clear whether senior media officials in both countries discuss news coverage at the operational level and how much of the official coordination is more symbolic in nature, in recent years there has been a growing drive for alignment and content sharing.
A large Ukrainian flag with the slogan "We stand with Ukraine" written in Chinese characters is seen on the outer wall of the Canadian Embassy on March 1, 2022, in Beijing, China.
How the Ukraine war exposed Western media bias
Chinese and Russian media have a number of content-sharing agreements, and the joint vision is clear: these media together can "break the monopoly of Western media," as a Global Times report on a media forum put it. Sino-Russian media in 2015.
Fast-forward to the Ukraine crisis and the benefits of this collaboration, at least for one of the partners, are obvious.
In the European Union, Kremlin-backed media outlets RT and Sputnik were officially banned last Wednesday, with companies like Facebook and Instagram parent Meta and Google's YouTube stepping in to block their content.
But, on Chinese channels like CGTN and Global Times, which are still running, Russian talking points are still being published.
Already this week, messages from those accounts have suggested Ukraine and the United States have pro-Nazi leanings, repeated Russian disinformation about the labs, and quoted Russia as denying that it plans to topple the existing government in its "special military operation" in Ukraine.
-- How CNN reported this story:
Since international reporting is a highly controlled and regulated industry in China, only a select number of state-owned media organizations, such as Xinhua and CCTV, are allowed to report international news. For this report, we selected 14 Chinese media accounts with almost or more than 10 million followers on Weibo, a Twitter-like platform that reaches more than 500 million monthly users and is popular in China.
Among these accounts were major media outlets such as Xinhua, China News Service, CCTV, People's Daily and Global Times. We collected all messages related to Russia or Ukraine using a keyword search posted by these accounts between February 24 and March 3, the first eight days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Below, we look at posts that have been shared more than 1,000 times and rate each of them, more than 300, on their political preference. Reporters classified the posts as neutral, pro-Russian, pro-Ukrainian, anti-American/Western, and pro-Chinese. Messages were sometimes classified into various categories, such as pro-Russian and anti-Western. We analyze the source and wording of the news to determine its categories.
Because the analysis focused on stories that garnered the most engagement on the highly controlled social media platform, CNN's results may not be representative of all posts shared by state media on Weibo.