U.S. support for Israel's military offensive in Gaza has been heavily exploited by China-connected bots, a joint investigation by VOA Mandarin and Taiwan's social media analytic firm DoubleThink Lab, or DTL, has found. Their postings on social media platform X depict Washington as a peddler of war and a disrupter of global peace.
The investigation has tracked and analyzed content amplified in the past 12 months by three distinct spamouflage networks with a total of 140 accounts. Each account has been disguised to look like the work of an authentic user in order to spread pro-Beijing narratives and misinformation.
Content within the networks originates with three main "seeder" accounts and then is amplified by the others. The VOA Mandarin-DTL investigation found that more than half of the content, totaling 399 posts in the last year, was about the war in Gaza. Most of those focused on U.S. military support for Israel and on pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campuses in America and other Western countries.
One such post showed what appeared to be an AI-generated photo of a baby wrapped in a blood-stained white blanket, lying on a table surrounded by a circle of chairs bearing the flags of the U.S., Israel, the U.K., France, Italy and Canada. "Bloody feast" was written at the bottom of the photo.
Some posts accused the U.S. of benefiting financially from the war in Gaza. Other posts slammed Washington for funding the war while refusing to provide its own people with free health care and education.
Often, these criticisms were accompanied by conspiracy theories claiming the U.S. government is controlled by the Israeli government and Jewish cabals.
One post tried to connect the wars in Gaza and Ukraine to Hurricane Helene, which recently ravaged parts of the Southeastern U.S., and accused the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, of neglecting domestic needs in order to fund foreign conflicts.
"FEMA, all Jews, refused to give humanitarian aid to American victims after the hurricane," the post wrongly claimed. "They gave all YOUR MONEY to 'migrants' and foreign countries. BECAUSE THEY HATE AMERICA!"
The unfounded accusation, like the majority of the content amplified by the spamouflage networks, had already been circulating online.
The VOA Mandarin-DTL investigation found that these posts have reached few real users and have had only a limited impact on X.
Two of the three seeder accounts cited in this article have been suspended by X.
Echoing Beijing
The VOA Mandarin-DTL investigation has not been able to link the spamouflage networks directly to the Chinese government, although disinformation experts and U.S. government officials have warned repeatedly of Beijing meddling in American politics through influence campaigns — something China has repeatedly denied.
But the Chinese government has long been promoting the same narratives promoted by the spamouflage networks, which is that the U.S. is responsible for perpetuating the war in Gaza since October of last year.
On October 7, China's state-run Xinhua News Agency released an article to mark the first anniversary of the violent conflict, criticizing Washington's military and diplomatic support of Israel.
"The United States' disheartening response to the conflict between Hamas and Israel has significantly tarnished its international standing in the Middle East," the article asserted.
In a post last week on X, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said this in a short post: "The 'genocide' in Xinjiang? Reflect on your own history & what's happening in Gaza first."
Tuvia Gering, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council's Global China Hub, told VOA Mandarin that in addition to undermining the global image of the U.S., Beijing sees the conflict in Gaza as an opportunity to invalidate the West's criticism of its own human rights record.
"It portrays the U.S. as hypocritical," he said. "They're saying, 'Look, it's America that's helping Israelis commit genocide against the Palestinians and sending their weapons and protecting them at the [U.N.] Security Council.'"
China has been accused of the mass detention of Uyghur Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. A 2022 U.N. report concluded that Beijing's actions in the region "may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity."
The U.S. government has labeled the alleged human rights violations in Xinjiang as genocide. Beijing denies the accusations and repeatedly has said its measures in Xinjiang are aimed at combating terrorism and extremism and ensuring regional security and development.
