Former U.S. President Donald Trump launched a CIA campaign in 2019 aimed at using Chinese social media to turn its people against Beijing.
Knewz.com has learned that the highly classified operation involved a small group of operatives who spread negative narratives about China President Xi Jinping and leaked embarrassing news to international media outlets, according to Reuters.
The news agency was unable to determine the impact of the program, or whether it is still operational under current U.S. President Joe Biden. The Biden administration declined to comment about the reporting.
The exclusive report said that the operatives created bogus internet identities and promoted sensitive narratives. Some of those stories included claims that Chinese Communist Party leadership had hidden ill-gotten gains abroad and that the Belt and Road Initiative was corrupt and wasteful.
The Belt and Road initiative is an ambitious infrastructure project meant to finance development in foreign countries, ranging from Africa to Italy. Beyond building roads and railroads, it was designed to foster links with China and help Beijing increase its growing clout.
However, the project has been criticized for failing to provide local jobs while creating a massive debt trap, highlighted by incident when Sri Lanka was forced to lease a major port to China for 99 years as collateral.
U.S. officials who spoke to Reuters declined to provide details of the clandestine operation, but they said the disparaging narratives were “based in fact,” even though they were being spread by undercover CIA operatives.
The overall goal was not to seed regime change, but rather to have the government “chasing ghosts” by creating a sense of paranoia that forced them to spend resources trying to figure out where the information was coming from.
The CIA refused to comment on the program, while the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs told Reuters that the program proves the US is in the business of using “public opinion space and media platforms as weapons to spread false information and manipulate international public opinion.”
It added that China follows a “principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries and does not interfere in the domestic affairs of the United States.”
The CIA said the operation was in response to similar programs being run by China.
The CIA claimed for years that China was using bribes and threats in developing countries to convince them to use front groups to sow division within the U.S.
Trump, who is now the Republican nominee to be the next president, has indicated that he will ramp up the antagonism toward China if re-elected.
In 2018, Trump gave more power to the CIA to launch cyber attacks against the countries China, Iran, North Korea and Russia. It allowed the agency to more easily support its own covert cyber operations, often skipping any need for approval from the White House.
A report from Yahoo News said that effort was aimed at launching efforts that would stray into the real world, such as disrupting an electricity network or leaking documents online.
The post Trump Launched CIA Campaign to Turn Chinese Public Against Communist Party in 2019: Report appeared first on Knewz.
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Author: Kevin McSpadden
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