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News



CHINA PROPAGANDA SPREADS VIA US NEWS SITES, FREELANCERS, TIMES SQUARE

A widespread disinformation campaign aimed at Americans wasn't that effective,
but it was certainly creative, even slipping in influence articles to legitimate
news outlets like AZCentral.com.
Nate Nelson
Contributing Writer, Dark Reading
July 24, 2023
Source: vectorsector via Shutterstock
PDF


The organizers of a pro-People's Republic of China (PRC) influence campaign
called "HaiEnergy" are taking the art of disinformation to new heights,
appropriating US news outlets, paying influencers, and more to promote their
agenda.



Google Cloud's Mandiant first detailed the campaign a year ago, at which time it
had puppeted multiple social media assets and at least 72 “news” websites to
push content strategically aligned with the political interests of the PRC. In
months since, the campaign has expanded even beyond cyberspace, financing two
physical protests in Washington, DC, and even throwing a Times Square billboard
into the mix.

Mandiant researchers have named at least two organizations behind the campaign.
First there's Shanghai Haixun Technology Co., Ltd (上海海讯社科技有限公司), a PR firm whose
thin and error-laden website suggests it is not quite what it seems.
Additionally, there's FinancialContent Inc., which specializes in sneaking news
stories onto the websites of legitimate publishers.

Despite the large, coordinated effort to push a specific, clear agenda,
HaiEnergy has proven remarkably ham-handed and ineffective. "The best way to
describe it is: creative," says Ryan Serabian, a Mandiant senior analyst. "Not
sophisticated, but very creative."




WHAT IS HAIENERGY?

In its early stages, HaiEnergy consisted of largely conventional methods for
disseminating propaganda on the Web. The perpetrators wielded an arsenal of 72
news websites, published worldwide in 11 languages. Claiming to be independent,
the websites pushed stories criticizing policies of the US and its allies,
supporting the erosion of Hong Kong's electoral system, and tarnishing outspoken
opponents of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). These stories were then
amplified by a small number of inauthentic and paid social media accounts.



Since then, the campaign has grown much larger and stranger than that. For
example, researchers discovered Shanghai Haixun hiring freelancers on Fiverr.com
to promote content consistent with its influence campaign, like a video
heralding China's "victory" over COVID-19.

Source: Mandiant

The campaign has also since graduated from cyberspace — for instance, by funding
two protests in Washington DC in June and September 2022. In both cases, "two
small groups of protesters can be observed demonstrating in Washington, DC,
holding placards and chanting slogans intended to highlight US domestic issues,
such as racial discrimination and abortion," the researchers explained. The
protestors didn't seem too determined to keep up appearances, however, as they
also protested the oddly specific issue of an import ban affecting cheap solar
industry parts from Xinjiang.

Both protests were amplified by two appropriately vaguely named Haixun-operated
newswire outlets, Times Newswire and World Newswire, and spread by inauthentic
social media profiles.

In another case of HaiEnergy IRL, an article published to Times Newswire
promoted a pro-PRC advertisement apparently displayed in the center of Times
Square in New York. "We lack evidence to confirm that the ad was actually placed
on the billboard or that it was paid for by the campaign," the researchers
cautioned. "However, we note the possibility, given our understanding of the
campaign, Haixun's self-promoted strategy of 'LED digital marketing services'
specifically referencing ad placement in 'Times Square, New York' and an
identified service that sells digital advertisements on the specific billboard
featured in the Times Newswire article."

"They're experimenting with new tactics and we can expect them to keep doing
this," Serabian warns. "Anytime this stuff crosses over into the physical space,
in my opinion, that's a sound for alarm."




HAIENERGY'S INVISIBILITY (FOR BETTER AND FOR WORSE)

The impact of HaiEnergy so far has not been extensive. While that
ineffectualness is good news, it also cuts both ways: Its invisibility has
afforded its operators time and space to experiment with new tactics.

Consider FinancialContent Inc., a US-registered company that appears to supply
stock and financial news data to various websites. As Serabian explains,
"FinancialContent appears to establish relationships with these legitimate news
outlets by providing stock and news data, but they also happen to be ingesting
from two obscure newswire outlets [Times Newswire and World Newswire] being
leveraged by this PR firm [Haixun]."

FinancialContent effectively behaves like a Trojan horse, so Haixun news stories
"slipped through the cracks," he says, making it onto subdomains belonging to 32
US publishers.

The following image demonstrates one case of a Times Newswire story picked up by
AZCentral, an Arizona news website with 6.5 million views per month.

Source: Mandiant

"I think that we need to be vigilant and keep outing these campaigns, no matter
how sophisticated or big or small they are," Serabian concludes. "Because when
we brought this to the attention of the news outlets, they were not even aware
that this was happening on their websites."

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