Unmasking the US cognitive warfare against China

Yi Xin

You might have noticed that "China Travel" is trending both on Chinese and international social media. As China expands the scope of its visa-free travel policy, an increasing number of curious foreigners, including many vloggers, are coming to explore a country they have heard so much about but never visited before. Unsurprisingly, many of them find that the real China they see and experience first-hand is totally different from what they were told back home. By taking the "seeing is believing" antidote, they are breaking free of the persistent indoctrination about China by Western media.

It's no secret that some people in the US are trying to wage a cognitive war against China. By repeating false accusations and spreading disinformation, they aim to tarnish the reputation of China, the one it labels as "primary rival", and make the world believe that somehow China is a "global villain", so that they could galvanize more resources and hoax more people into containing China's development and retain US global hegemony or dominance, whatever you call it. Some recent revelations once again attest to this fact.

Disinformation operations on social media

In June, an exposé by Reuters revealed a year-long anti-vax disinformation campaign since spring 2020 by the Pentagon to discredit China's pandemic relief efforts across Southeast Asia, especially the Philippines, as well as in Central Asia and parts of the Middle East. The campaign involved creating fake accounts to spread rumors that the virus was a bioweapon engineered by China and that Chinese vaccines contained prohibited substances.

At least 300 accounts on Twitter, now X, were created around the same time, and centered on the slogan #Chinaangvirus, Tagalog for "China is the virus". In Islamic countries, Reuters also identified over 150 phony accounts spreading the rumor that Chinese COVID vaccines contained pork gelatin, and repeating variations on the same message: Sinovac was not halal. Do not get the vaccine.

"We weren't looking at this from a public health perspective," said a senior military officer involved in this campaign. "We were looking at how we could drag China through the mud." At that time, the virus was at its peak, claiming lives every day, and the situation was worsened by the vaccine hesitancy and skepticism fomented by these disinformation campaigns. To endanger innocent lives during a pandemic for petty geopolitical gains is not just a crime; it is a heinous offense against humanity.

Fabricating 'cyber threat'

The US government's manipulation of public opinion goes beyond social media campaigns, and cyberspace is another battleground for its cognitive warfare against China.

In May 2023, the US and its "Five Eyes" allies released a joint advisory, claiming that a "China state-sponsored cyber actor" labeled as "Volt Typhoon" launched espionage activities targeting US critical infrastructure. After this "clarion call", the US intelligence community, US Congress and multiple federal agencies as well as Microsoft and other US cybersecurity companies all joined the "Volt Typhoon" chorus and painted China as a "cyber villain".

However, China's National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center and other technical teams conducted a traceability analysis and issued an investigation report that revealed that the "Volt Typhoon" story was nothing but a calculated move to perpetuate the myth of a looming Chinese cyber threat, and to justify the extension of Section 702 of the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a controversial legislation, and more funding for intelligence operations.

Once again, the mastermind behind the "Volt Typhoon" story used China, a country that has long been the main target of cyberattacks by the US, as a convenient "scapegoat" to divert attention from its role as the biggest "cyber villain".

Defaming Chinese athletes

US cognitive warfare also extends to sports. In the months before the Paris Olympics, US anti-doping authorities accused the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) over its handling of doping cases involving Chinese athletes. The US claimed that Chinese swimmers were cleared by WADA to compete at the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2021 despite testing positive for a banned drug, insinuating that Chinese athletes competing at the Olympics were "not clean".

However, an independent investigation by Swiss prosecutor Olivier Kottel found no evidence of misconduct or bias by WADA in these cases, affirming that the agency's decisions were based on thorough and fair assessments. WADA Chairman Witold Bańka also denounced the politicization of anti-doping efforts, emphasizing the importance of impartiality and fairness.

Yu Liang, the nutritionist for China's swimming team, posted on July 18 that after arriving in Paris, the 31 Chinese swimmers undertook nearly 200 anti-doping tests within just 10 days. They were very cooperative with the work of the International Testing Agency, whether it's early morning or midnight. And according to figures released by the World Aquatics, in 2023, each Chinese athlete was tested as frequently as four to five US Olympic champions combined. The presumption of guilt was unjustly assigned to them, only because they were Chinese.

We all remember what former CIA director Mike Pompeo proudly said -- "We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment." The social media operations against Chinese vaccine, the "Volt Typhoon" story and the WADA controversy are just three out of the countless examples of persistent US cognitive warfare, which intends to manipulate ordinary Americans as much as people of other countries.

The international community must remain vigilant, because US cognitive warfare only fuels tension and division, erodes trust and international cooperation when they are badly needed, and makes it more difficult to tackle the real challenges facing humanity.

Lies repeated a thousand times are still lies. As Abraham Lincoln insightfully cautioned, "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time."

The author is a Beijing-based observer of international affairs.

The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.