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China’s influence campaign intensifies as US election nears

washington — At first glance, Noah R. Smith might seem like your typical social media user. His bio says he’s a father, a former “Track and Field representative,” and a current member of the PanAm Sports organization.

On July 14, a day after the first assassination attempt on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Smith shared three posts from an account named “TRUMP WON.”

One post declared, “AMERICA was attacked today … we must get it together. It’s literally a matter of life and death,” accompanied by an image depicting a divine hand halting a bullet aimed at Trump.

Another post urged “all MAGA GOD Fearing Patriots” to connect, stating, “Grow These Accounts, UNITED We Are Strong.”

While it might seem that Smith is a devoted Trump supporter, closer inspection suggests otherwise. His cover photo features Chinese watermarks, his profile picture is sourced from a company that provides photos, videos and music, and his bio is lifted from an authentic account named Laurel R. Smith.

In reality, Noah R. Smith is impersonating a U.S. voter who supports Trump. A joint investigation by VOA Mandarin and Doublethink Lab (DTL), a Taiwanese social media analytics firm, uncovered 10 such accounts on X.

These accounts are linked to China’s Spamouflage network — a state-sponsored operation aimed at supporting the Chinese government and undermining its critics. This network was first identified by social media analytics company Graphika in 2019 and was used to target Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters at that time.

Following the assassination attempt on July 14, the accounts began promoting pro-Trump content. Previously, they shared material consistent with Spamouflage’s broader interests: defending China, criticizing U.S. foreign policy, and exploiting divisive domestic issues such as gun violence and racial tensions.

DTL labeled this network of accounts posing as Americans “MAGAflage 1,” because they all seem to be promoting Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again [MAGA].”

“The MAGAflage accounts are different because they are not just criticizing stuff. They are amplifying positive content about Trump,” Jasper Hewitt, a digital intelligence analyst at Doublethink Lab, told VOA Mandarin.

He added that it’s too early to draw conclusions about whom China is supporting, as researchers are still tracking accounts that criticize both Republican candidate Donald Trump and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.

“Engaging with the MAGA movement, or any part of the political spectrum, might merely be a new attempt to generate authentic traffic,” Hewitt told VOA.

The first MAGAflage network was discovered by Elise Thomas, a senior analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, in April 2024. This network focuses on promoting positive content of Trump. She told VOA earlier that by wrapping a topic in a U.S. partisan political frame, these accounts got “a reasonable amount of engagement from real American users.”

Limited influence

The VOA Mandarin investigation revealed that the accounts operate in coordination. Six out of the 10 accounts were created in 2015 but had their first visible posts on May 18 or May 19, 2022.

The batch accounts — the 10 new accounts — are not very active. Each account has roughly 100 posts or reposts over the last two years. The batch accounts were inactive for one year but were awoken after the first Trump assassination attempt.

Additionally, these accounts occasionally post or repost Chinese content.

For example, an account named Super-Rabbit shared praise for China’s political and economic model from state-linked influencers like Shanghai Panda and Xinhua News Agency’s reporter Li Zexin. One post from September 3 contrasted U.S. President Joe Biden’s inactivity with China’s President Xi Jinping’s engagement in Africa.

“When Joe Biden is sitting on the beach wasted away, China’s President Xi is shaking hands with various African leaders and making a better impact in Africa,” the post said.

VOA contacted the Trump and Harris campaigns for comment but did not receive a response as of publication time.

Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, told VOA in a statement that “China has no intention and will not interfere in the U.S. election, and we hope that the U.S. side will not make an issue of China in the election.”

So far, the newly discovered MAGAflage 1 accounts have had limited influence, with only a handful of followers and minimal interactions.

U.S. intelligence agencies issued their latest assessment earlier this month, warning that Russia, Iran, and China are intensifying efforts to influence the U.S. presidential election.

While Russia remains the primary concern, officials noted that Chinese online influence actors have “continued small scale efforts on social media to engage U.S. audiences on divisive political issues, including protests about the Israel-Gaza conflict and promote negative stories about both political parties.”
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