1/ The Chinese Communist Party has a problem with smart Asian women. See my latest Strategist article co-authored with my colleague @DaniellesCave aspistrategist.org.au/smart-asian-wo…
2/ For months now, some of the world's leading China journalists and human rights activists have been the targets of an ongoing, coordinated and large-scale information and silencing campaign.
3/ Based on open-source information, ASPI assesses the inauthentic Twitter accounts behind this operation are likely another iteration of the pro-CCP ‘Spamouflage’ network, which Twitter attributed to the Chinese government in 2019. blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/c…
4/ The hashtag #TraitorJiayangFan—targeting New Yorker staff writer Jiayang Fan—is one such malicious example. We identified at least 367 inauthentic accounts that started and amplified this hashtag beginning on 19 April 2022.
5/ Account pushing this hashtag had previously shared content consistent with past iterations of Spamouflage. This includes conspiracy theories surrounding the origins of Covid-19, targeting Guo Wengui and disinformation about human rights abuses in Xinjiang.
6/ Accounts had generic Western names and appropriated images of real women from other websites to use as profile pictures. Some accounts used AI generated profile pictures. 
7/ Analyse of the posting patterns of these accounts showed that most of the targeting was done during Beijing business hours and accounts were far less active during China’s 30 April to 4 May holidays.
8/ Other high-profile journalists and human rights activists are being targeted too. These covert activities appear coordinated with a broader campaign by the Chinese government to silence women of Asian descent who have criticised/reported on its policies.
9/ Not every account we observed trolling and abusing these women was linked to this network. Some were possibly nationalistic Chinese netizens who were spurred on by how these women are portrayed within China.
10/ For example, Xinhua article published earlier this year accused Chinese journalists of helping Western media with ‘anti-China’ reports web.archive.org/web/2022031512…
11/ For this report, we were careful to distinguish between nationalistic trolls and accounts we assessed likely to belong to the Chinese state-link Spamouflage network.
12/ Spamouflage constantly replenishes accounts, seemingly undeterred, continuously using the same tactics over and over to maintain a presence on US-based platforms. ASPI has used these indicators to infer similar sets of activity and track the network across for years.
11/ However, CCP information operations are escalating and becoming more strategic and sophisticated. Chinese state-linked transnational digital repression is now a booming industry.
12/ What should be done? Firstly, Social media platforms need to urgently shift their thinking and move from taking down these campaigns though a defensive ‘whack-a-mole’ approach, to a more pre-emptive and proactive stance.
13/ Platforms and governments need to work more collaboratively to build the infrastructure, capability and deterrence measures necessary to respond to cyber-enabled foreign interference and digital transnational repression.
14/ A good first step would be for governments to more publicly denounce these malicious harassment and disinformation campaigns. A joint statement should gain support from countries and regions like Australia, the UK, Canada, Europe, Japan and hopefully others.
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