[These include a $320,000 Chinese
state media software program that mines Twitter and Facebook to create a
database of foreign journalists and academics; a $216,000 Beijing police
intelligence program that analyses Western chatter on Hong Kong and Taiwan; and
a Xinjiang cybercenter cataloguing Uyghur language content abroad.]
By Cate Cadell
China maintains a countrywide
network of government data surveillance services — called public opinion
analysis software — that were developed over the past decade and are used
domestically to warn officials of politically sensitive information online.
The software primarily targets
China’s domestic Internet users and media, but a Washington Post review of
bidding documents and contracts for over 300 Chinese government projects since
the beginning of 2020 include orders for software designed to collect data on
foreign targets from sources such as Twitter, Facebook and other Western social
media.
The documents, publicly accessible
through domestic government bidding platforms, also show that agencies
including state media, propaganda departments, police, military and cyber
regulators are purchasing new or more sophisticated systems to gather data.
These include a $320,000 Chinese
state media software program that mines Twitter and Facebook to create a
database of foreign journalists and academics; a $216,000 Beijing police
intelligence program that analyses Western chatter on Hong Kong and Taiwan; and
a Xinjiang cybercenter cataloguing Uyghur language content abroad.
“Now we can better understand the
underground network of anti-China personnel,” said a Beijing-based analyst who
works for a unit reporting to China’s Central Propaganda Department. The
person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss their work, said
they were once tasked with producing a data report on how negative content
relating to Beijing’s senior leadership is spread on
Twitter, including profiles of individual academics, politicians and
journalists.
These surveillance dragnets are
part of a wider drive by Beijing to refine its foreign propaganda efforts through
big data and artificial intelligence.
They also form a network of warning
systems designed to sound real-time alarms for trends that undermine Beijing’s
interests.
“They are now reorienting part of
that effort outward, and I think that’s frankly terrifying, looking at the
sheer numbers and sheer scale that this has taken inside China,” said Mareike
Ohlberg, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund who has conducted
extensive research on China’s domestic public opinion network.
“It really shows that they now feel
it’s their responsibility to defend China overseas and fight the public opinion war overseas,” she said.
Some of the Chinese government’s
budgeting includes buying and maintaining foreign social media accounts on
behalf of police and propaganda departments. Yet others describe using the targeted
analysis to refine Beijing’s state media coverage abroad.
The purchases range in size from
small, automated programs to projects costing hundreds of thousands of dollars
that are staffed 24 hours a day by teams including English speakers and foreign
policy specialists.
The documents describe highly
customizable programs that can collect real-time social media data from
individual social media users. Some describe tracking broad trends on issues
including U.S. elections.
The Post was not able to review
data collected by the systems but spoke to four people based in Beijing who are
directly involved in government public opinion analysis and described separate
software systems that automatically collect and store Facebook and Twitter data
in real time on domestic Chinese servers for analysis.
Twitter and Facebook both ban
automated collection of data on their services without prior authorization.
Twitter’s policy also expressly bars developers from gathering data used to
infer a user’s political affiliation or ethnic and racial origin.
“Our API provides real-time access
to public data and Tweets only, not private information. We prohibit use of our
API for surveillance purposes, as per our developer policy and terms,” said
Katie Rosborough, a Twitter spokesperson, referring to the company’s
Application Programming Interface (API), which allows developers to retrieve
public data from the platform among other functions.
Facebook did not respond to
requests for comment about whether it is aware of the monitoring or whether
several companies, universities and state media firms listed as supplying the
software were authorized to collect data on its platform.
China’s Foreign Ministry did not
respond to a request for comment.
'Public opinion guidance'
China’s systems for analyzing
domestic public opinion online are a powerful but largely unseen pillar
of President Xi Jinping’s program to modernize
China’s propaganda apparatus and maintain control over the Internet.
The vast data collection and
monitoring efforts give officials insight into public opinion, a challenge in a
country that does not hold public elections or permit independent media.
The services also provide increasingly
technical surveillance for China’s censorship apparatus. And most systems
include alarm functions designed to alert officials and police to negative
content in real time.
These operations are an important
function of what Beijing calls “public opinion guidance work” — a policy of
molding public sentiment in favor of the government through targeted propaganda and censorship.
The phrase first came to prominence
in policymaking after the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy demonstrations,
when officials began exploring new ways to preempt popular challenges to the Communist
Party’s power, and has since become integral to the underlying architecture
of China’s Internet, where users are linked by real name ID, and Internet
services are required by law to maintain an internal censorship apparatus.
The exact scope of China’s
government public opinion monitoring industry is unclear, but there have been
some indications about its size in Chinese state media. In 2014, the
state-backed newspaper China Daily said more than 2 million people were working
as public opinion analysts. In 2018, the People’s Daily, another official
organ, said the government’s online opinion analysis industry was worth “tens
of billions of yuan,” equivalent to billions of dollars, and was growing at a
rate of 50 percent a year.
[China
builds advanced weapons systems using American chip technology]
That surveillance network system is
expanding to include foreign social media at a time when global perceptions of
Beijing are at their lowest in recent history.
A Pew Research survey released in
June showed that perceptions of China among 17 advanced economies had dipped to
near historic lows for a second year in a row in the aftermath of the U.S.
trade war, the Xinjiang human rights crisis, Hong Kong and the coronavirus
pandemic.
In May this year, Xi called on
senior officials to portray a more “trustworthy, lovable and reliable” image of
China abroad, calling for the “effective development of international public
opinion guidance.”
His comments reflect Beijing’s
growing anxieties over how to control China’s image abroad.
“On the back of the Sino-US trade
talks and the Hong Kong rioting incident, it’s becoming clearer day by day that
the public opinion news war is arduous and necessary,” China Daily said in a
July 2020 bidding document for a $300,000 “foreign personnel analysis
platform.”
The invitation to tender lays out
specifications for a program that mines Twitter, Facebook and YouTube for data
on “well known Western media journalists” and other “key personnel from
political, business and media circles.”
“We are competing with the US and
Western media, the battle for the right to speak has begun,” it said.
The software should run 24 hours a
day, according to the specifications, and map the relationships between target
personnel and uncover “factions” between personnel, measuring their “China
tendencies” and building an alarm system that automatically flags “false
statements and reports on China.”
Warning systems like the one
outlined in the China Daily document are described in over 90 percent of
tenders that list technical specifications, The Post’s review of the documents
show.
Two people who work as analysts in
public opinion analysis units contracted by government agencies in Beijing told
The Post that they receive automated alarms via SMS, email and on dedicated
computer monitors when “sensitive” content was detected. Both of the people
spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak
to foreign media.
“Having responsibility for [the
monitoring] is a lot of pressure,” said one of the people. “If we do our work
poorly, there are severe repercussions.”
Highly sensitive viral trends
online are reported to a 24-hour hotline maintained by the Cybersecurity
Administration of China (CAC), the body that oversees the country’s censorship
apparatus, the person said of their unit.
The person added that most of the
alarms were related to domestic social media but that foreign social media had
also been included in the units’ monitoring since the middle of 2019.
The person’s account is supported
by four bidding documents for unrelated systems that mention direct hotlines to
the CAC.
“In case of major public opinion,
directly contact the staff on duty of the CAC by telephone to ensure that
notifications are in place through various communication tools,” said one
December 2020 tender for a $236,000 system purchased by the municipal
propaganda department in eastern China’s Fuzhou city for monitoring Facebook
and Twitter alongside domestic social media.
It specifies that reports to the
CAC should include the details of individual social media users.
State media-led data mining
Suppliers of the systems vary. The
China Daily awarded its contract to Beijing’s Communications University, one of
a half dozen Chinese universities that have launched specialized departments to
develop public opinion analysis technology.
However, some of the most prolific
public opinion monitoring services are provided to police and government
agencies by state media themselves.
The documents provide insight into
the scope of foreign social media data collection done by China’s major state media
outlets, which maintain offices and servers abroad, and their key role in
providing Beijing with publicity guidance based on increasingly sophisticated
data mining analysis.
The growing clout of Beijing’s
propaganda efforts abroad, spearheaded by state media, has triggered alarms in
Washington.
In 2020, the State Department reclassified the U.S.-based
operations of China’s top state media outlets as foreign missions,
increasing reporting requirements and restricting their visa allocations,
angering Beijing.
The People’s Daily Online, a unit
of the state newspaper the People’s Daily, which provides one of the country’s
largest contract public opinion analysis services, won dozens of projects that
include overseas social media data collection services for police, judicial
authorities, Communist Party organizations and other clients.
The unit, which recorded $330
million in operating income in 2020, up 50 percent from 2018, says it serves
over 200 government agencies, although it is not clear how many request foreign
social media data.
In one tender won by the People’s
Daily Online, the Beijing Police Intelligence Command Unit purchased a $30,570
service to trawl foreign social media and produce reports on unspecified “key
personnel and organizations,” gathering information on their “basic
circumstances, background and relationships.”
It also calls for weekly data
reports on Hong Kong, Taiwan and U.S. relations. Issued shortly before the 2020
U.S. presidential election results were ratified on Jan. 6, it also called for
“special reports” on “netizens’ main views” related to the election.
“The international balance of power
has been profoundly adjusted,” said the request for tenders. “Through the
collection of public Internet information we can keep a close eye on the
international community, analyze sensitivities and hot spots, and maintain the
stability of Chinese society.”
In an April 2020 article, the chief
analyst at the People’s Daily Online Public Opinion Data Center, Liao Canliang,
laid out the ultimate goal of public opinion analysis.
“The ultimate purpose of analysis
and prediction is to guide and intervene in public opinion,” Canliang wrote. “…
Public data from social network users can be used to analyze the
characteristics and preferences of users, and then guide them in a targeted
manner.”
In the article, Liao points to
Cambridge Analytica’s impact on the 2016 U.S. election as evidence of social
media’s ability to mold public opinion.
“The West uses big data to analyze,
research and judge public opinion to influence political activities. ... As
long as there is a correct grasp on the situation, public opinion can also be
guided and interfered with,” he wrote.
People’s Daily subsidiary Global
Times, a firebrand newspaper known for its biting coverage of China’s critics,
also has a unit gathering foreign social media data for China’s Foreign
Ministry, Beijing’s Foreign Affairs Office and other government agencies.
In late 2019, the Global Times
Online won a three-year contract worth $531,000 to provide a “China-related
foreign media and journalist opinion monitoring system” that monitors
overseas social media on behalf of China’s Foreign Ministry and produces
comprehensive regular reports, as well as special briefings in “urgent
circumstances.”
Documentation accompanying the
project says that close to 40 percent of the Global Times monitoring unit’s
staffers are senior Global Times reporters and that the publication maintains
large overseas social media monitoring platforms.
A description on the website of the
Global Times’s public opinion research center says the group conducts “overseas
monitoring and overseas investigation services” and provides “comprehensive
response plans” to government and private clients.
Both the People’s Daily and the
Global Times were among the outlets designated as foreign missions in the
United States.
The increase in China’s monitoring
of foreign public opinion on social media coincides with efforts by Beijing to
boost its influence on Twitter and other U.S. social media platforms.
In June 2020, Twitter suspended 23,000 accounts that it
said were linked to the Chinese Communist Party and covertly spreading
propaganda to undermine pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. This month,
Twitter said it removed a further 2,048 accounts linked to Beijing and
producing coordinated content undermining accusations of rights abuses in
Xinjiang.
Experts say those accounts
represent a small fraction of China’s efforts to boost pro-Beijing messaging on
foreign social media.
'Extreme chilling effect'
Just under a third of the public
opinion analysis systems reviewed by The Post were procured by Chinese police.
In 14 instances, the analysis
systems included a feature requested by the police that would automatically
flag “sensitive” content related to Uyghurs and other Chinese ethnic
minorities. An additional 12 analysis systems included the police-requested
capability of monitoring individual content authors over time.
“It must support information
monitoring of overseas social media … and provide for targeted collection of
designated sites and authors,” said one invitation to tender released by the
Fuzhou city police in October that lists coverage of Facebook and Twitter as a
requirement.
The monitoring of social media
abroad by local police throughout China could be used in investigating Chinese
citizens locally and abroad, as well as in flagging trends that stir domestic
dissent, experts say.
“The public security monitoring is
very much about stability maintenance, tracking people down and finding
people’s identity, and when they monitor overseas social media, it’s also often
with an eye to monitoring what news could cause trouble at home in China,” said
the German Marshall Fund’s Ohlberg.
[Xi
Jinping’s crackdown on everything is remaking Chinese society]
Companies providing overseas public
opinion monitoring to police include a mix of private and state-owned firms,
including the People’s Daily Online.
Six police contracts awarded since
2020 stated that the People’s Daily was chosen to conduct monitoring on the
basis of its technical ability to gather data abroad.
“It’s the only one in the industry
that deploys overseas servers. It is a public opinion service organization that
can monitor and collect more than 8,000 overseas media without ‘overturning the
wall,’ ” said the Guangdong Police Department in a $26,200 contract offer
posted in July 2020, referring to the ability of the People’s Daily unit to
collect overseas data outside China’s Great Firewall.
Experts say the increasingly
advanced social media surveillance technology available to Chinese police could
worsen the targeted harassment of Beijing’s critics.
“The Chinese government is one of
the worst offenders when it comes to targeting individuals outside of the
country,” said Adrian Shahbaz, the director for technology and democracy at the
think tank Freedom House.
“It has an extreme chilling effect
on how Chinese citizens outside of China are using social media tools, because
they know that back home, their information is very easily monitored by Chinese
authorities,” he said.
The China Public Security Bureau
did not respond to a request for comment.
A police bureau in southern China’s
Nanping city purchased a $42,000 system that “supports collection, discovery,
and warning functions for ... Twitter and Facebook social media data according
to different classifications and keyword groups, as well as overseas
information lists,” according to bidding documents released in July 2020.
Other procurements for public
opinion services outline programs purchased by Chinese police and Xinjiang
government bodies to track “sensitive” ethnic language content abroad. (China’s
mainly-Muslim Uyghurs are concentrated in Xinjiang.)
A $43,000 system purchased by
police in central China’s Shangnan county included a “foreign sensitive
information” collection system that requested Uyghur and Tibetan staff
translators, according to the contracts.
Military procurement documents —
less detailed than other types — did not offer much detail on the purpose of
the foreign data collection but alluded to vague categories of data including
“key personnel.”
One heavily redacted June 2020
contract issued by the People’s Liberation Army described a system that would
trawl foreign sites and categorize data on the basis of affiliation, geography
and country.
Source Data Technology, the
Shanghai-based company that won the contract, says on its website that it uses
“advanced big data mining and artificial intelligence analysis technology” to
cover more than 90 percent of social media in the United States, Europe and
China’s neighboring countries.
