Winning the web: How Beijing exploits search results to shape views of Xinjiang and COVID-19 – Brookings Institution

Executive Summary

As the war in Ukraine unfolds, Russian propaganda about the conflict has gotten a boost from a friendly source: government officials and state media out of Beijing. In multiple languages and regions around the world, Chinas wolf warrior diplomats and state media routinely amplify Kremlin conspiracy theories rationalizing President Vladimir Putins invasion, and undermining the credibility and appeal of the United States, NATO, and independent media even as China declines to endorse the Kremlins adventurism wholesale. This spring, for example, Chinas messengers promoted the baseless Russian claim that the United States has been supporting a biological weapons program in Ukraine at times, more aggressively than Russia itself.

Because Russian state media have been de-amplified or banned by multiple Western social media platforms, Beijings messaging could play an outsized role in channeling Kremlin talking points to audiences around the world.

These narratives do not just spread on social media. Beijings state-funded publishers have considerable success in a domain that has received comparatively little attention: search results.

For months, our team has been tracking how China has exploited search engine results on Xinjiang and COVID-19, two subjects that are geopolitically salient to Beijing Xinjiang, because the Chinese government seeks to push back on condemnation of its rights record; COVID-19, because it seeks to deflect criticism for its early mishandling of the pandemic. In both cases, Beijing is quite focused on positioning itself as a responsible global leader and softening perceptions to the contrary.

To evaluate these concerns, we compiled daily data over a 120-day period on 12 terms related to Xinjiang and COVID-19 from five different sources: (1) Google Search; (2) Google News; (3) Bing Search; (4) Bing News; and (5) YouTube.

We found that:

To address these findings, we propose that companies:

Other actors can play a role too. In particular:

By taking these steps, companies, content creators, and authoritative outlets can ensure that Beijing is not able to dominate search results for terms related to its geopolitical interests, and that users have the information they need to contextualize the propaganda they encounter.

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Winning the web: How Beijing exploits search results to shape views of Xinjiang and COVID-19 - Brookings Institution