Beijing has increased its propaganda efforts on YouTube.
Signs of the Chinese regime’s influence are becoming more prevalent on YouTube, especially in English-language content about China.
Paid agitators are flooding comment sections, propaganda videos are being masked as grassroots content, and influencers are being offered cash or crypto to push the regime’s message.
Aside from content that artificially boosts the regime’s image, much of the propaganda aims at discrediting Beijing’s critics, particularly religious and ethnic minorities persecuted in China, as well as the United States more broadly.
The propaganda content on YouTube largely lacks any disclosure that its progeny traces back to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Many times, it’s produced by American or European YouTubers with no apparent connection to the regime.
“[The CCP] has manipulated the public opinion space, especially on YouTube, in the past two, three years, to really focus on using foreign faces, and not people from China … to try to legitimize their claims,” said David Zhang. He runs the “China Insider with David Zhang” channel with more than 1.3 million subscribers and previously hosted a news program at NTD, a sister media of The Epoch Times.
The CCP uses influence operations as part of its unrestricted warfare doctrine with the goal of deposing and replacing the United States as the world’s leading superpower. In contrast to regular propaganda, these influence operations usually don’t disclose their connection to the regime.
Wen Tzu-yu, a Taiwanese YouTuber who recently co-produced a documentary on CCP infiltration through social media, said “propaganda is crucial for the CCP’s power.”
“The CCP built itself up with propaganda before it took up the guns,” he told The Epoch Times.
The CCP has been active on YouTube for many years, but for a long time its activity was carried out by the so-called “50-cent army,” or Wumaos, consisting of paid agitators posting pro-CCP comments under videos.
“I never was bothered so much by the Wumaos, as they’re called,” said Chris Chappell, who runs the “China Uncensored” channel with more than 2 million subscribers, the largest China-focused YouTube channel critical of the CCP. He previously worked for NTD, a sister media of The Epoch Times.
“Generally, there’d be an obvious CCP troll saying something ridiculous, and all the other commenters would jump on them,” he told The Epoch Times.
“As far as shifting the Overton Window of how Americans think about China, that was pretty ham-fisted.”
The recent propaganda efforts, however, seem to be “much more sophisticated and dangerous” in their capability to influence Americans, Chappell said.
