Chinese firm behind ‘news’ websites pushes pro-Beijing content globally, researchers find

More than 100 websites disguised as local news outlets in Europe, Asia and Latin America are pushing pro-China content in a widespread influence campaign linked to a Beijing public relations firm, digital watchdog Citizen Lab has found.

Spread over websites in 30 countries, the propaganda material is interspersed with news aggregated from local news outlets and Chinese state media, according to a research report the Toronto-based group released on Wednesday.

"While the campaign's websites enjoyed negligible exposure to date, there is a heightened risk of inadvertent amplification by the local media and target audiences, as a result of the quick multiplication of these websites and their adaptiveness to local languages and content," researcher Alberto Fittarelli said in the report.

The sites' content sways between conspiracy theories, often about the United States or its allies – such as a piece blaming American scientists for "leaking" COVID-19 – to articles attacking Beijing's critics.

It is rare for researchers to link such operations to specific entities. Citizen Lab said the campaign began in mid-2020 and traced the network to public relations firm Shenzhen Haimaiyunxiang Media Co., Ltd., also known as Haimai.

The company did not respond to a Reuters request for comment and a phone number listed on an archived version of its website was not reachable.

"As a principle, it is a typical bias and double standard to allege that the pro-China contents and reports are 'disinformation', and to call the anti-China ones 'true information,'" a spokesperson for China's embassy in Washington said in an emailed statement.

Citizen Lab said one of the websites in the campaign was Roma Journal, which looks every bit like a local