China using social media to sow racial discord in the US

10/19/2022 / By Ramon Tomey

A former intelligence officer claimed that China is making use of social media to sow racial discord in the United States. This race-baiting strategy, he added, seeks to decrease faith in the American political system and ultimately destroy the country from within.

Nicholas Eftimiades, a senior fellow at Washington, D.C.-based think tank Atlantic Council, put forward this claim during a Sept. 30 interview with the NTD television network.

“Race baiting is a tactic that we’ve seen starting to evolve from China in the U.S.,” he said. This goes back to the [Black Lives Matter] riots in 2020. China works a lot now [in] attempting to divide the United States.” Race-baiting is defined as the encouraging or enticing of racism or racial animosity for political benefit

The senior fellow and erstwhile staffer at the Department of State, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency claimed that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had a number of groups that performed foreign media operations and could support such activities. He named the United Front Work Department, the Ministry of State Security and the People’s Liberation Army as examples of entities that have conducted hidden influence operations in other countries. (Related: China plotted to infiltrate Federal Reserve to mine data.)

Eftimiades remarked that oftentimes, CCP social media efforts end up short-lived after they are discovered by security personnel for social media platforms. However, some that elude security checks may thrive within isolated echo chambers online – thanks to proprietary algorithms that show these kinds of content.

“You can question how effective some of these are because they don’t have the time to build up a massive following before they’re taken down,” he said. “So, you typically look for echo chambers. You look for that type of race-based politics that China’s trying to divide and conquer [with] in the United States.”

The former intelligence official’s remarks followed news of Meta Platforms shutting down a China-based misinformation operation ahead of the 2022 U.S. midterm elections. The campaign looked to be designed to escalate tensions and increase divisiveness among Americans on Facebook and Instagram, two of Meta’s social media platforms.

Eftimiades remarked that the incident represented a shift in CCP’s communication techniques. Beijing historically focused on altering perceptions about Americans outside rather than from inside.

“I’d say it’s the first time we’ve seen a lot of attacks in the U.S. – it’s a concept of divide and conquer internally. We have our issues with racism, and they’re exploiting those differences as of late.”

Pompeo: CCP’s worst lie is painting the US as a “racist” country

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also zeroed in on the lies the CCP propagates about race relations in the U.S. on his program “Evening Chats with Mike Pompeo: A Message to the Chinese People.” The online show from the conservative think tank Hudson Institute sought to explain “how the CCP tries to divide Americans based on race” and “how it lies to the world about the United States.”

“The worst lie they tell is that America is somehow a racist country. [But] that is the exact opposite of the truth. America is the only country in the world founded on the idea that all humans are treated and created equally,” Pompeo said.

The former Trump administration official cited the words of Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), who said: “Original sin is never the end of the story, not in our souls and not for our nation. The real story is always redemption.”

According to Pompeo, “some of the longest waiting lines for visas anywhere in the world to come to the U.S. were at [American] consulates in China. Countless Chinese people want to visit, study or even immigrate here.”

The erstwhile secretary of state also took shots at Twitter, remarking that the social media platform “is not allowed in China, but CCP propagandists use it.”

Watch Chinese affairs analyst Gordon Chang expound on the CCP’s infiltration of the United States.

This video is from the Free4eva Media channel on Brighteon.com.