Unpacking the Power of Propaganda: The Factors in Shaping Overseas Chinese Communities’ Attitudes Towards Pro-CCP Narratives
Roy Ngerng, Researcher, Doublethink Lab
Eric Hsu, Researcher, Doublethink Lab
Cecile Liu, Manager, Digital Intelligence, Doublethink Lab
Ai-Men Lau, Social Engagement Team Lead, Doublethink Lab
Key Findings
Opinion of PRC, US and pro-CCP propaganda
- Non-Chinese in New Zealand had the most favorable attitudes towards the US. Among the communities analyzed in New Zealand, it was notable that Chinese respondents actually had the second most favorable opinion of the US.
- Malay respondents had the least favorable opinion of the US and the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
- In general, Chinese respondents were in higher agreement with pro-CCP propaganda. In New Zealand, Malaysian Chinese showed similar levels of agreement with Chinese respondents with pro-CCP propaganda.
- Of the four questions related to propaganda, respondents overall showed lower levels of agreement for the questions pertaining to the origins of the Covid-19 virus and on the treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
Attitudes towards government and democracy
- Chinese respondents in New Zealand who reported being less trusting of government, less satisfied with democracy, had a higher preference for non-democratic governance and believed that strong leaders are good, also tended to have a higher agreement with pro-CCP propaganda.
- Among Chinese in Malaysia however, the findings differed. Respondents who agreed with pro-CCP propaganda also tended to distrust government and be dissatisfied with democracy, but both respondents who preferred democratic or non-democratic governance however showed higher levels of agreement with propaganda.
- Surprisingly, among non-Chinese respondents in Malaysia, respondents who reported being more trusting of government and more satisfied with democracy were more likely to agree with pro-CCP propaganda.
- Among Chinese respondents in New Zealand, those who were less trusting of the government, less satisfied with democracy, and had a higher preference for non-democracy, tended to agree with propaganda. However, Chinese respondents tended to have a higher preference for democracy than not.
- Chinese respondents in both countries who were more concerned about government and poor leadership, and race relations and racism, were more likely to agree with propaganda.
Attitudes toward society and identity
- In general, not having a sense of belonging and a weaker identification with the country of residence, is associated with higher levels of agreement with propaganda.
- Among Chinese respondents in New Zealand and Malaysia, those who were more concerned about government and poor leadership, and on race relations and racism, tended to show higher levels of agreement with pro-CCP propaganda.
- Among Chinese respondents in New Zealand, those who were more concerned about crime, foreign policy, ethics and moral decline and immigration were also more likely to agree with propaganda, though it should be noted that other than the issue of crime, the sample sizes of those concerned about the other issues are low.
Introduction
In recent years, there is growing awareness that ill-intended propaganda spread by authoritarian regimes can impact our societies and social stability. At Doublethink Lab, we have conducted digital investigations in recent years to identify the strategies adopted by the People’s Republic of China (PRC)’s Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and other similar actors to spread propaganda in Taiwan and parts of Southeast Asia.
Much of the research on pro-CCP propaganda has focused on the tactics the CCP and similar actors use to target its audience. In the past two years, more targeted methods have been observed such as propaganda to manipulate local issues that individuals are concerned about, to potentially sow discord and create distrust towards local government and society. Other major authoritarian regimes have been known to use this tactic to conduct its influence campaigns. According to Dr. Samatha Bradshaw, Russian influence operations played up both pro- and anti-#BlackLivesMatter rhetoric to polarize the debate in the United States (US) and create chaos (Bradshaw et. al, 2022).
Background
Given the adaptability of such propaganda campaigns, it is therefore crucial to develop an understanding of the issues that can be manipulated by malign authoritarian regimes, as these can have an impact on the stabilization of our societies. However, there remains a lack of research examining this particular issue. There is also little research which seeks to understand the audiences of propaganda, and the various factors that might indicate a higher susceptibility to agreeing with propaganda.
In particular, there remains a dearth of research examining this issue and the Chinese diaspora communities. In 2018, the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office was subsumed under the United Front Work Department (Brady, 2017; Almén, 2020) and the CCP has also expanded its strategy to engage and influence overseas Chinese diaspora communities. While tactics and policies have been documented in research, the impact of these efforts on Chinese diaspora communities is not well understood.
Doublethink Lab developed a survey to capture broad insights into the populations who tend to agree with pro-CCP propaganda. We looked at the literature and past reports to identify factors that could increase individual susceptibility to disinformation such as attitudes towards government and democracy, sense of belonging and identity, and other psychological traits. The survey also looks at the media habits of respondents to identify the pathways in which they use to receive news, and which pro-CCP propagandists might seek to reach them from. We also sought to identify the issues that respondents are concerned about, which may be manipulated or exploited by propaganda to create divisions.
Additionally, this survey is focused on the question of propaganda and does not look at disinformation. The propaganda questions identified were not selected based on whether they are factual or not, but based on whether these are narratives being spread by the CCP and other similar actors. To identify these narratives, we looked at the data of digital investigations conducted internally by Doublethink Lab of the narratives spread by coordinated inauthentic accounts, as well as other external research and surveys highlighting the key propaganda narratives that were spread by the CCP and similar actors (Zhang et al., 2021; Thange et al., 2020; Brand Finance, 2022; YouGov, 2022)
This survey was conducted in two countries — New Zealand and Malaysia — and we found differences in factors affecting an individual’s response to propaganda. This survey hopes to provide a comparative context to allow readers to be able to map out an overview of the factors relating to propaganda inclinations, and to provide insight as to how different local contexts can mediate local responses to propaganda.
Methodology
The survey was conducted from June 24, 2022 to July 7, 2022 in New Zealand, and from July 25, 2022 to August 22, 2022 in Malaysia. Data analysis was undertaken from July to December 2022. We conducted the survey to about 1,000 respondents in New Zealand and Malaysia with the initial aim of identifying a representative sample. However, because we wanted to conduct more in-depth analyses of the Chinese population, we sought to over-represent the Chinese population, and to obtain a sample of 500 Chinese and 500 non-Chinese in each country, and it was therefore not possible to obtain a representative sample. A non-probability sampling method was therefore adopted for the Chinese population in New Zealand.
The survey was conducted via phone in Malaysia in the four major languages (English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil). A phone survey was chosen because as the majority of the elderly population in Malaysia were still not online, a phone survey will be better able to capture their data (MalayMail, 2021). In New Zealand, we went with an online survey, as the majority of elderly users do access the internet (Digital.govt.nz, 2022); it was only conducted in English due to the limitations of the online platform., but you will see from the survey results that we were still able to capture useful data on the Chinese population in spite of the language limitations. The definition of “Chinese” used in the survey is based on the census definitions in each country.
Limitations
This project had a number of limitations including the limitations of country contexts and systems, sampling and limitations of the survey design. This survey was initially designed based on the assumption that some of the results from past research on disinformation could be applicable in this survey as well. However, after analyzing the results from this survey, we found that there are differences between conducting a survey on propaganda versus disinformation, and surveys conducted in countries with different political, economic and social make-ups also produce different results.
Our survey results may lack the specific country contexts and systems. For example, there was little correlation between demographics and agreement with propaganda among respondents from New Zealand. Moreover, with our results from Malaysia, some of our hypotheses which were applicable to Chinese respondents in New Zealand did not find alignments with Chinese respondents in Malaysia.
The aim of this research project was to establish a potential framework to identify and understand any patterns. However, due to the small sample size, some of the data points were too small to be representative and therefore also not generalizable. Conducting the survey in the future with a larger sample size or geared to specific populations might help to produce more representative outcomes.
While this survey is the beginning to help provide more insights about the audiences targeted by propaganda, it would be necessary to further refine this survey, as well as to conduct other supporting research in order to strengthen the findings of this survey, and to enable a more comprehensive understanding of the issue.
As this area of research is relatively new, there is a lack of academic literature to draw from to fully understand this issue. While this survey was designed to provide more insights about the audiences and propaganda, further research is needed to better understand the issue. Further refining the survey and conducting order supporting research, such as quantitative surveys and experiments, would be needed to strengthen the findings of the current survey
Respondents
Results
Overall, Chinese respondents had more favorable attitudes towards the PRC and higher levels of agreement with pro-CCP propaganda. There were notable divergences between Chinese diaspora communities in Malaysia and New Zealand in terms of agreement with pro-CCP propaganda. Among Chinese respondents in Malaysia, our results demonstrated a trend in which the older a respondent was, the more likely they were to agree with pro-CCP propaganda. Compared to non-Chinese respondents in Malaysia, it appears younger demographics were more likely to believe pro-CCP propaganda. However, there was no clear trend in terms of age and likelihood to agree with pro-CCP propaganda among Chinese respondents in New Zealand.
In terms of attitudes towards the U.S., Non-Chinese respondents in New Zealand had more favourable attitudes towards the U.S.. Surprisingly, Chinese respondents had the second most favourable opinion of the U.S. among groups analyzed in New Zealand. In Malaysia, Malay respondents had the least favourable opinion of the U.S.
In terms of attitudes towards the PRC, we found that Chinese respondents in New Zealand had the most favourable opinion of the PRC, while non-Chinese had the least favourable opinion. Among Malaysian respondents, Chinese respondents had the most favourable opinion, whereas Malay respondents had the least favourable opinion.
Agreement with each of the four propaganda are broadly correlated with one another. In New Zealand, they were more correlated with favorability towards the PRC (as opposed to unfavorability towards the US), but in Malaysia, they were more correlated with unfavorability towards the US.
In the following charts, we correlated various questions to agreement with Uyghur propaganda, a significant pro-CCP narrative. This agreement is categorized into two broader narratives which are (1) Uyghurs are benefitting and (2) Uyghurs are discriminated against.
Chinese respondents in both countries who used Chinese-language or PRC media tended to have higher agreement with propaganda. In terms of medium, for Chinese respondents in New Zealand, those who received their news from Chinese social media tended to have a higher level of agreement with propaganda, though among Chinese respondents in Malaysia, it is among those who used mainstream media.
Among Chinese respondents in New Zealand, those who were less trusting of the government, less satisfied with democracy, and had a higher preference for non-democracy, tended to agree with propaganda, though there are variations among the other ethnicities. However, it should be noted that Chinese respondents tended to have a higher preference for democracy than not.
Among Chinese respondents in both countries who were more concerned about government and poor leadership, and race relations and racism, they were more likely to agree with propaganda.
In general, not having a sense of belonging and a lesser identification with the country of residence, is associated with higher levels of agreement with propaganda.
Conclusion
The aim of this research was to develop insights into targeted audiences of CCP propaganda and to examine if there were any identifiable patterns in individuals who were more likely to agree with pro-CCP propaganda. Our survey results have revealed some insights of those that are more likely to agree with pro-CCP propaganda including a lack of identification with their country of residence, media use and preference for democracy as a political system. However, these results are limited. Furthermore, our results were surprising and failed to prove some of our hypotheses in this project. Thus, further research is needed to better understand our results and the impacts of propaganda.
