What democracies can learn from China’s disinformation campaign in Solomon Islands
A Q&A with ASPI’s South Pacific analyst Blake Johnson
Dear China watchers, this week, we spoke with the lead author behind a new report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) published last Wednesday. In this lightly edited conversation, we talked about the tactics the Chinese government uses to manipulate public discourse and what other susceptible democracies can do about it.
About the report:
Blake Johnson, along with four other researchers, published a report, Suppressing the truth and spreading lies. Through an examination of the CCP's online influence in the aftermath of the Honiara riots in late 2021 and in response to the leaked security agreement in March 2022, the report explores how the CCP is using a range of influence channels to shape, promote and suppress messages in the Solomon Islands information environment. A previously undocumented level of coordination across a range of state activities has been revealed.
More on the author:
Johnson is an analyst at the International Cyber Policy Centre of ASPI. His research interests include influence and information operations, disinformation, and emerging technologies, particularly in the South Pacific. Prior to joining ASPI, Johnson previously worked in government on national security issues, with a focus on regional security, stability and development, foreign influence, and climate change.
*Interview was edited for length and clarity
Q: Why did you decide to focus on the Solomon Islands?
Johnson: When the riots occurred there was this really clear message that the CCP was trying to push, and that was obviously false, in that Australia and the U.S. were funding the rioters and were responsible for instigating those problems within the Solomon Islands. So that just made it an obvious place to start.
Q: Where did you see that type of narrative unfold?
Johnson: The first place that we looked for this was really in CCP state media. Although it's not a particularly effective way of messaging populations, it's a good way to pick up what sort of narratives are in the conversation there and what are some of the messages that the CCP at large is trying to push.
Q: You just mentioned that you think state media is not a good way of messaging to populations. It seems that China is moving towards using opinion pieces and press releases and that's seeing more success. So what does this tell us? Do you think China is getting smarter at engaging people and manipulating the global perception of the CCP?
Johnson: Yeah, that's a great question. I think again, this is only the beginning of this kind of work in the Pacific Islands. Speaking to some of my other colleagues at ASPI, they seem to think that yeah, perhaps the CCP is getting smarter in their messaging. One thing that I've noticed looking at the Solomon Islands report, and continuing our research across the Pacific, is they do seem to have an awareness of what narratives are effective and gain traction in the local population and they'll keep trying to return to those same narratives and apply it to different scenarios.
So, the accusations of Australia and the U.S. instigating the riots, that kind of fell flat. There wasn't a great change in the way the population was talking about it. No one actually believed that narrative. In the second case study when they were talking about the lack of genuine interest in the Pacific and the colonialist bullying kind of tropes, that gained more traction. And since then, we've seen that pushed out a couple more times to more regional events to show that they're probably picking up on what once worked and going back to those same more effective narratives.
I think when it comes to different kinds of information channels, whether they think CCP state media is effective or not, I don't expect it to really change. It's just something that they're going to do consistently and persistently to keep that message ticking over. I don't see them really changing or we haven't seen them change, yet, how much effort they're putting into that particular information channel, but it will certainly be interesting to see if they, in the future, do more and more of the opinion pieces and editorials in local media.
Q: How do Taiwan and the one-China policy play into all of this?
Johnson: Yes, so the Solomon Islands made the switch in diplomatic recognition to no longer recognize Taiwan and recognize the one-China policy in 2019 when Sogavare’s government won the election. It was a big topic of debate in Solomon Islands at the time. A number of provinces were very fine with their connections to Taiwan and were pleased with the way that they were receiving support, and there are still provincial levels of government that I think would like to see that relationship continue on. That's part of the political tension that is ongoing within Solomon Islands. But I think Sogavare’s statement that the riots were all about recognizing one-China policy or not, there was just a lot more domestic issues going on in Solomon Islands that contributed to this event. It wasn't really just tied to that, and it certainly wasn't being instigated by any foreign country.
Q: The report says that these op-eds or press releases, compared to those from the U.S. and Australia, are more effective, more frequent and have more social-media engagement. It just sounds like, to us, that China is winning. Why is CCP so popular in this region?
Johnson: I think that definitely, as you said, they're definitely getting more engagement from those pieces within the local media and they are far more active, but part of that is because Australia and the U.S. are not doing as much as they should be in that space. And that's not necessarily just because they need to do more to counter China. It's just Australia and the U.S. overall could be doing more to explain what they're doing in the region and being more transparent about the support they provide. Really their engagement is pretty poor sometimes. There's so much aid and development assistance going on in Solomon Islands provided by Australia and it really doesn't get into the media enough. And if they were more active in a legitimate way—because there is a legitimate way that governments can engage in local media and spread positive messages—if Australia was doing more of that, it would help to counter that false narrative that Australia's interest isn't genuine.
Q: Do you think the recent U.S.-Pacific agreement would have any effect on the rhetoric and public perception of the West?
Johnson: It's certainly something that I'll be keeping an eye on in the next couple of weeks. It's not something that I've seen a lot of change in, yet. It'll take time. And certainly, again, when the U.S. actually starts to provide this additional support that they've promised. They’ve got to make sure that they're getting that message out more clearly. When the Pacific Islands Forum was held, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris spoke in one of the mornings and made a couple of announcements that related to that broader agreement. The news of those announcements and those additional promises of support didn't spread very far within the Pacific. It's not something that really generated a lot of reaction, yet. That's something that will definitely happen over time.
Q: So, what do you think the democracies could do more to improve?
Johnson: We could definitely do more to support local media, help with hiring and training and retention of quality journalists. And that will help with establishing a proper message so that they can better recognize some of that disinformation and be less vulnerable and more resilient to the pressures that they may face to publish content. But Australia and the U.S. can also do more to better understand the Pacific region itself, to understand the issues that really matter to the Pacific and to try and address those. Naturally, the first place that that goes to is climate change. Most of the time that's widely considered to be the greatest security attack for the Pacific and that's not going to change anytime in the near future despite all of the geostrategic competition and games that seems to be going on. So certainly, that would be a good place to start.
Q: What are other takeaways that democracies should take note of from this report? Especially those who are also fighting China’s disinformation war domestically.
Johnson: Yeah, I think certainly any country could learn, I guess, to be more aware of the different information channels that the CCP is trying to push these messages. And understand that it is a coordinated push coming not only through their state media, but through their Facebook pages, and then through local media as well and the things that you might read [such as] opinion pieces and whatnot in local media-- it's all part of that. It is part of a coordinated information operation that's not just one message here and one person's opinion.
Q: Some of the tactics the CCP uses in the Solomon Islands have also been used in other countries with little press freedom, for example, in the Middle East. What is the way to handle this disinformation campaign when freedom of press is close to non-existent?
Johnson: That's a really, really tough question. And that’s one of the recommendations that was in the report … I was actually in Taiwan last week and at a conference that was sponsored by Meta. There were a few people from Facebook there and we spoke about the different labeling that they can do. And one thing I raised is that some places are able to label posts to say ‘Oh, this is actually a post by Global Times. It is a state media outlet.’ But that label is not really done in many different languages yet, certainly not in Pacific languages.
So that was one of the things we talked about. Say you can label these articles so even if the media is less free and it’s pushing this stuff out, when it actually has posts online, Facebook can step in and say this article you're reading is actually underpinned by a state-owned media agency. [It] would help people sort that out, separate [from] the actual media publishing.
When it comes to a series of opinion articles part of the information campaign is to try and tell you what to think, but also a large part of it is trying to see what you're thinking about. So, in these cases surrounding the security agreement, it was so that you weren't thinking about whether it was okay for China and Solomon Islands to have a security agreement. You were thinking about how the U.S. and Australia were responding to it and whether or not they were threatening Solomon Islands. So, it's to distract from the issue you should be thinking about to something else entirely. So even when that message seems really, really clear, and sometimes really far-fetched, like the Australia and U.S. instigation of the riots, that distracts from the role that China played that some people were critical of.
Q: The report mentions further research that you are going to do. Could you give us a preview of that?
Johnson: The next step in our research is to look at the way the CCP is trying to influence the Pacific on a regional level with the regional narratives. It's entered the draft phase now. Hopefully it'll be out before the end of the year. It'll look at some of those more regional narratives and not just focus on Solomon Islands but include as many of the Pacific Island countries as we possibly can. Based on how much actual activity there is online and the way that they publish their media.
*Read the full report here.