תחקיר חושף: רשת אתרי חדשות מזויפים מסין תוקפת להקת אמנויות מניו יורק המקדמת ערכים סיניים מסורתיים

A recent report reveals fake websites impersonating major news outlets to spread pro-CCP messages. The campaign is targeting New York-based performing arts company Shen Yun, highlighting Beijing's ongoing efforts to silence the group. NTD's Washington correspondent Jeff Bradley has the details. A recent investigation is exposing a coordinated Chinese influence operation. Researchers at Grafica identify 43 domains and 37 subdomains all hosted in China impersonating outlets like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Guardian, among others. They're calling it spamouflage, a propaganda campaign that relies on fake accounts and coordinated dissemination. A main target is Shen Yun Performing Arts, a New York-based company that showcases traditional Chinese culture and portrays China before communism. Shen Yun also depicts the Chinese regime's human rights abuses and suppression of religion. The company was founded in the United States by practitioners of Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, a spiritual discipline based on meditation and moral teachings, and that's been severely persecuted by the Chinese regime since 1999. My first MC partner was from Beijing, and the National Security Bureau would visit her family in Beijing every single weekend, telling them, we know what your daughter is doing, get her to stop it. We had an arhu player, this is a musician soloist. When she was performing with us, her husband was jailed for three years and tortured. Researchers say that many of these spoofed websites attacking Shen Yun were created over the past five years. The investigation also uncovers contracts between Chinese government organizations and public relations firms that promote this content. In one example, the city of Changchun paid a Chinese PR firm more than $15,000 to publish hundreds of promotional reports and videos in what were described as international media networks. According to the report, 41 ex-accounts and three Facebook pages amplified the articles in a coordinated manner, using randomly generated usernames, stock profile photos, and almost no followers. They posted identical content at the same time, criticizing Falun Gong and Shen Yun. And most of the domains appear to target Chinese audiences, but several are designed for English speaking readers overseas. The concern is that the campaign exploits both mainstream media branding and Western social media platforms, giving fabricated stories an air of credibility and extending Beijing's pressure campaign beyond China's borders. Reporting from Washington, D.C., Jack Bradley, NTD News.