Fake news driving wedge between Chinese and foreigners, top Beijing adviser says in call for ban

Rampant sharing of fake information has had ‘serious impact’ on interests of China and its society, CPPCC Standing Committee member says
Jia Qingguo seeks laws banning the sharing of such misleading information

Internet

Guo Rui

Published: 7:00am, 7 Mar 2022

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The rampant spread of fake information in China is fuelling hostility against foreigners and polarising public opinion, according to a top Chinese political adviser and former academic.

Such information had further intensified confrontation between China and other countries, said Jia Qingguo, former dean of the School of International Studies at Peking University, as he called for laws against their dissemination.

“For example, there are often people on the internet who, for some reason, present a foreigner’s vicious remarks against China as the opinion of representing everyone in that country, thereby inciting the public’s discontent and hostility towards that country and its people,” he said.

Jia, an expert on US affairs, is a member of the Standing Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the country’s top political advisory body, which began its annual session in Beijing on Friday.

Jia Qingguo says online misinformation can spark public hostility towards entire nations. Photo: Weibo

Fake information confused the public about right and wrong, amplified extreme voices and fuelled polarisation, he told TheCover, a news outlet affiliated to the state-owned Sichuan Daily.

When society was divided by such misleading information, consensus building on objective facts became more difficult, Jia noted in the interview published on Saturday.

Some people created and spread fake news to gain satisfaction from the online attention and clicks, and such posters also tended to exhibit a narrow, nationalistic mentality, he said.

“Because of the low cost, speed and wide coverage of internet communication, compared with traditional communication methods, [and] assisted by some marketing means, false information can be spread rapidly and widely.”

The rampant dissemination of fake information had had a “serious impact” on the interests of China and its society, Jia noted. He said that at the annual session he would suggest laws to be enacted to crack down on the creation and sharing of fake news.

Jia’s proposal comes at a time when Chinese social media is awash with fake news about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – heavily consumed by internet users in China despite being debunked by some mainstream media outlets and independent fact-checkers.

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It also comes as public opinion towards China in developed economies is at its lowest in decades, as suggested by recent polls. The trend is also marked by a high level of nationalism among China’s public.

Chinese internet regulators are strict about content originating in and related to China, but have generally turned a blind eye so far to conspiracy theories and fake news about foreign governments and societies.

Conspiracy theories, especially those related to the United States, have a massive online Chinese audience that sees the world as a zero-sum game between China and the West. Scholars and journalists have warned about overconfident nationalistic youth displaying a hostile online attitude towards the West, the US in particular.

In a survey published in November by the Carter Centre’s US-China Perception Monitor, 62 per cent of Chinese held unfavourable views of the US, rising to 63 per cent among those aged 16 to 24.