The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) embrace of large-scale online influence operations and spreading of disinformation on Western social media platforms has escalated since the first major attribution from Silicon Valley companies in 2019. While Chinese public diplomacy may have shifted to a softer tone in 2023 after many years of wolf-warrior online rhetoric, the Chinese Government continues to conduct global covert cyber-enabled influence operations. Those operations are now more frequent, increasingly sophisticated and increasingly effective in supporting the CCP’s strategic goals. They focus on disrupting the domestic, foreign, security and defence policies of foreign countries, and most of all they target democracies.

Left unaddressed, the CCP’s increasing investment in cyber-enabled influence operations threatens to successfully influence the economic decision-making of political elites, destabilise social cohesion during times of crisis, sow distrust of leaders or democratic institutions and processes, fracture alliances and partnerships, and deter journalists, researchers and activists from sharing accurate information about China.

This report provides the first public empirical review of the CCP’s clandestine online networks on social-media platforms. The authors outline seven key policy recommendations for governments and social-media platforms.