Daria: To an unexperienced viewer,
these Uighur influencers would just look very genuine.
These women post about the most mundane things.
Things like puppies or travel or makeup.
But then embedded in this lifestyle content,
there are hidden subtle propaganda messages.
I believe the main aim of these channels
is that of whitewashing the human rights abuses.
Further evidence of the harsh detention
and indoctrination of a people …
not for what they’ve done, but for who they are.
Every single provision
in the United Nations Genocide Convention
violated by the Chinese government’s treatment of Uighurs
and other Muslim minorities.
You know, they would win over algorithms
because this content is very fresh, and it catches people’s attention.
Daria: We believe that Beijing’s propaganda machine
is refining its techniques.
They have basically succeeded in controlling that
within China's borders.
But now they’re attempting to control the narratives
outside of their borders as well.
[Keyboard clacking]
My name is Daria Impiombato, and I’m a China analyst
at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
I focus on the intersection between China, human rights, and technology.
We started noticing these ethnic minority influencers
that kept popping up in our searches.
The algorithm kept suggesting these videos to us,
so we decided to look more deeply into it.
My team and I went through 1,700 videos.
These women work for private companies,
but because they operate in China,
they have to abide by CCP laws and regulations.
So they would be promoting socialist values,
and they have to by law.
The problem with these videos
is that their link with the propaganda apparatus
is not as direct as with party state media
or people who appear on Twitter
and have official state-linked accounts.
Xinjiang is the westernmost region of China.
Xinjiang is very different from other provinces in China.
In fact, it is called the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.
Uighurs are predominantly Muslim.
They are very culturally distinct from the Han Chinese.
Since 2017, China has rounded up over 1 million Muslim Uighurs
into so-called re-education camps.
These camps are, in fact,
just indoctrination and often forced-labor camps
where a lot of these people are still detained.
The US State Department has called
what China is doing to your Muslim minority a genocide.
Also, Canada says that. Also, the Netherlands say that.
Daria: The UN finally published a highly anticipated report …
on the human rights situation in Xinjiang.
They came to the conclusion that there is credible evidence that
grave human rights violations
have and are still taking place in Xinjiang.
We started seeing all these ethnic minority influencers pop up
in this series of videos.
The thing that stood out to us was that we were on YouTube,
which is a platform that is actually banned in China.
Most of these accounts started popping up from mid-2020.
So to an unexperienced viewer
who doesn’t know about what is happening in Xinjiang,
they would just look like genuine lifestyle videos.
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But then embedded in this lifestyle content,
there are hidden subtle propaganda messages.
And then you also have the more overt, you know,
strictly propagandistic messages that are embedded in the videos.
Another disturbing allegation
that the Uighur population has been forced to engage in slave labor.
The cotton production in Xinjiang
has been under a lot of international attention and pressure
because of allegations of forced labor.
These influencers started publishing
a lot of videos about how amazing Xinjiang cotton is
and how great quality it is.
But then they went as far as, you know,
interviewing people who owned
the majority of these cotton plantations.
Big Western brands are now facing a very big boycott in China. Why?
For taking a stand
against the alleged use of forced labor in Xinjiang
in the production of cotton.
So here, Guli is doing a piece to camera
and talking about the H&M controversy.
I think the technique behind this propaganda push
is to actually flood the information environment
with random content
so that when you search for Xinjiang
or search for Xinjiang cotton or forced labor,
this is the content that comes up
and not all of the investigations recording the human rights abuses.
To the international community,
China has a message that its Xinjiang province
is a wonderful land.
The Chinese Communist Party would like a depiction of Xinjiang
as an idyllic land of ethnic harmony.
Covert propaganda messaging is still linked to state policies
but without necessarily expliciting it,
so about how ethnic minorities live in harmony in Xinjiang
or about how developed the region has become.
The assimilation of ethnic minority groups
has always been a priority for the Chinese government.
Ultimately, the Chinese Communist Party
wants these people to feel primarily Chinese
and belonging to the motherland of China.
I think part of the efficacy of this content
is that it creates plausible deniability
for the Chinese government,
sort of showing that there are Uighurs out there
who are willing to stand by the Chinese government
and openly say that they are fine
and they’re not being suppressed or exploited.
But one side has very credible, solid evidence.
What is it you want the world to understand
about the Uighur experience?
And the other side has set up propaganda videos.
Ahhh!
Watching these videos,
I just feel very uneasy about
how these women are being somewhat instrumentalized.
I still think, you know, they’re being used as a pawn
by the Chinese Communist Party
to just debunk allegations against its human rights abuses.
[Speaking in Chinese]
[Mouth click]
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