Russia’s use of disinformation tactics to undermine the Ukrainian government, discredit President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and demoralize the Ukrainian population have put a spotlight on the weaponization of disinformation in wartime. At the same time, China has been increasing its use of such tactics, and the United States and Japan should take steps to protect their alliance from peacetime deployment of these disinformation campaigns.
Actors such as Russia and China have helped the U.S. and like-minded countries become increasingly cognizant of disinformation’s potential consequences. While much of the recent analytical focus has been on its role in a crisis, disinformation can have pernicious, real-world effects in peacetime.
Japan witnessed this first-hand in 2023. A rock was thrown at a Japanese children’s school in Qingdao, eggs were thrown at another school in Shandong, and a brick was thrown at the Japanese embassy in Beijing. Such anti-Japanese actions are believed to have been motivated, in part, by Chinese government disinformation about the safety of treated wastewater being released into the oceans from the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant.
Even though the International Atomic Energy Agency had approved Japan’s wastewater release plan, the Chinese government and state media ran a coordinated disinformation campaign questioning the science behind Japan’s decision. For example, Chinese commentators and government officials shared misleading claims about the released wastewater “polluting” the oceans, drew connections between the wastewater and Godzilla, and even produced a musical parody accusing Japan of being responsible for “polluted water and poisoned fish.”
Microsoft reported in April that the Chinese government’s most notorious covert disinformation group, Spamouflage, was behind a campaign on social media leveraging generative AI to target Japan (among others), seeking to criticize Tokyo’s decision to release the wastewater.
When considering Chinese disinformation, it is natural to focuses on its potential role before or during an invasion of Taiwan. It is also understandable to focus analytical attention on how disinformation may be used to interfere in a foreign democratic election, in Taiwan or elsewhere. For example, it is believed that China likely spread disinformation in Taiwan’s most recent elections.
Arguably, underexamined issues are the more subtle disinformation campaigns like the Fukushima wastewater episode. It is not a life-or-death situation, like war; nor is it interfering in the domestic politics of a democracy. Yet these subtler forms of disinformation campaigns have the potential for long-term damage because they change global perceptions, create new “truths,” and foster damaging opinions that are more supportive of China and its authoritarian worldview.
Working to address such disinformation campaigns – whether it be through building resiliency, identifying disinformation patterns and networks, or creating counter-narratives to blunt the falsehoods – helps democracies push back on these campaigns and potentially withstand more extreme disinformation campaigns that are likely in a crisis.
China uses disinformation in multiple ways but often with the apparent objective to shape a favorable international environment to its claims and behavior. China focuses on propagating narratives to undermine the U.S.-led international system, including presenting China as a global leader, a friendly nation, and a model for other countries to follow. According to an analysis of almost 20,000 segments posted to YouTube by the state-run China Global Television Network, about 44 percent of the content promoted the Chinese political and economic model, focusing on crafting an image of China’s responsive institutions, competent leadership, and poverty alleviation.
Beijing has been engaging in “narrative warfare” against Taiwan for decades seeking to create the perception that Taiwan is, always has been, and always will be a part of China. China’s disinformation campaigns, while not always sophisticated, target multiple audiences, including the Chinese public, Taiwanese public, Taiwan leadership, potential third-party interveners (i.e., the United States, Japan), and the broader international community.
An analysis of Chinese military texts by RAND researchers found that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has thought about the role that disinformation plays in peacetime, crises, and wartime. In peacetime, the PLA uses disinformation for broader messaging to foreign publics and foreign leadership; in crises, the PLA intends to utilize disinformation to support coercion; and finally, in wartime, the PLA plans to spread disinformation to degrade adversary leadership decision-making, undermine the adversary government, weaken adversary troops’ will to fight, undermine adversary public support for the war, and degrade adversary alliances.
Collectively, this suggests that the United States and its allies cannot afford to be complacent, even in peacetime. Active disinformation campaigns work against the interests of the United States and its allies. That brings us back to the Chinese government campaign against Japan’s release of treated wastewater. Cases like this provide the Japan-U.S. alliance an opportunity to bolster resiliency against disinformation as well as develop and test anti-disinformation tools. Toward that end, there are several steps that the United States and Japan can pursue to strengthen their ability to stand up to Chinese disinformation campaigns.
Perhaps the easiest effort could be establishing a Japan-U.S. initiative to monitor China’s disinformation activities. First, Japan and the United States will need to identify the relevant organizational entities within their countries (government or non-government) that are tasked with monitoring these efforts, whether that be monitoring the amount of online activity, the content of narratives, or intended audiences. Cooperation could help the allies gain insight into possible Chinese priorities and issue areas to target.
The harder part will be identifying the relevant organizations within each of their governments to combat those disinformation narratives. Once successful, the U.S. and Japan can explore collaboration with social media platforms around the world to automate tagging or removing posts that include disinformation and automate removing accounts that spread disinformation.
Along the same lines, the U.S. and Japanese governments could work together to develop a common information operation (IO) strategy. Not everything has to be uniform across governments, but cooperating on a strategy can help avoid a situation where individual departments and ministries are developing their own IO initiatives and responding individually.
Once the allies identify the relevant organizational entities for combating disinformation, the allies can work cooperatively toward pursuing an IO campaign. Which office in the United States picks up the phone to call which office in Japan to combat disinformation should be clearly established before a crisis begins. The U.S. and Japan could work together to translate rejoinders to disinformation into multiple languages. For example, in its response to China’s disinformation campaign, the Japanese government released videos with accurate information about the Fukushima release water in multiple languages.
A third area the allies could focus on is a jointly developed public diplomacy strategy to counter Chinese government narratives that have the potential to undermine a free and open international order based on the rule of law. Such efforts should focus less on U.S. leadership or democracy and more on the “rules-based” international order that has benefitted and will continue to benefit countries, particularly when it comes to peace and prosperity. The “free and open Indo-Pacific” concept, first articulated by Japan and later adopted by the United States, is an ideal vessel to achieve this messaging. Not engaging in disinformation is also important, as it undermines one’s own efforts to advocate for accuracy.
Arguably the hardest line of effort for the U.S. and Japan is the need to invest in governmental and societal resilience against disinformation. This includes not just media literacy training and fact-checking but stronger collaboration with civil society, journalists, and social media companies. Because of the dramatic increase in truth decay and loss of trust in established institutions, building societal resilience to disinformation in both countries will be extremely difficult. Publics are skeptical and once-established institutions no longer carry the credibility they used to have.
Possible avenues for building such resiliency include fostering a more diverse media landscape by funding independent public broadcasters; investing in education, especially in building information literacy skills; and supporting local journalism.
China’s disinformation is dangerous. Just as the Japan-U.S. alliance has strengthened to enable a more robust deterrence against possible kinetic action, so too should the allies consider ways to strengthen their collective ability to respond to disinformation operations. The Fukushima wastewater experience was not China’s first disinformation operation, and certainly will not be the last.