The Hong Kong infowar in Malaysia

Focussing on the 2019-2020 anti-government protests in Hong Kong, this is the first media investigation in Malaysia to map how international online disinformation campaigns made its way to our shores and spread within local online communities.

From 2019 to 2020, Hong Kong was gripped by a series of mass anti-government protests that brought the financial hub to a standstill. The protests were triggered by fears that a controversial new bill at the time – which would have allowed extraditions to mainland China – could impact Hong Kong’s judicial autonomy and the ‘One country, Two systems’ arrangement.

In the months that followed the first rally, as peaceful marches swelled in size and escalated into violent confrontations between protesters and police, a parallel information war began playing out between anti-protest and pro-Hong Kong factions in cyberspace.

Unlike the protests themselves which were largely contained within Hong Kong, this information war soon became a disinformation race that involved both China’s state media and anti-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) forces, and which eventually spread to different countries including Malaysia.

In an eight-month-long investigation, we sought to trace the origins of false information on the protests which have triggered heated disputes among Malaysians both online and off.

Disinformation is false information that is deliberately created or disseminated with the express purpose to cause harm. Producers of disinformation typically have political, financial, psychological or social motivations.

First Draft

The disinfo ‘importers’

Mainstream Chinese language media in Malaysia were found to be among the main ‘importers’ of disinformation originating from China state media and other pro-CCP media in Hong Kong.

We found many news reports about the protests published by local Chinese language mainstream media were lifted whole from foreign press including those that are known to be biased and hyper-partisan and which contained elements of untruths concerning the demonstrations. Some of these 'copy-paste' reports did not credit the original publisher. However, a simple search on Google was able to bring up the original reports.

By republishing the articles (see examples below), local mainstream media did not just lend credibility to the disinformation within but amplified them to local audiences, who, in turn, shared the reports through Facebook pages viewed by their followers. Some of the biggest Facebook pages in our dataset have hundreds of thousands of followers, enabling a piece of disinformation to reach potentially millions of Malaysians within just a few hours.

We have picked two cases from our investigation to illustrate the role of local Chinese media in the spreading of disinformation.

Case 1

A false story, started by China’s state-owned media, that claimed protesters threw Molotov cocktails at school buses, was distributed through major local Chinese dailies and amplified by Facebook pages.

2019 12 Nov

China

The Chinese version of Global Times (环球时报), a news outlet under the CCP, published an article on Nov 12, 2019 with the headline “Save the children! After rioters intimidated police’s kids and attacked a school bus, we talked to mothers in Hong Kong”.
The article claimed Hong Kong police had confirmed during a press conference a day before that protesters had thrown Molotov cocktails in front of a school bus.
It posted two photographs showing two different fires allegedly caused by Molotov cocktails thrown by the protesters. However, the article did not specifically state that the buses were the targets of the attacks. No details were provided for the photographs. The article also did not provide the full names or photographs of any of the interviewees.
2019 12 Nov

China

When the same article was published on the Global Times’ English site later that same day, several pieces of key information were modified to assert that protesters were targeting school kids. Among them, the headline was changed to “Petrified HK parents rush to send kids to safety as rioters wreak havoc on school”.
The first two summary points stated that “Rioters have targeted innocent schoolchildren in Hong Kong” and “They threw a Molotov cocktail at a school bus on Monday morning…”.
2019 12 Nov

China

This story was quickly republished by various media in China including state-run broadcaster CGTN and Sina News. The latter republished it with a new title that read “Rioters intimidate children of police officers and attack school buses. Hong Kong mothers: please save the children” (暴徒恐吓警察子女袭击校车香港妈妈：救救孩子).
2019 13 Nov

Malaysia

The next day, three major Chinese dailies in Malaysia republished the article.
Daily A posted the story on its Facebook page, which had over 1.6 million likes then, with a sensational headline: “Children's lives hang by a thread! Molotov cocktails thrown in front of Hong Kong school bus” (小朋友命悬一线！香港校车前被丢汽油弹). The caption accompanying the post read: “Even kids were not spared 😨😨 ” (小朋友也不放过 😨😨 ). The accompanying image was a composite of the photographs of the two fires.
After the post drew comments from readers questioning the sources and the images in the story, it was updated 83 minutes later. The new status read “Police press conference video inside” and the new image was a composite of the two earlier photos and a screenshot of a CGTN video featuring a Hong Kong police spokesperson.
2019 14 Nov

Malaysia

The following day, Daily A posted the same story again but with an apology. It clarified that Hong Kong police had only confirmed the Molotov cocktail was burning in front of the school bus, and not that the bus had been attacked by protesters.
According to Crowdtangle, a social media analytics tool, the first Facebook post had attracted almost 4,000 interactions on the social media platform, including over 1,900 shares. The second post containing the apology only recorded a third of the previous post’s interactions with just 184 shares.
Although Daily A updated the first post in less than two hours and issued an apology the next day, the earlier misleading version reached more Malaysian audiences even beyond the daily’s Facebook followers, through other Facebook pages.
2019 13 Nov

Malaysia

One such distribution channel is a Facebook page called 槟城人 (Penang Lang), which means Penangites in Hokkien. Penang Lang was among those that had republished the earlier version of the story on its website penanglang.com and Facebook page which has over 430,000 likes.
2019 15 Dec

Malaysia

Data from Crowdtangle showed that the penanglang.com webpage featuring the story had been further shared 101 times on Facebook, including in a public group called Komuniti Kuantan which has over 200,000 members.
2019 13 Nov

Malaysia

Daily A is not the only “importer” of such foreign disinformation. Daily B copy-pasted the whole article from Sina News on its website together with a slightly different headline that read “Rioters attack school buses. Hong Kong mothers: Please save the children” (示威者袭击校车香港妈妈:救救孩子).
2019 13 Nov

Malaysia

It was then posted on the daily’s Facebook page with the message: “Please protect the children” (请保护孩子~) along with the photograph of flames in front of the school bus. The message was later changed to "Chaotic" (乱象横生~).
2019 14 Nov

Malaysia

This post was further shared 390 times including on a public group called "Ipoh Forum" (ipoh 怡保吹水站) that has over 300,000 members. Many shared the post with messages condemning the protesters.
2019 13 Nov

Malaysia

Daily C also published the story with the initial title “Hong Kong protesters throw Molotov cocktail. Smash school bus and broke window” (港示威者掷汽油弹砸校车打破车窗). The title was later modified.
2019 13 Nov

Malaysia

In its Facebook post, Daily C used an image of the two fires with a photo caption: “Children’s school buses attacked. Angry parents: Is Hong Kong still safe?” (子女校车遭袭击家长怒：在香港还安全吗？). The message accompanying the article read: “There were children on the bus...” (车上有小孩的啊...).
The post was updated hours later. The new title read “Hong Kong protesters throw Molotov cocktails. Police: It exploded in front of school bus” (港示威者掷汽油弹警方：校车前燃烧). Image showing the fire near the school bus was removed and the message was updated to, “School buses are not safe too...” (校车也不安全了...).
2019 13 & 14 Nov

Malaysia

The post was shared over 1,200 times but it is not sure how many of them were done before the changes. According to data from Crowdtangle, it was further shared to at least three public groups each with more than 10,000 members - "Kepong chit-chat station")(甲洞3817《吹水资讯站》), "Johor Bahru giant chit-chat station"(新山吹水霸王站) and "Reporters for the people"(全民记者 News & Media).

2019 8 Aug

Malaysia

In a short article with the headline “Suspected American hands behind Hong Kong chaos exposed” (美乱港幕后黑手疑曝光), Daily B claimed that unnamed netizens witnessed the meeting take place in the lobby of a Hong Kong hotel.
“According to the eyewitness, when they saw her ‘looking very American’, they acted very respectfully, as if they were meeting their big boss,” read the article, which was accompanied by a photo of the alleged meeting.
2019 8 Aug

Malaysia

Daily B also posted the article on its Facebook page with the caption ”Hong Kong ‘separatists’ met with US embassy officials?!” (“港独”组织头目会美领馆人员？！). It was shared 144 times.
2019 7 Aug

Hong Kong

The article, only three-paragraph long, was attributed to ifeng.com, a news website under Phoenix New Media, a Hong Kong media conglomerate known for its pro-Beijing stance. The whole article, including the headline and photo, was published on ifeng.com a day before.
2019 7 Aug

China

Further checks online revealed that ifeng.com had, in fact, republished the article from Chinanews.com, a news website under China state-owned news agency China News Service.
2019 7 Aug

Hong Kong

Chinanews.com itself had taken the story from Wen Wei Po (文汇报), a Hong Kong newspaper controlled by the CCP.
2019 8 Aug

Malaysia

Daily D, Daily F and Daily A also published the story on the same day as Daily B. However, they had included Wong’s rebuttal. He explained that the meeting with Eadeh was held after she visited the Hong Kong Legislative Council to discuss the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act.
2019 7 Sep

Malaysia

The Chinese embassy in Malaysia also posted a video on its Facebook page featuring the same disinformation to support the conspiracy theory that Western powers were behind the anti-government demonstrations.
The two-minute video, entitled “The 10 chaos [sic] must be suppressed immediately”, featured the same photo of Wong meeting Eadeh to assert that the Hong Kong protests were “plotted, commanded and supported by Western powers”.
2019 7 Sep

Malaysia

The embassy’s Facebook post was shared 91 times. One user by the name of Jia Bao Yu (贾宝玉) shared this post on more than 10 public groups. Some of those groups have over 100,000 members such as "JB Forum" (JB吹水站), "Bukit Mertajam Forum" (大山脚吹水站) and "Ipoh Forum" (IPOH 大只广吹水交流区).
2019 10 Aug

China

Radio Antarabangsa China is another official channel of the Chinese government that distributed this disinformation to Malaysian audiences, but in Bahasa Malaysia.
Together with the message “traitors in Hong Kong riots” (pengkhianat dalam rusuhan di Hong Kong. #HK), it posted a video on its Facebook page on Aug 10, 2019, that featured the photo of Wong and Eadeh. The state-owned media has accumulated over 480,000 followers.

Gatekeepers’ dilemma

When asked about the disinformation coming from foreign media, news editors at local Chinese dailies responsible to filter and curate international news acknowledged the difficulties in providing accurate and balanced information, due to the current short news cycle and distance.

“There are blindspots. Sometimes we can’t find live reports from other media (on the same incident). This has caused difficulty for us because we need to be timely, so it is hard for us to verify a piece of information. After all, we are not there and we report based on what the local media there have reported,” said Oriental Daily News international news editor Liew Hwei Yin on the reports of the alleged school bus attack.

Other Chinese dailies declined to comment.

She knows very well the political inclination and bias of different foreign media. Hence the newsroom usually tries to compile information from different publications across the political spectrum.

“Our standard operation is news compilation. We know Apple Daily and Wen Wei Po are at the opposite ends of the spectrum. So we will combine the content from both publications and let the readers make their own judgement because we can’t force readers to accept a certain news angle,” explained Liew.

For the record, our investigation found that such new compilations were produced by Chinese dailies alongside with articles taken from pro-Beijing foreign media in whole without any editing. Most misinformation was found in the latter articles, as shown in the examples above.

‘Not culprit but accomplices’

Despite the difficulties faced by local Chinese media in verifying foreign news, media lecturer Oung Kang Wei (below) opined that they are still indirectly responsible for the spreading of foreign disinformation.

“Put it this way, they are not the culprit but they are accomplices. We can’t say they are innocent. After all, they are the ones who first laid down the rules recognising Wen Wei Po, Phoenix New Media (which operates ifeng.com), Ta Kung Pao (大公报), Xinhua News Agency, China Review News Agency, etc. as official and credible media.

“Local Chinese media do not create these news because they don’t have first-hand information, but they are the media responsible for reproducing and disseminating such news,” said Oung, who was previously also an international news editor at a local Chinese daily.

He pointed out that the political inclination of media owners and the conservative nature of local Chinese media also play a role in editorial direction.

“If the (specific media) owners are pro-Beijing business people, there would be more news favorable to China."

M’sian Facebook dominated by pro-Beijing voice

Malaysiakini also discovered that posts on the protests and the comments they attracted were overwhelmingly anti-protesters and pro-Beijing although both sides of the political divide - police and the protesters - resorted to excessive force and violence during the protests.

To note, this could be due to the fact that many Facebook posts we compiled were from local Chinese dailies which relied on information from mainstream Hong Kong and China media.

Some of the mainstream media in Hong Kong were clearly on the side of the establishment such as state-owned Wen Wei Po and Ta Kung Pao while their counterparts in China are also state-owned mouthpieces like Global Times and CCTV.

On the other hand, anti-Beijing media such as the various publications under the Falun Gong-affiliated Epoch Times (大纪元时报) that have been churning out disinformation attacking the CCP during the protests were not considered as “official” information by Chinese Malaysian dailies.

It’s been reported that both sides of the Hong Kong protests generated and spread disinformation to sway public opinion, but the platforms used by protesters were very different from their rivals. The former, however, preferred instant messaging app Telegram that encrypted their messages and protected their identities. It’s hard for information circulated on such platforms to go beyond local users and reach foreign media. Our investigations, however, did not cover any messaging applications. Read more about our methodology at the bottom.

Joining the skirmish

Our investigation also identified over a dozen popular public Facebook pages run by managers based in Malaysia that have been sharing misinformation on the protests. Videos, articles and news reports with sensational and exaggerated headlines were shared by both pro- and anti-protesters pages. Such content often attracted huge responses from users who shared the same view.

However, for the record, we found no evidence to indicate these pages were intentionally created to spread misinformation or propaganda for either party. Many of these pages have been active for several years and have built considerable following before the protests erupted.

They can be categorised into three groups - town/state-based communities such as “I’m from Penang” (我来自槟城), supporters of local political parties like “We Fully Support P.R- D.A.P 我们全力支持民行”, and news information sharing pages such as “FBT News 新闻最前线”.

Many of them formed networks of pages that amplified each other’s messages by simultaneously posting the same content and cross-sharing content. However, we could not confirm if the pages were managed by the same people as Facebook only reveals the location of the page managers but not their identities.

One of those networks identified in our investigation consists of three Facebook pages - “World news” (天下无所不闻), “I can’t find any reason to support BN” (我真的找不到支持国阵的理由) and ”还我公正，力挺安华！We Support Anwar！”. Combined, they have close to 60,000 likes.

These pages have cross-shared or published some 20 posts with identical content that were either pro-Beijing or anti-protesters. Most of those posts used exaggerated or sensational language containing false information.

For example, one post about Hong Kong police searching for protesters that vandalised the legislative council building had a message that read, “10 thugs have been convicted! Hong Kong begins citywide search! Foreign ministry denounces UK! Declare war if more interference!” (10名暴徒罪證已定！香港開始全城搜捕！外交部痛斥英國！再干涉就開戰！).

The post is no longer available on Facebook. The reasons for its removal was not made clear but it is available in our database that we have made public.

Almost all their common posts were articles or videos that had been published on Qiqu.live (screenshot above), a content farm targeting Chinese-speaking audiences. This pattern was also found in other networks of pages. They consistently posted articles and videos related to the protests from the same content farm.

Content farms or content mills refer to websites that publish a large amount of low-quality content, often with sensational titles, to lure clicks and views with the purpose of earning advertising revenue or swaying public opinions. Since their sole purpose is to attract attention, their content often contains misleading and/or false information.

According to The Reporter, an award-winning investigative journalism website based in Taiwan, a network of hundreds of content farms targeting Chinese-speaking audiences in Asia was run from Malaysia. The websites in this network include those with “Qiqu” in their domain names like Qiqu.live and Qiqu.pro and those with “KanWatch” like KanWatch.com, KanWatch.me and KanWatch.site.

A deeper look at Qiqu found that many of the videos it published on the China-US geopolitics originated from pro-Beijing YouTube channels like 时政焦点, 中国新观察 and 时政热点.

Another network of pages that distributed pro-Beijing disinformation were centered around “Being overseas” (人在海外) which has eight managers - six located in Malaysia and two in Singapore - and has close to 140,000 likes.
2019 11 Jun

Malaysia

During the early stage of the protests, one post claimed protesters had devised several strategies including the use of Molotov cocktails, explosives and mini crossbows to charge the legislative council building on Jun 12, 2019, in order to stop the extradition bill from being passed.
2019 11 Jun

Hong Kong

A check online showed that the content came from an unverified report published by the CCP-controlled Wen Wei Po on the same day. It based the report on an alleged discussion in a protesters’ Telegram group.
2019 11 Jun

Malaysia

Although the post received only 11 shares, the information was further amplified by other pages including "Grassroot fully support Chinese traitors to resign" (草根全力支持卖华贼下台) and "We fully support Pakatan Harapan" (我们全力支持希望联盟) that consistently shared posts from “Being overseas” during the protests.
Despite this, none of the mentioned weapons were seen during the protest on June 12. Instead, protesters hurled at police umbrellas, traffic cones, water bottles and bricks that they found at the spot. Police responded with pepper spray, tear gas, bean-bag rounds and rubber bullets.

Foreign disinfo amplified by pro-protesters forces

Malaysiakini's investigation also identified Facebook pages that distributed pro-protesters misinformation although the number is much lower than those in the opposite camp. Most of them were set up as pro-Pakatan Harapan/Pakatan Rakyat pages. However, none of them were official Pakatan pages and there was no evidence found indicating any Pakatan leaders were behind them.

“Rakyat Rise to Change the Regime” (全民起義改朝換代) was one of the most active and popular pro-protesters pages run by managers based in Malaysia.

screenshot of Rakyat Rise to Change the Regime Facebook page

It consistently provided disinformation to its 60,000 followers during the peak of the protests. This included content from foreign media, especially YouTube channels affiliated with Epoch Times, a multi-platform media network backed by the anti-Beijing spiritual movement Falun Gong.

The channels include Epoch Times Hong Kong (香港大紀元新唐人聯合新聞頻道), New Tang Dynasty Television (NTDTV, 新唐人電視臺), Crossroads of the World (世界的十字路口唐浩) and Dayu Show (新聞拍案驚奇大宇).

screenshots of NTDTV and Crossroads of the World Youtube pages

Epoch Times Hong Kong, which has over 400,000 subscribers and was temporarily suspended by YouTube twice. The first was in early November 2020 during the US presidential election and the second was in January 2021, just before the inauguration of US President Joe Biden. YouTube did not reveal the reasons behind both suspensions.

screenshot of Epoch Times suspended by Youtube

Started in March 2019, Dayu Show quickly accumulated over 575,000 subscribers in just 20 months. The show’s only host, Lee Da Yu, was a broadcast journalist with NTDTV before joining the show.

2019 4 Oct

Malaysia

One video shared by “Rakyat Rise to Change the Regime” alleged that the escalating violence between police and protesters was a plot by the CCP to divide the people of Hong Kong.
2019 4 Oct

Hong Kong

The video was published by the Epoch Times Hong Kong Youtube channel a few hours earlier.
2019 11 Oct

Malaysia

Another video shared by “Rakyat Rise to Change the Regime” falsely claimed that female students arrested during the protests were raped by Hong Kong police.
2019 10 Oct

US

The video was published a day before on Dayu Show. It has been viewed over one million times on the YouTube channel.
2019 21 Nov

Malaysia

The same allegation was spread by two anti-Beijing Facebook pages - “Political scandal wiki” (政治丑闻维基) and “Chinese Malaysian channel” (大马华人频道).
Although less influential, these two pages amplify their messages by regularly posting or cross-sharing identical misinformation about the protests.
2019 1 Nov

Hong Kong

The video they shared was published by Epoch Times Hong Kong.

2019 12 Jun

Malaysia

The official Facebook page of the Chinese embassy in Malaysia shared a YouTube video in Chinese packed with conspiracy theories. The post received over 100 reactions and shared 37 times on Facebook.
Entitled “Deconstructing how the ‘color revolution’ by US destabilised a country in 12 steps and analysis of the Occupy Central Movement, Ukraine and Arab Spring” (解构美国如何‘颜色革命’12步搞乱一个国家，浅析占中事件乌克兰阿拉伯之春), the 26-minute video claims that the same modus operandi was repeated in the 2014 Hong Kong protests.
2016 30 Oct

Hong Kong

Although the embassy had described the video as an exposé by Hong Kong media, the video was actually uploaded to YouTube nearly three years ago by an unknown channel called “Ciao chef Lev” with only 199 subscribers.
It alleged that the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a US agency funded by the US Congress to promote democracy abroad, was funding and supporting the protesters to trigger a ‘colour revolution’ in Hong Kong similar to the uprising in Arab countries and Ukraine which were allegedly part of a global conspiracy by the Freemason organisation.
The video also alleged the Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 that was shot down in 2014 was a ‘false flag operation’ (military action that’s made to appear to have been carried out by a group that is not actually responsible) to provide an excuse for the US and Europe to impose economic sanctions against Russia.
2014 19 Oct

Hong Kong

Further online investigation found that the video was first posted weeks after the Occupy Central Movement in 2014, by a YouTube channel of a church based in Hong Kong called The Church of Zion.
The video, which has over one million views, is a sermon delivered by its leader Reverend Leung Yat-wah. The controversial church was called a cult by mainstream Christian churches in 2004 as it encouraged followers to drink hydrogen peroxide every day in order to cure a host of diseases.
2019 5 Aug

Unknown

The embassy Facebook page shared another YouTube video in English with the message “The riots in #HongKong clearly require orchestration, leadership and most importantly, money. So who is the force behind the scenes? It’s time to unveil the true nature of #NationalEndowmentforDemocracy (#NED) in this video.” The post was shared 205 times.
It propagated the conspiracy theory that the protests in Hong Kong, both in 2014 and 2019, were funded by the US through the NED. The video claimed that NED is an extension of the CIA with the purpose of destabilising rival countries.
2019 30 Jul

China

The original video is published by Beijing Review, a state-owned English news magazine, on its YouTube channel with the title “US Fingerprints All Over Hong Kong Violence”.
Although pro-democracy groups in Hong Kong have been receiving funding from NED for quite some time, there's no clear evidence to prove such funding is used to fund the protests.

Conclusion

Malaysiakini’s investigation found that although the disinformation campaign was started by foreign forces with a clear agenda to influence public opinion both local and international, it was brought into Malaysian cyberspace mainly by local players driven by different goals.

Local Chinese language media was found to be passive “importers” of the news whose purpose was to provide coverage of the protests for local audiences. However, the lack of resources and skills in their newsrooms to filter, curate and fact-check the information before publishing them has led to the amplification and dissemination of largely pro-Beijing disinformation in Malaysia.

The problem was further aggravated by conventional news operations that preferred mainstream media content from China and Hong Kong – comprising mostly state-controlled and pro-establishment news organisations – and their long-term content-sharing partnership with these media.

On the other hand, this investigation identified local public Facebook pages that have been actively spreading foreign disinformation originating from China state media and other international anti-Beijing media.

These Facebook pages, both pro-Beijing and pro-protesters, were able to reach a wide audience not only due to the huge number of followers, but also through coordinated distribution with several pages functioning as a network.

Despite such huge influence, there was barely any oversight or action taken by social media platforms such as Facebook and local authorities on the practice. This could be due to the fact that the disinformation was mainly communicated in Chinese, which is not as widely monitored as English and Malay content here. Another reason could be that the content concerned a foreign issue with little, if any, direct impact on domestic affairs.

As global powers up their game in this information war, inaction by authorities and lack of awareness could see Malaysians further misled, polarised and even exploited. This vulnerability will expose the country to more disinformation operations that could one day have greater and more direct influence on local affairs and could cause greater harm.

The Hong Kong infowar
in Malaysia

Context

What we found

The disinfo ‘importers’

Case 1

Case 2

Gatekeepers’ dilemma

‘Not culprit but accomplices’

M’sian Facebook dominated by pro-Beijing voice

Joining the skirmish

Foreign disinfo amplified by pro-protesters forces

Disinfo from the Chinese Embassy in Malaysia

Conclusion

The Hong Kong infowarin Malaysia

Context

What we found

The disinfo ‘importers’

Case 1

Case 2

Gatekeepers’ dilemma

‘Not culprit but accomplices’

M’sian Facebook dominated by pro-Beijing voice

Joining the skirmish

Foreign disinfo amplified by pro-protesters forces

Disinfo from the Chinese Embassy in Malaysia

Conclusion

The Hong Kong infowar
in Malaysia