A week after Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway announced plans to seize $24 billion worth of assets owned by China as compensation for COVID-19, the online hate started pouring in.
Hundreds of posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, in late November began questioning the attorney general’s competence and character, honing in on her defense of Missouri’s gerrymandered congressional map and crack down on intoxicating hemp products.
“She should be impeached and dismissed from her position as attorney general,” one post declared.
But according to investigators at the social media analytics company Graphika, the attacks were not an organic reaction to a high-profile and controversial announcement. Instead, researchers found they were a coordinated campaign, likely originating in China and conducted by fake accounts.
A network of 105 inauthentic pro-China X accounts were involved, according to Margot Hardy, the Graphika intelligence analyst who was involved in the research and an expert in Chinese influence operations.
About half of the accounts were created in November and December. Many display gaming or animation-related profile pictures, have few or no followers and use randomly generated account handles.
Graphika has studied this type of activity before, Hardy said, but most of the time it targets people who are dissidents of China or exiles in the U.S.
“This is interesting, because we don’t often see China-linked or pro-China actors targeting specific U.S. individuals at the local level,” Hardy said, “which is something rather more sophisticated. So that’s why we reported on this activity.”
Posting activity dropped sharply on weekends and during the Golden Week holiday in early October that celebrates the founding of the People’s Republic of China. The timing of the posts during the workday, Hardy said, signals that there is likely a “commercial actor” behind the campaign and that the network is likely based in China.
The accounts in the network have shared other pro-China positions, such as calling for lifting bans on Huawei, the Chinese tech company banned in the U.S. out of concern its equipment could be used for espionage. Some accounts previously engaged in another coordinated campaign in late November that portrayed the U.S. as a “scam-friendly” nation and an “empire of espionage.”
Several posts misused pronouns, referring to Hanaway as “he,” and misspelled her name as “Kathleen Hanaway” or “Hanawi,” suggesting the possible use of auto-translation tools to produce the content.
This activity, Hardy said, demonstrates how pro-China actors respond to criticism of Beijing or calls for COVID-19 accountability by attempting to discredit those individuals.
“We are not threatened by online trolls from China, and remain undeterred in our efforts to seize Chinese assets,” Hanaway said in an email to The Independent. “Missourians deserve justice.”
In late 2020, the state of Missouri sued China for that country’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak. In March, U.S. District Judge Stephen Limbaugh awarded Missouri $24 billion after China did not defend itself in the lawsuit.
In his ruling, Limbaugh wrote that China concealed the true nature of COVID-19so it could stockpile protective gear that could limit spread of the virus. He found that Missouri lost tax revenue due to the pandemic and will experience a long-term loss of revenue as well, accepting the state’s the $8 billion estimate for the period 2020 to 2051. He added the state’s increased cost for protective gear, estimated at $123 million, due to the hoarding and tripled the amount to set the final judgment.
The judgment is against the Chinese government, the Communist Party of China, several national agencies, provincial and local governments around Wuhan and the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Hanaway has formally asked the U.S. State Department to notify China that the state intends to pursue assets with full or partial Chinese government ownership to satisfy the judgment. The attorney general’s office is also assembling a list of Chinese properties that could be targeted, with a focus on properties wholly owned by the Chinese government or by companies in which the Chinese government has a stake.
“China owes Missourians $24 billion,” Hanaway said. “The People’s Republic of China is answerable to the extraordinary harm it inflicted on our citizens and our economy.”
Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., said in an emailed statement last month that China’s policies and measures during the pandemic were “acts of national sovereignty and are not subject to the jurisdiction of U.S. courts.”
China will not pay, Pengy said, and “will retaliate if necessary.”
The campaign of pro-China attacks on Hanaway appears to have petered out, Hardy said. This network’s activity does not appear to have gained organic traction on X, and Graphika did not find that the network branched out to other social media platforms.
“A possible rational explanation (for the campaign) could be that her remarks were reported in the region,” Hardy said. “Or it could be that there was a specific Chinese state media coverage that triggered this. But for sure, it’s not typical to see this level of involvement at the local level targeting a specific U.S. official.”
