This new report says that China maintains a nationwide
network of data surveillance services that were developed over the past decade
and are used domestically to warn officials of politically sensitive
information online.
The software, which targets domestic Internet users and
media, also collects data on foreign targets from sources such as Twitter,
Facebook, and other Western social media.
The documents accessed by the Washington-based publication
also show that Chinese agencies including state media, propaganda departments,
police, military and cyber regulators are purchasing new or more sophisticated
systems to gather data.
The report states that the Chinese state media software
program mines Twitter and Facebook to create a database of foreign journalists
and academics.
The report further reveals that a Beijing police
intelligence program analyses Western content on Hong Kong and Taiwan. It also
catalogues Uyghur language content abroad.
"Now we can better understand the underground network
of anti-China personnel," said a Beijing-based analyst who works for a
unit reporting to China's Central Propaganda Department.
The unit was once tasked with producing a data report on how
negative content relating to Beijing's senior leadership is spread on Twitter,
including profiles of individual academics, politicians, and journalists,
according to the report.
"They are now reorienting part of that effort outward,
and I think that's frankly terrifying, looking at the sheer numbers and sheer
scale that this has taken inside China," said Mareike Ohlberg, a senior
fellow at the German Marshall Fund, as quoted by The Washington Post.
She added: "It really shows that they now feel it's
their responsibility to defend China overseas and fight the public opinion war
overseas."