With the turbulent political climate between China and the US, social media remains the primary battlefield for Chinese threat actors to influence public opinion. Evidence suggests that China combined different resources, including Chinese botnet, marketing firms, and overseas branches, in the influence operations (IO, or information operation). Notably, the IO content was tailored for the overseas Chinese. We assessed that China leverages its diaspora to further ferment the favorable narratives to win the public within the other countries.

In the first part of the presentation, we will dissect the recent evolution of the Chinese botnet. As generic AI becomes a heated concern at the end of 2022, Chinese botnets also adopted AI technologies in the campaigns to create related content. In "Operation WhitePaper," the Chinese botnet shared videos with VTubers' avatars criticizing the White Paper Revolution – a 2022 protest on Chinese strict covid policy.

In the second part of the presentation, we will introduce three notable campaigns to demonstrate the closer collaboration among the Chinese botnet, marketing firms, and overseas branches. First, we will detail how China's national police forces leverage the same botnet to operate disinformation campaigns in the US under the "912 Project". Then, we will share our exclusive investigation based on the UK-based PR company. Lastly, we will elaborate on a recent case in Taiwan, showing how the threat actors can potentially use local PR firms to conduct IO campaigns with more related content.

The Chinese IO campaigns aligned with its political agenda and often surged with important geopolitical events. In the last part of the talk, we will provide our assessment and the possible threat landscape for the rest of the year. Among all, as Taiwan will host the next presidential election in January 2024, we will provide our predictions on the potential IO campaigns ahead with policy recommendations to mitigate the potential impacts.