Dr. Li Bicheng, or How China Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Social Media Manipulation — Insights Into Chinese Use of Generative AI and Social Bots from the Career of a PLA Researcher

Excerpt:  “Despite the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) initial fear about the threat that the rise of social media posed for authoritarian regimes, the CCP has come to embrace social media as a way to influence domestic and foreign public opinion in its favor. Even as Beijing blocks foreign social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter (now X), from operating in China, it actively seeks to leverage these and other platforms for both overt propaganda and covert influence operations abroad. While Chinese social media manipulation has so far produced relatively limited results, we argue the advent of generative artificial intelligence (AI) could dramatically improve China’s capabilities moving forward, posing a greater threat to global democracies.”