China: The coup that never was

By Venkatesh Raghavan*

Diplomatic channels reporting from China to Indian intelligence officers set to rest the rumours on social media about the military coup and Chinese premier, Xi Jinping being under house arrest. Tracing the source of the misinformation campaign, the experts disclosed that none of the news or graphics came from any authentic media portal or website. It all was routed from Africa and later Indian twitter handlers picked it up for re-tweeting and creating an alarm situation. The rumour mongers on Twitter trended on Xi Jinping’s unprecedented attempt of earning a third term in office as president of China getting thwarted as he was being placed under house arrest after his return from Uzbekistan.

In the absence of any credible news source to ascertain the veracity of the rumours about the coup, a counterargument was also placed that Xi had been quarantined for a period of 15 days after his return from Uzbekistan’s Samarkand region. It was attributed to China following very strict quarantining norms to nip the Covid virus spread in the bud.

What is significant is that in today’s routine press conference of the Chinese Foreign Ministry in Beijing – the first such press conference since September 23, 2022 – no direct questions were raised about Xi Jinping or the rumoured coup. However, a reference was made to a recent Stanford Internet Observatory report disclosing how the US spreads disinformation targeting specific countries and regions including China on social media platforms to sway international public opinion and manipulate people’s perceptions and narratives. 

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin noted that the report revealed that over the years, the United States of America has put in place “a huge” propaganda network targeting countries including China, Russia and Iran on social media platforms. “Through this network, the US has launched political propaganda and rumour-mongering campaigns by creating fake personas, sharing similar content and hyping up specific topics. I have also noted that multiple US media outlets have recently revealed that these sham accounts are suspected to be managed and run by the US military with the aim of staging covert information wars,” Wenbin told journalists. He blamed the US for “fabricating and spreading disinformation to glorify aggression and interference as promoting democracy, plundering as upholding justice, and devastation and killing as protecting human rights”.

According to him what was particularly ironic was that the US, “being the largest disinformation propagator”, has constantly labelled other countries and slung mud at them. “The US is the one who has created a colossal number of sham accounts, yet it keeps asking social media platforms to remove the accounts of Chinese users. The US is the one who has manipulated public opinion, yet it keeps labelling Chinese media outlets as “state-affiliated” accounts. The US is the one who has applied a gloomy filter to paint China in a negative light, yet it keeps accusing China of turning public sentiment against the US”, he said.  

“Perhaps some in the US believe that if they spread enough rumours, they will win the information war. However, people of the world are clear-eyed and will not be fooled. Be it alleged WMDs in Iraq, the “White Helmets” in Syria or “genocide” in Xinjiang, they have all become synonyms for the US’s failing credibility. The various disinformation spread by the US is being seen through by more and more people around the world and will only be rejected by the world just like US hegemony,” Wenbin said. 

Sources say internet users who were desperately attempting to ascertain whether Xi was being deposed prior to his claim for a third term in office found no confirmation and were left to rely on circumstantial narratives that supported the rumours that were being floated. The rumour mills were working overtime soon after Xi left Samarkand after the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit. There were also falsified claims about Xi not having one-to-one meetings with Russian Vladimir Putin and Indian Narendra Modi.

More intriguingly, the graphic displays of an 80 km long military convoy marching into Beijing, loud people’s protests and also a ban on air and rail traffic turned out to be doctored or morphed to suit the narrative of the twitter handlers. The morphed graphics and videos that were doing the rounds on social media platforms were supported by adequate fabrications about Xi’s behaviour in the previous two years and went on to describe the ‘coup’ as a culmination of such actions.  

The rumour mongers credited the ‘coup’ to former Chinese Communist Party leaders and veterans, stating that there were plenty of disgruntled elements within the Party who were keen to ensure that Xi was on his way out. Intelligence sources from within India also attributed the amplification of such rumours to right-wing elements in our country, who were eager to swallow the narrative and build on it.  

*Senior Journalist

(With inputs from global bihari bureau)