November 7, 2022
Monday 7 November 2022
Australians will be rightly shocked and disturbed to learn of the Chinese Communist Party’s weaponisation of social media to harm young women and liberal democracies.
A new report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute has exposed the chilling and highly organised harassment campaigns perpetrated by the Chinese Communist Party online which disproportionately targets young women of Asian heritage with grotesque sexualised smears.
The world’s largest techno-authoritarian state, China, cannot be allowed to intimidate, coerce and attempt to silence researchers, journalists and activists using platforms headquartered and regulated in liberal democracies. Social media companies must do more to combat this insidious behaviour which already violates their platform rules.
Political leadership is also required. Countering cyber-enabled foreign interference should be the next frontier for legislative reform, building on the success of the 2018 foreign interference and espionage reforms which largely targeted attempted interference in our political parties and democratic institutions.
We have now seen multiple case studies globally where social media has been weaponised to harm liberal democracies. Unless the government addresses this, our democratic institutions will be eroded just at the time when we need them to be stronger than ever to help meet the serious strategic challenges we face.
Read the APSI report here.
