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Chinas Peoples Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party, posted a video on March 9 on Weibo, the popular Chinese social-media platform, showing Russia providing humanitarian aid to Ukrainians outside Kharkiv, a Ukrainian city near the Russian border that has faced artillery and rocket attacks since Moscows February 24 invasion. The video received more than 3 million views.

In other coverage, the Moscow correspondent of Chinas Phoenix TV has issued reports while embedded with Russian troops outside of Mariupol, a strategic port city that is the scene of stiff fighting. In a recent clip he speaks with soldiers about their steady advance and talks to civilians allegedly welcoming the presence of Russian forces.

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Chinas tightly controlled media and heavily censored Internet have provided increasingly skewed coverage, omitting details on civilian casualties and the widespread international condemnation of Moscow, while quoting Russias own state-backed networks and broadcasting the views of Russian officials without verification or pushback to its domestic audience.

While Beijing is threading the needle diplomatically and looking to put breathing room between it and its close ties with the Kremlin in the face of mounting international pressure over its invasion of Ukraine, Chinas state media and vocal officials are increasingly converging with Moscows distorted narrative of the war even beginning to push conspiracy theories against Ukraine and the West in the process.

U.S. biolabs in Ukraine have indeed attracted much attention recently, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said on March 8, echoing a conspiracy theory regularly pushed by Russian media and online accounts that some Western officials charge could be part of an effort by the Kremlin to justify its invasion by saying that Ukraine is working on biological or nuclear weapons.

All dangerous pathogens in Ukraine must be stored in these labs and all research activities are led by the U.S. side, Zhao added, without providing evidence to support the claim. U.S. and Ukrainian officials say the allegation is baseless.

China, Russia, And The Ukraine War

The biolab theory has been a mainstay of Russian state media and even some embassy accounts on social media with a recent report by Foreign Policy magazine highlighting how it has taken hold among American far-right online conspiracy networks and spread to other countries as well.

It is also not the first time it has been referenced by Chinese officials, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying first raising the claim about biolabs in Ukraine during a May 2021 press conference.

Chinese diplomats have also frequently pointed to Fort Detrick, a U.S. military facility in Maryland that the Soviet Union falsely claimed in the 1980s was the source of the virus causing AIDS and has often been a target of Russian disinformation, to deflect questions when asked about the origins of COVID-19.

But the timing and renewed push of the theory could be part of a wider strategy, with Britains Defense Ministry tweeting on March 8 that while the baseless claims are long-standing, Ukraine has stated that it has no such facilities, they are currently likely being amplified as part of a retrospective justification for Russias invasion of Ukraine.

The biolab story also fits with a growing trend of convergence between Chinese and Russian sources that has accelerated since the war in Ukraine, with false and misleading stories echoed by Chinese media and receiving hundreds of millions of views on Weibo in the process.

Throughout the war, Chinese media have helped spread dubious Russian-state narratives about Ukrainian forces using civilians as human shields while also saying the Russian military only goes after other military targets, despite the shelling of dozens of apartment blocks and other civilian structures.

Chinese networks have also magnified and spread Russian disinformation, such as when Chinese state broadcaster CCTV quoted Russian officials to falsely claim that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had fled the capital, or when the state-backed Global Times, citing the Russian state network RT as its only source, said many Ukrainian soldiers had surrendered on the first day of the invasion.

Taken together, this highlights a different version of the war that viewers and online users are seeing in China compared to most of the world and how Chinese authorities have allowed the Kremlins propaganda networks to shape its publics perception of the war with few restrictions.

For instance, the Kremlin-backed Sputnik has over 11.6 million followers on Weibo and other Russian outlets also have large and engaged followings inside China, where access to many other foreign media outlets and major information sites are blocked or restricted.

This has contributed to Russian claims about Ukrainian officials being extremists and neo-Nazis to be regularly adopted online and also picked up by Chinese-language outlets, which often reference the Azov Battalion a fringe unit of the Ukrainian National Guard known for having neo-Nazi sympathizers in its ranks and show it as representative of wider Ukrainian society.

More Than Censorship

Control of all Chinese media by the Communist Party and intensive Internet censorship make it difficult to gauge public opinion, while pervasive censorship also means the pro-Russian sentiment online in China is likely not representative of the country as a whole.

But the types of content that are allowed online or published by state-backed media show what Chinese authorities want their population of 1.4 billion people to think.

Chinas government has neither condemned nor condoned Russias war in Ukraine and has even refrained from calling it an invasion. Both expressions of sympathy for Ukraine and support for Russia appear online and in social media, but criticism of Moscow is regularly censored, according to China Digital Times, a group that tracks Chinese censorship and online discussion at the University of California, Berkeley.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin have grown closer in recent years and heralded a new era in their ties during a joint meeting in Beijing on February 4.

While Russias invasion of Ukraine has left Beijing awkwardly distancing itself diplomatically from the Kremlin, the shared messaging from both countries state media shows that ties are still intact and they could be growing in the information space, an area where many experts say cooperation has been developing in recent years.

Xi and Putin have signed a variety of media-cooperation agreements over the years and have held a Sino-Russian media forum annually since 2015.

A December report by the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) found that both China and Russia had played a central role in spreading COVID-related disinformation and propaganda throughout the pandemic. However, the report did not find clear-cut evidence of direct cooperation between Beijing and Moscow, instead noting that they borrowed from and amplified each others campaigns.

Similarly, a June report from the Carnegie Moscow Center found that while both countries state-backed media and officials often echo similar talking points and narratives on world events, this is largely due to Beijing and Moscow having shared strategic objectives in global affairs.

Chinese and Russian online behavior are largely the result of Chinese actors careful but independent study of and creative adaptations of the Kremlins tools, rather than an expression of active, ongoing cooperation between the two governments, the report noted.

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Beyond Censorship: How China amplifies propaganda for Russia's distorted version of the war in Ukraine - Milwaukee Independent

JESSE WATTERS (HOST):Tulsi, it is striking when yousee Putin propaganda and youline it up against Bidenpropaganda.Do you think that we're at riskof kind of moving in thatdirection right now?

[...]

TULSI GABBARD (FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE): This is what is so dangerousabout the place that we are inright now as a country.Where this idea, this principle,this foundation of freedom ofspeech, freedom of expression isdirectly under threat and underattack.

And you are right, it's not so different.What is happening here is not so different from what we're seeing happeningin Russia, where you have got state TV and controlled messagingacross the board.This is where we are at.

WATTERS: It worked so well for themduring COVID.If you questioned anything, theywanted to knock you off socialmedia, they wanted to get you introuble because you were seen asa danger to other people. And now they are trying the sameplaybook with the war inUkraine.

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Jesse Watters and Tulsi Gabbard say the so-called censorship of conservatives in America is not so different to media censorship in Russia - Media...

Ukrainian emergency employees and volunteers carry an injured pregnant woman from the maternity hospital, damaged by shelling, in Mariupol, Wednesday. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov dismissed the claims of an attack on a functioning hospital as lies and propaganda. [AP]

In a liberal country, the state does not even censor the banners suspended by soccer fans. For example, we dont know what one batch of PAOK hooligans meant with their recent banner reading Hang in there brothers, but we can certainly guess. Yes, the banner unfurled in the PAOK stadium should have been taken down. But not by the police or a judicial official who have no such authority. It should have been taken down by the stadiums owner, which is PAOK itself.

By the same token, the European Union has no business censoring Russian President Vladimir Putins propaganda in Europe. The plug should not be pulled on the online versions of Russia Today and Sputnik, even though, to paraphrase, the first casualty of this war has been lies. If anything, it would have given us a laugh to read Putins continued claims of feeling threatened by the Ukrainians.

We mention the online versions specifically because radio waves are something quite different. The electromagnetic spectrum is a very valuable resource, with specific and limited broadcasting frequencies and wavelengths. It is also a public commodity. And just as a state has a duty to ban the use of its airspace by the aggressors bombers, so it is well within its rights to forbid the use of any of its public resources for anything its democratic society considers detrimental. Banning certain broadcasts is not censorship, in the sense that it is not forbidding the propagation of a specific message. It is simply ensuring that the state is not enabling the dissemination of, say, fake news.

A liberal state does not forbid a message, even one the majority may regard as harmful, but it does not help propagate it either

In other words, a liberal state does not forbid a message, even one the majority may regard as harmful, but it does not help propagate it either. It is this fundamental principle that gives the National Broadcasting Council its legitimacy. It is an independent authority whose task it is to manage our public property by setting certain rules and limitations.

But the council has absolutely no authority over the internet or print media, whose producers use private resources to get their message across. The responsibility of dealing with the kind of propaganda and fake news that has been spread for years by the Putin regime lies with civil society.

In this sense, the European Union may decide that there is no room on the public radio waves of its member-states for the kind of Putin nonsense and poison disseminated by Russia Today and Sputnik, just as it may decide to ban Nazi propaganda. The Commission, however, has absolutely no authority over online networks and cable channels none whatsoever.

Freedom of information is a fundamental European value, and it must not be undermined, not even in times of war.

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Propaganda, censorship and the limits of authority - Kathimerini English Edition

In celebration of Read Across America Day, schools and libraries championed favorite books in a giant celebration of all things reading. Among the participants on social media was the New York State Education Department. Several employees had their photos taken with a book they love, alongside a short statement of why they encouraged people to pick up those titles.

One of those tweets was quickly picked up by a Twitter account notorious for reposting content to its right-wing following and encouraging them to harass the person in question. This account was the reason behind the removal of a 3rd grade teacher from her classroom in the fall because she shared LGBTQ+ books on her personal TikTok account available to her students (she was later reinstated).

The response was swift and immediate. Followers of the above account began to ask the New York State Education Department. The tweet, as well as the Facebook post, were deleted.

The story here isnt (yet) what has or has not happened to Moore. Its the fact that the State Eduction Department, where Moore is State Librarian, failed to defend her choice in a book thats been making censors angry for the last year. Rather than double down on their choice to run the tweet and defend the right to read rather than even note that accusations about the book being child pornography are wrong the Department removed the tweet and rendered themselves complicit in active censorship. It was and remains a victory for right-wing groups like this one, further emboldening and empowering them to continue pushing for silence.

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Compare this to stories of quiet censorship and see that where an institution of power like the above quietly pulls and buries its story while individual librarians whose jobs and livelihoods may be on the line by speaking out about the right for people to read whatever theyd like to read, and its impossible not to wonder what the Department was doing and who that Department is working for.

Its certainly not the students.

Its the bullies from which the State Eduction Department should be protecting those students.

Emily DeSantis, spokesperson for the New York State Eduction Department told The National Desk that,[NY]SED was not aware of the graphic nature of the contents of the book, which is not apparent from its title. Once we became aware, we immediately removed the post. SED is investigating the circumstances under which this title was selected and posted.

Its unclear what graphic nature DeSantis and the rest of the team deemed unfit for promotion Gender Queer is an award-winning book appropriate for teen readers but what is clear is that the priority isnt intellectual freedom and the freedom to read for people in New York state.

As of writing, no reputable news site has followed up on this, and the previously public LinkedIn account for Lauren Moore has been deleted.

Frank Strong has put together an incredible resource for Texans: The Book-Loving Texans Guide to May 7th School Board Elections. This voters guide offers a look at school districts where board elections will be on the ballot in May, along with whose running, their beliefs, and where energy is really needed right now to ensure censorship doesnt win at the voting booth. Youll see clear lines of where money and support comes from for many of these candidates, as well as short histories of those communities and their ties to book removal agendas.

If youre not in Texas, this guide is still for you. Can you help out with an election there by donating or spreading the word? How can you adapt this guide to your own state? Its an incredible and collaborative tool.

For more ways to take action against censorship, use this toolkit forhow to fight book bans and challenges, as well as this guide toidentifying fake news. Then learn how and why you may want touse FOIA to uncover book challenges.

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Why Didnt The New York State Education Department Defend Its State Librarian?: This Weeks Boo... - Book Riot

The Chinese government is scrubbing the countrys media of sympathetic or accurate coverage of Ukraine and systematically amplifying pro-Putin talking points about Russia's invasion of Ukraine..

Why it matters: Chinas wide use of its propaganda and censorship muscle helps insulate Beijing from a domestic backlash against its support for Putin and leaves its citizens with an airbrushed, false version of events, similar to whats seen in Putins state-controlled Russia.

What's happening: Chinese media outlets were told to avoid posting "anything unfavorable to Russia or pro-Western" on their social media accounts, and to only use hashtags started by Chinese state media outlets, according to a leaked censorship directive.

But the Chinese government made a miscalculation in the early days of Russia's invasion, according to a new analysis published by Doublethink Lab, a Taiwan-based organization that researches online disinformation suggesting that Beijing underestimated Europe's resolve.

"They tried to depict the U.S., the West and NATO as not trustworthy, and people in Taiwan as delusional to think the U.S. will protect Taiwan at all," Doublethink Lab CEO Min Hsuan Wu told Axios.

Yes, but: Censorship means that opposing viewpoints are muted, making it seem like anti-west, pro-Russia sentiment is more ubiquitous among Chinese people than may actually be the case.

Go deeper: Governments around the globe hold upper hand online

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China is censoring the invasion of Ukraine - Axios