The ABC reveals Chinese social media is again facilitating foreign interference in our elections, Dutton is the true champion of China relations, while Chinese hospitals are overcharging Aussies for lifesaving surgery.

Take note of RedNote

The ABC reports (20/03/25), “Chinese social media platform  fuels misinformation concerns in Australian election”. It’s tabloid-like stuff, throwing a couple of buzz words into a headline and then building a narrative to support a poorly substantiated conclusion. If something can happen it doesn’t automatically mean it will; and if it does happen, that doesn’t mean it will be as bad as the headline suggests.

Is RedNote, the Chinese social media app millions in the English-speaking world flocked to after the US banned TikTok, generating any more or less misinformation than its Western equivalents? US-owned social media platforms Facebook, X and Instagram all play host to millions of posts with false content. In Australia, these platforms produce far more fake content than we see on Chinese social media.

The ABC story throws the specter of “foreign interference” out in the first sentence of the story. Foreign interference is unambiguous code for the Chinese Communist Party’s sinister attempts to destroy our democracy. There is absolutely no evidence presented in this story to support such assertions… but it makes for a great lead in.

While the ABC makes much of an AI video of Peter Dutton, dubbed in Chinese with a voice similar to his, how many Chinese-Australians believe Dutton actually speaks Chinese? I’m guessing it’s a figure slightly north of zero.

In recent years, there’s been a torrent of election time reports in mainstream media that Chinese-Australians are being fooled by misinformation campaigns. The one thing these reports lack, particularly the ABC’s RedNote report, is evidence that Chinese-Australians are actually influenced by clearly fake posts.

The underlying suggestion is that Chinese-Australians so lack intellect that they can’t distinguish between what’s real and what’s not. In my book, such continual suggestions are racist.

Further, there is not a single mention that both the Liberal and Labor parties are using their own official accounts on TikTok to post misinformation with AI-generated videos.

The principal source for the ABC story is a report authored, but not publicly released, by the RECapture project, a private collaboration of academics from the University of Melbourne, Monash and Deakin universities.

Two years ago, one of the authors published another report concluding that suggestions Chinese state actors were using WeChat to influence Australian elections were overblown, writing, “Despite fears of foreign interference, our study — which monitored multiple rounds of Australian federal and state elections — has not yet identified alleged ‘Chinese influence’ across (WeChat Official Accounts).”

In order to bring some balance back into its argument, the ABC got on the blower and sought comment from Victorian LNP senator and self-proclaimed “China wolverine” James Paterson.  

While Senator Paterson continues to bemoan anything China-related as linked to a totalitarian, hostile enemy, he remains silent on his own party’s use of TikTok, developed and owned by Chinese company Byte Dance.

According to an ABC report, the Liberals are running rings around PM Albanese and the Labor Party in peddling their political influence over the platform. In December 2024, Peter Dutton’s posts reached individual views of 859,250, while Albanese lagged far behind on 89,283. Surely the alternate prime minister’s posting on Chinese social media holds far greater sway over voters than the handful of RedNote posts identified by the ABC?  

Speaking of fooling voters

An exclusive RedBridge poll reported (paywalled) in Murdoch Media (19/03/25) has found that Dutton is the political leader best equipped to manage relations with China. Though the poll is not to be found anywhere on the RedBridge website, it reportedly found that 51 percent of Australians believe AUKUS has made Australia a safer place.

Oddly enough, 51 percent of respondents did not believe the AUKUS submarines were a good investment, presumably not the same 51 percent who think the subs make us safer. Despite the guns of the US and its willing allies being pointed at China, incredibly, 71 percent did not believe, or expressed no opinion, that AUKUS has increased the risk of war.

Lies, damned lies and statistics; if you think those numbers don’t add up, it’s because they don’t.

Chinese ‘horror’ story

An Australian couple face a “horror” medical bill at the hands of the Chinese, so we need somebody to blame. News.com.au (19/03/25) reports on the plight of an Australian couple holidaying in southern China. After 64-year-old David Crowley suffered a heart attack and received emergency lifesaving surgery at a hospital in Guilin, Murdoch stablemate, Sky News, says the couple was “slapped” with a $2000 a day medical bill.

So, what does $2000 a day get you?

A dive into the report reveals Crowley’s wife alerted staff at the hotel where they were staying that her husband could not move, was pale and had trouble breathing. Within 10 minutes, an ambulance was on the scene, rushing Crowley to a local hospital where, according to his family, he was placed in an induced coma and underwent emergency surgery to have two stents inserted.

To date, according to the couple’s son, the hospital has billed $11,000 for the ambulance, surgery and two days in the intensive care unit. It seems all Crowley got in return for that money was his life.

To give this some perspective, in 2023, I had a 40-minute procedure at a Sydney hospital to repair torn cartilage in my right knee. I was in and out of the hospital in half a day and the entire procedure cost $10,500 – imagine my horror.

The Sky News and news.com.au reports quote Crowley’s son as saying, “They just put the EFTPOS machine in front of Mum when she gets in.” According to the report, the surgery was not covered by insurance because Crowley had a pre-existing heart condition. If only the Crowleys went to Disneyland, then they’d only be looking at a bill of around $100,000 for the same procedure.

It’s indeed a horrible experience for any Australian tourist to face life-threatening medical episodes in a foreign land; but let’s not blame the Chinese for saving this man’s life and then asking to be paid.

Marcus Reubenstein is an independent journalist with more than twenty-five years of media experience, having previously been a staffer with a federal Liberal Party senator from 1992 to 1994. He spent five years at Seven News in Sydney and seven years at SBS World News where he was a senior correspondent. Internationally he has worked on assignments for CNN, Eurosport and the Olympic Games Broadcasting Service. He is the founder and editor of Asian business new website, APAC Business Review.

This is a republication from PEARLS & IRRITATIONS website at:  https://johnmenadue.com/misinformation-in-politics-anti-china-media-watch/

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.