A subterranean campaign on the Chinese-language social media platform WeChat has ramped up in the final weeks of the 2022 federal election campaign, with material being shared in private groups that alleges Labor and the Greens will fund school programs to turn students gay, impose new taxes and destroy Chinese wealth.
The “posters” – well-produced posts designed for WeChat – carry no party authorisation, but for the most part support the Liberal party. Several have been obtained by the Guardian.
They were seeded into Liberal MP Gladys Liu’s volunteer group and elsewhere just before and after the second debate. At this stage there is no information about their origins or how widely they have been shared.
But they appear to be circulating in both Sydney and Melbourne.
Contacted by the Guardian, Liu the member for Chisholm, said: “I have never seen this material before and have had no involvement with its production or distribution.”
The posts pick up many of the themes that were run within the Chinese community in the 2019 campaign and appear designed to damage Labor among socially conservative Chinese-speaking voters.
It is impossible to determine their origins and whether they are the work of an individual, a group, a party or a state actor.
A poster with a pink background includes an extract from a Daily Telegraph article which claims: “Labor’s national policy platform removed ‘mother’, ‘breastfeeding’, ‘pregnant women’ and other words.
The poster refers to the article with comments including: “Some have questioned whether Albo has the ability to stop the woke “erasing” women if he won the election. Labor has ‘betrayed’ women.”, the poster says. There is no suggestion the author of the article is aware of or authorised its use.
A poster with a green background focuses on the supposed economic risk of Labor, warning it would “cancel negative gearing, raise the tax rates, the mortgage rate will rise, the unemployment rate will rise, the cost of living will rise, income will drop and family wealth will drop.”
The poster has been shared within a group of 81 people, called the Australia-China Literary Garden.
“In the past 50 years, Labor created the highest RBA interest rate (18%) in history in 1990 during its government; in 1992, it created the highest rate of unemployment in history (11.2%)“ the poster says.
“Liberal has created the lowest RBA rates (0.1%) during its government in 2021. In 2022 it creates the lowest unemployment rate in history (4%).”
Posters have also appeared in a video group, EnjLifeWide. The site is linked to Jen Li, a volunteer who works on Gladys Liu’s campaign.
Contacted by the Guardian, Li said she had only taken photographs of the posters to bring them to the attention of Liu’s campaign, and that she had nothing to do with creating them. “ I do not have those skills,’ she said.
Another post reads: “If you vote for Labor, you are voting for the following disasters:
1. increase tax;
2. cancel negative gearing, heavily discourage Chinese people’s property investment, house price plummets;
3. interest rate rises, property houses plummet, your wealth decreases;
4. cost of living increases rapidly, money becomes worthless;
5. The Australian economy enters depression and slows down;
6. You will lose your jobs and houses;
7. Refugees flood in, taking your wealth away.
8. The country has to borrow loans to survive.”
Separately, immediately after the second debate this week a user called Jaylin Mao posted an article from April 2019 about the Safe Schools program.
Jaylin Mao is the name of a businesswoman who has been previously identified as a Liberal member and is a former president of the Australia-Sichuan Chamber of Commerce.
Mao could not be contacted for comment at her listed place of work and did not reply to requests via Facebook and The Guardian has been unable to confirm that she is the person who made the posts or that she is aware of their content.
It was shared into a group on WeChat called “ATC” which is a group for Chinese speakers interested in horse-racing with 274 members.
The article says: “Labor and Greens make people not to love God. They encourage same-sex marriage, promiscuity, abortion, unreasonably distribute high welfare, encourage lazy people to not take responsibilities, leading to the split of families and incomplete homes for children who suffer from mental harm and will become problematic young people, eventually breaking social harmony.”
“(They) promote the so-called ‘Safe School Program’ to educate little kids about homosexuality in primary schools, about switching their gender. (They) spend your money educating your children (to become) homosexual, letting you have no descendants and making population plummet.”
“On the other hand, they use humanity as an excuse, they get a large group of ethnicities who only give birth to get welfare and have no Christian faith to enter Australia. This will shake Australia’s foundation of faith, this is an exchange for political benefits by sacrificing national interest.”
Keeping track of this kind of misinformation/unauthorised information campaigns is notoriously difficult. There is nothing illegal about sharing articles and images for personal purposes, however, if the material originated with a political party or another group intending to influence voting then it should carry an authorisation from the original publisher.
Australia has no laws requiring truth in political advertising, which means that there is nothing to stop misleading material.
The Australian electoral commission said it responds to complaints but is not specifically monitoring political activity on WeChat.
Mao could not be contacted for comment at her listed place of work and did not reply to requests via Facebook.
