The Chinese government is likely conducting influence operations on social media to covertly dispute territorial claims and denigrate authorities in India’s northeastern states.

As part of a joint investigation with Taiwanese think tank Doublethink Lab for its 2024 Foreign Influence on India's Election Observation Project, we identified coordinated social media campaigns seeking to amplify social tensions in Manipur and criticise the Indian government, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) party and its policies. This occurred in the lead-up to and during the Indian general elections, when social divisions were especially heightened.

Despite Beijing publicly seeking stability with India the Chinese Communist Party will likely use other covert methods, mainly targeting Chinese-speaking diasporas, to destabilise the India-China border and pursue its territorial ambitions.

The CCP has a history of trying to exploit ethnic and political conflicts in India’s northeastern states, such as in Manipur, where Beijing has allegedly fostered instability using Myanmar-based and local terror groups. On 3 May 2023, Manipur’s latest ethnic conflict in erupted between the Meitei and the Kuki indigenous ethnic groups over a disputed affirmative action measure related to benefits for the Meitei people. According to reports, the violence resulted in 221 deaths and displaced approximately 60,000 individuals.

Our findings shows that most of the narrative had first appeared on Chinese social media platforms which then entered the Indian social media landscape through translation or AI enabled translations. This way it reached to the targeted audience, the Meitei people. Anthropologists say the Meitei people may be ethnically related to Tibetans, whose land is now part of China, but the Meitei do not speak Chinese.

Violence in Manipur became a hot topic on Chinese social media platforms and websites in early 2024, amplified by pro-CCP writers and likely inauthentic social media accounts seeking to push CCP narratives in the region. These accounts spread misleading narratives, such as ‘There is a little China in India that holds the six-star red flag, does not speak Hindi and refuses to marry Indians’ (印度有个“小中国”，举六星红旗，不说印语，拒绝和印度人通婚). Others are ‘conflict in India’s Manipur is a result of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s crackdown on religious and ethnic minorities’, ‘India is running concentration camps for minorities’, and ‘Manipur has never been a part of India and the demand for independence in the state is justified.’

We also identified coordinated inauthentic accounts likely originating from China disseminating the ‘Little China in India’ narrative on Western social media platforms, such as X and YouTube. For example, one Chinese-language speaking account named jostom, created in November 2023, posted the phrase ‘Little China’ 小中国, and shared a YouTube video with the nonsensical title ‘Manipur India known as “small China” once the impact of independence on India?’

The video (which had had only around ​​2500 views at the time of writing) was uploaded on 18 March 2024 by the YouTube account Earth story, which claims to be a Chinese-language ‘popular science number [sic] on international relations that everyone can understand’. It is unclear whether the videos uploaded by the account are original content or reuploads from an account of the same name on Douyin, a short-form video app popular in China. However, some video titles are also in English, indicating that the channel’s target audience goes beyond Chinese-speaking diasporas. In addition, there are always auto-generated captions in Hindi or English when the narrator speaks in Mandarin.



The jostom X account was one of many likely inauthentic accounts spreading the Little China narrative. The latest post by jostom was on 20 April 2024. The account has only 22 followers and follows 31 accounts, and mostly shares content with Chinese landscape pictures, a common feature of Chinese propaganda. Out of 71 posts on the account, the Little China video is the only political content.

Among its 22 followers, at least six accounts appear to be inauthentic: they were created around the same date, and their profiles and posts share many similarities. For example, they are all following a similar number of accounts, and the only posts these six accounts made were on 22 or 23 July 2023.

These accounts display similar characteristics to a sophisticated subset of Spamouflage disinformation networks, which ASPI identified last year as having interfered in an Australian referendum. This network goes beyond spreading typically pro-China propaganda and is known for amplifying domestic issues in democracies. Like the accounts that targeted Australia, accounts following jostom use images of Western women to develop their personas. Their first posts are aphorisms or quotes, many of which are incomplete.



The small sample of accounts discussed above is likely part of a broader network of inauthentic accounts originating from China that has increasingly sought to interfere in India’s domestic affairs. Since 2023, social media conglomerate Meta has publicly disclosed at least two coordinated inauthentic networks targeting India and originating from China in its quarterly Adversarial Threat Reports. The first disclosure in 2023 revealed that fake accounts originating from China were criticising the Indian government and military by focusing on issues on the India-China border. The second campaign, disclosed in early 2024, was linked to the original 2023 campaign but instead targeted the global Sikh community, creating a fictitious activist movement called Operation K that called for pro-Sikh protests.

On X, many of the accounts identified by Meta in its Adversarial Threat Reports continued to operate and disseminate disinformation in the lead-up to the 2024 Indian elections. Common topics and narratives spread by these included accusing Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi of not being concerned about the welfare of people in Manipur, amplifying protests in nearby Nagaland and fomenting dissent against the Indian government in another northeastern state, Arunachal Pradesh (see screenshot below). In some cases, accounts called for Indians to boycott the BJP over its activities in the Manipur region.

ASPI has identified some of the same accounts used for interfering in the 2024 Taiwanese elections.



The accounts appear to be copying tweets from other prominent Indian commentators rather than creating original posts. Sometimes this resulted in errors, such as the Nawal Sharma account appearing to have copied a tweet from India Daily Lives but failing to correctly copy the Hindi text while posting the same hashtags and link (see screenshot below).



The CCP’s influence operations targeting India in 2024 were mostly ineffective. However, they are part of a broader strategy to destabilise countries in their neighbourhoods. It has used similar methods to influence electoral outcomes and political narratives in Canada, Taiwan and Britain, where it has employed a combination of disinformation and covert support to influence public opinion and political results. These actions often reveal Beijing’s true intentions, such as its territorial ambitions in India’s northeastern states, and contradict its charm offensive with neighbouring states.

As the CCP resorts to more covert methods to pursue its interests, democratic countries should publicly expose these influence operations and share information on observed tactics, techniques and procedures with allies and partners. Indo-Pacific countries should consider financial sanctions against private companies or state-affiliated media conducting intelligence activities and disinformation campaigns, similar to sanctions applied to Russian disinformation actors. While it may be difficult to deter the CCP through these policy actions, it will at least impose costs on Beijing and make it more difficult to conduct these operations with impunity.