This story was made in collaboration with data forensics company The Nerve.

In the ongoing saga that sees the Philippines on the receiving end of Chinese harassment, China-linked propaganda pushes the narrative that the country is caught in a proxy war initiated by the United States. 

The official Facebook accounts of China state-affiliated entities and media are among the sources of these propaganda narratives online, as found in a scan of posts from June 2022 to July 2024, under the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The scan was conducted by Rappler and data forensics company The Nerve.

These narratives include blaming the US for China’s rift with other countries, targeting the so-called “Western media.” Such propaganda highlights China’s supposed sovereignty over countries they claim as their own and emphasizes the importance of a regional alliance among Asian countries against the West. They also target civil society movements that attempt to stand up to Chinese harassment in the West Philippine Sea.

With the continuing Chinese harassment of Filipino vessels and the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG), however, the pro-China narratives are trumped by the overwhelming anti-China sentiment from individuals trooping to social media to voice their support.

Akbayan Party president Rafaela David, who is also a co-convenor of civilian-led advocacy Atin Ito, said that the China propaganda campaign “is designed to belittle the courage of the ordinary Filipinos and the efforts of legitimate civil society organizations.” 

The public sentiment also lines up with the Philippine government’s more decisive actions against China’s harassment and other acts of intimidation. This stronger stance of government under President Marcos is different from the often inconsistent, if not outrightly dismissive, Duterte administration.

Targeting civil society group Atin Ito

The increasing tension between the Philippines and China has inspired ordinary citizens to voice out their disapproval of China’s moves. But a coalition of civil society organizations took this a notch higher by actually sailing out to sea to assert ordinary Filipinos’ rights. 

The Atin Ito coalition has done two civilian missions so far. The civilian-led convoy first set sail in December 2023 to Ayungin Shoal to deliver supplies to military and Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) outposts, but eventually had to turn back due to the “constant shadowing” of China vessels. 

In May 2024, the convoy went on another civilian supply mission to deliver food and fuel to Filipino fishermen “to show solidarity and support to the community who are most affected by what China is doing in our own waters.”

David said that the mission sought to “normalize and regularize civilian access” in the West Philippine Sea to counter China’s militarization.

“Let it be made clear, Filipinos have agency [and] we do not need other foreign powers to compel us to do what is the inherent responsibility of every Filipino citizen [which is] to defend our country and protect our own rights,” David told Rappler.

But Facebook pages found to have links to China paint another story. For these propaganda arms, the Atin Ito coalition and its missions are pawns supposedly deployed by the US and the Philippine governments.

State-controlled media China Daily on May 15, posted a Facebook video baselessly claiming that the coalition “is actually secretly funded by the Philippines and the US governments,” as it questioned how a small civic group was able to mobilize resources for these missions.

The one-minute video linked the Atin Ito efforts to a so-called Project Myoushu, an initiative that started in 2022 at the Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation at Stanford University. The Gordian Knot Center’s website states that the project is sponsored by the US Office of Naval Research.

In a separate video posted a month later on June 15, China Daily presented more details about the alleged project, saying it is “funded by the Philippines and the US governments to bolster the Philippines’ position in the South China Sea.”

According to Ray Powell, analyst and Project Myoushu lead, the project wanted to take a “fresh look” at the South China Sea issue and saw that most of the country’s “maritime aggressions were enabled by the fact that most of them took place out of the public view.”

The China Daily video said that the project “portrays China as an aggressor, aiming to suppress narratives that challenge the Western discourse.”

These baseless claims have also been shared in various online communities via coordinated, inauthentic behavior. Rappler found that a handful of Facebook accounts had coordinately shared popular posts from China-affiliated pages, amplifying propaganda surrounding the Atin Ito coalition.

Such posts were being seeded into three significant communities — groups supporting China or the BRICS countries (led by Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), Philippine political groups, and buy-and-sell groups.

The pro-China/BRICS and Philippine political Facebook groups explicitly include names of politicians, parties, and other institutions supportive of China. 

Some Philippine political groups mention President Marcos and his party, Partido Federal ng Pilipinas, as these groups were named in the lead up to the 2022 elections, where Marcos and Sara Duterte forged ties. A previous Rappler investigation found that it did not take long for the Marcos and Duterte networks to crack after the President took a more pro-US foreign policy approach.

However, pro-China propaganda still found its way to a number of buy-and-sell groups, which are extremely active and likely not closely moderated, despite some groups having a “no-spam” rule. The smallest of these buy-and-sell groups has over 19,700 members, while the largest has over 486,500 members. These groups can have hundreds or thousands of new posts every day, making it easier for unrelated posts to slip through the cracks.

‘Experts’ in the China network

The scan by Rappler and The Nerve showed that CRI Filipino Service, tagged by Facebook as “China state-controlled media,” was the first China-linked page that mentioned Project Myoushu. It posted on December 19, 2023 an announcement about a forum that aimed to tackle how “US Project Myoushu-PBBM rapes RP.” The speakers are known to have links with China.

Three of the named speakers “were among the network of supposed experts who would push for Beijing’s narratives” and “would be consistently cited and interviewed in Chinese state media,” according to the book, Unrequited Love: Duterte’s China Embrace by journalists Marites Vitug and Camille Elemia. Previous Rappler findings showed that pro-China propaganda in the Philippines often came from bloggers and websites that claimed academic expertise and legitimacy.

CRI Filipino Service went on to post about Project Myoushu four more times — another one in December 2023, once in January 2024, and twice in May 2024. 

In a post published on May 15, 2024, CRI Filipino claimed that Project Myoushu uses social media to spread false information about normal Chinese vessel activities in the South China Sea.

The Chinese embassy in Manila also explicitly mentioned Project Myoushu in a post on May 16, 2024. It posted a link to a Global Times opinion piece that tagged the Atin Ito coalition as “far from being genuinely civilian,” claiming that it was “another act in the US’ Project Myoushu.” 

China-linked or affiliated pages are not the only ones posting allegations against the Atin Ito coalition and the bigger Project Myoushu conspiracy.

A search on Facebook showed that the narrative related to Project Myoushu has been carried by individual bloggers and pages that have links to, or show apparent support for, Rodrigo Duterte, his allies, or the previous administration as a whole. 

One of the individuals who consistently posts about the project and its link to the Atin Ito coalition is a writer named Elmer Jugalbot. On May 15, Chinese state-run news site CGTN’s Facebook page published a video interview with Jugalbot, where he claimed that the civilian mission was funded by the US through Project Myoushu.

Jugalbot, who identifies himself as a “political commentator,” has been cited in articles published by China-run or China-linked media, including CRI Filipino Service. He has also been featured in several videos published by SMNI News, owned by fugitive and Duterte ally Apollo Quiboloy. Before this, a certain Jugalbot was referred to by a 2018 news report as a “businessman”.

Atin Ito’s David denied that the civilian group has any links with Project Myoushu, claiming that these allegations from China-linked pages “are as fictitious as their 9-dash line.”

“Such absurd lies only show that they are threatened by ordinary Filipinos who dared to come together and hold accountable a superpower like China,” she told Rappler. 

Project Myoushu’s Powell also said “there is no connection whatsoever” between the project and the Atin Ito coalition. He said that the online narrative “suggests an orchestrated messaging campaign” that is aligned with China.

Atin Ito’s David said that China’s narrative comes as no surprise, given how the civilian movement in the Philippines has since increased. 

“China’s lies seek to divide us, and sow doubt among civilian groups who found the collective courage to stand up against a bully like China,” she said. “By seeking to discredit legitimate civilian dissent to their illegal activities, they aim to dampen Filipinos’ resolve to stand up for what is rightfully ours.” 

The Philippines: No match to China, caught in proxy war? 

The claims against civilian missions carried out by the Atin Ito coalition are just part of a bigger narrative deployed on social media as tensions escalate.

For many Filipino netizens, it’s a no-brainer to support the cause and express patriotism through social media comments on Philippine-based media organizations’ news reports about the tensions. But Rappler and The Nerve also found a handful of social media comments that framed the issue as if the Philippines was starting a war that it is not ready for. Several Facebook users alluded to China as a global superpower that had all the resources, while the Philippines had nothing to show.

There is also the narrative that alleges that the Philippines is just caught in a proxy war initiated by the US. Information released by authorities indicating incidents committed by Chinese vessels or the CCG against Filipino vessels were tagged as “Western war-mongering propaganda” and “another drama directed by the US.” They also accuse the US of “not supporting the Philippines but…escalating the tension.”

Patterns of inauthentic behavior were also observed in the accounts posting this content. One account was found spamming rapid, continuous, and repetitive comments showing screenshots of anti-US content to different posts — a technique previously identified as part of the Russian “Firehose of Falsehood” Propaganda Model.

Overwhelming public sentiment vs China 

While China-linked pages are now increasingly extending their narrative to also focus on civic society, and even warmongering, ordinary Filipinos online are hitting back by also consistently asserting Philippine rights and condemning Chinese harassment. 

This is evident on TikTok, where videos expressing support for Atin Ito and condemning Chinese aggression are among the most talked about and most liked. The Nerve analyzed 568 TikTok videos containing hashtags related to the West Philippine Sea by processing their audio, converting them into text, and applying natural language processing for narrative analysis.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: An earlier version of this story said 359 TikTok videos were analyzed. This has been corrected.)

Among the videos that were played the most were reports on the successful ventures of the Atin Ito movement and the favorable reaction of the international community toward the Philippines.

Memes were also among the most shared videos, including posts making fun of Vice President Sara Duterte for her “no comment” quip when asked about the ongoing bullying by China.

Political analyst and professor of political science Arjan Aguirre said that perhaps one of the reasons why pro-China propaganda carried by official outlets does not sway Filipinos — or the general public — is because “they are devoid of effective communicative devices.” 

He said that the messages are “usually poorly constructed” or there is an “effort to limit the scope of the discussion to topics that are innocuous to them.”   

“In fact in the subconscious of many of us, we already know that movements need resources and if it is true that the US is funding this movement, people would just feel good about the info that someone is helping us against China,” he said. “This is another layer, a pragmatic sense, that I’m getting or sensing about the issue.” 

Can we expect China to take its propaganda efforts up a notch? – Rappler.com

This investigation used Probe, Nerve’s suite of forensic solutions including video and network analysis. If you’re interested in working with the Nerve, send an email to hello@thenerve.co. 

The Nerve is a data forensics company that enables changemakers to navigate real-world trends and issues through narrative & network investigations. Taking the best of human and machine, we enable partners to unlock powerful insights that shape informed decisions. Composed of a team of data scientists, strategists, award-winning storytellers and designers, the company is on a mission to deliver data with real-world impact.