Why are Chinese content creators targeting Singapore?

**Natasha Ann Zachariah** (0:07)
You might have seen online videos saying that Singapore is being overrun by Indians or that our multiracial policy is a facade meant to appeal to Western values. Now, earlier this month, the government ordered the removal of 14 Chinese language posts featuring such content. While the authorities don't believe this was a coordinated campaign by any government, this isn't the first time that there has been content spreading disinformation about Singapore's politicians, communities and people who live here. So if it wasn't organized, who's producing them and why do they do it? More importantly, do Singaporeans buy into the messaging of this content? Hi guys, I'm Natasha and welcome to another episode of The Usual Place, the podcast where we have real conversations about the headlines. Now, to help me answer these questions about disinformation, I have Benjamin Ang, a senior fellow and the head of the Centre of Excellence for National Security, Future Issues and Technology at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. You hit a lot of centres, Benjamin. But you also have many areas of research including cyber security, digital security and disinformation, which we're talking about today.
Next to you on the couch, I have my colleague from The Straits Times, Senior Columnist Tan Dawn Wei, who writes about China and its relations with the rest of the world. Now, you were in Beijing for seven years from 2018 as the China Bureau Chief for SD covering all aspects of the country from its domestic politics to the economy. Welcome both of you to The Usual Place. Okay, so I want to talk about this information today. And why we're talking about it is because the most recent episode, as I mentioned, had the government blocking content that originated from platforms in China.
But Law Minister Edwin Tong said there was not a coordinated, there was no evidence basically it was coordinated campaign by any government. And essentially it was the work of independent foreign content creators.
Ben, can we ever tell when content is state-directed or organic? Like what's the difference between both types of content?

**Benjamin Ang** (2:03)
That's a great question because in the past we used to actually have to distinguish because there was a lot of resources that went into doing something like an information campaign. And it was states that had the kind of resources to put people, to put time, to put production values.
And then an individual could do or maybe other organization could do would be limited. But those times have changed. Actually, the capacity to run an information campaign is in the hands of individuals. So is it really an important distinction now between a state campaign or a non-state campaign when the impact is still huge? And like you said, is there a difference? I would say that right now we need to focus on what is the impact and how we're going to stop that impact. Because just like in a cyber operation, you can't really tell from the first phase who the attacker is.
They can go through proxies, they can use other means, they can use people like mercenaries. There are many, many ways of hiding who the true entity is. But really the problem at the end of the day for something like this is what's the impact on our society and how can we protect our people?

**Natasha Ann Zachariah** (3:10)
So how does actually such content get generated? And what is the intention of these creators? And I want to get both of your views because Dawn, especially if it's coming out of China, who are they targeting specifically? But maybe Ben, you can tell us like, what is the intention of such creators when they create such content?

**Benjamin Ang** (3:29)
So based on our research, there's a real spectrum, a real gamut of different kinds of threat actors.
Of course, on one end, there's the states, countries that have particular political objectives and they want to further it through an information campaign. But we've also got criminals because you can actually get a lot of attention from these kinds of content. You know, they get a lot of clicks because they are so controversial, they are outrageous. People click and then you suck people in to a channel where you start then selling them a crypto scam.
Or you can just be people who are less, shall we say, scrupulous business people who want to just draw attention to themselves. Or we have content creators who want to get the clicks because from clicks, we also get advertising revenue. So there's a whole range of different motivations. And based on discussions I've had with academics in Europe and in China, this is actually happening all over the world, that we have people who are saying, what's the big trending topic that I can make use of this week? And I'll make videos about it and then people will come and click and I'll draw traffic to my site.