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Asia Times
03-05-2025
- Business
- Asia Times
How candidates in democracies campaign using Chinese social media
In Australia this election season, social media have constituted a major battleground as candidates try to reach younger voters. As Gen Z and Millennials now make up the dominant voter bloc, securing their support is more electorally important than ever. This effort has also played out on Chinese social media platforms, namely WeChat and RedNote. Thousands of Australians use these apps, often as a main source of news. The RECapture research team has been tracking political activity on these platforms for years. Between October 2024 and April 2025, we observed 319 Liberal Party advertisements, 68 Labor Party advertisements and 258 ads from independent candidates on WeChat. More than 20 Australian politicians used RedNote for self-promotion. Both platforms are becoming increasingly popular among politicians. But there's a catch: political communication on these apps is either banned or hidden. So how do candidates work around the rules? We've found they use influencers and third parties, blurring the lines between authorized political advertising and undisclosed campaigning. Platforms such as Facebook and Google maintain public ad repositories to document political advertising. On WeChat and RedNote, however, such content is not formally registered or subject to public scrutiny. Since 2019, WeChat has been a key platform for Australian politicians trying to reach Chinese-Australian voters. From 2022 onwards, our research has observed the rising political popularity of RedNote, driven by its low entry barriers and emphasis on visual content. In January, a shift of US-based users from TikTok to RedNote further elevated the platform's prominence. Now, candidates of all stripes are using it. But WeChat bans political advertisements and campaigning. RedNote uses shadowbanning (the covert hiding of specific content) to limit the visibility of political accounts. As a result, political figures in democracies globally often bypass these restrictions by working with Chinese-language media or influencers to reach Chinese-speaking voters. This tactic enables political messaging outside platform and regulatory oversight. It undermines transparency and accountability in political communication. Political advertising on WeChat isn't transparent. WeChat requires official account registration through Chinese businesses recognised by Chinese tech conglomerate Tencent. In Australia, Chinese-language media outlets serve as intermediaries. They distribute political campaign materials on behalf of candidates. Political advertising on WeChat is presented in three main formats: embedded within articles, as sponsored content and as short videos distributed via WeChat's Channel function. Advertising costs are typically negotiated between media outlets and campaign teams, ranging from a few hundred to several thousand dollars, depending on the outlet's influence and the ad's target demographic. Spending on political ads on WeChat isn't disclosed anywhere, so it's very hard to track how much money is being spent this way. For example, we identified Scott Yung, a Liberal candidate for Bennelong, and Andy Yin, a former Liberal Party member now running as an independent for Bradfield. They both published between two and eight political advertisements on WeChat daily in April. These ads were in addition to their self-promotional content and other campaigning activities via short videos. This content sometimes includes celebrity endorsements. In 2019 and 2025, respectively, Yung and Yin used third-party media and marketing companies based in China to recruit celebrities to endorse their campaigns. However, such strategies are criticized domestically due to concerns about potential 'Chinese influence' and perceived links to the Communist Party of China. But behind the public political ads lies a semi-private form of campaigning. By attaching a QR code to their political ads, candidates direct their campaigns to private group chats, enabling a more targeted form of engagement (observed in the case of sponsored content for Liberal candidate Reid Grange, running to represent Reid). Non-Chinese Australian politicians often get around shadowbans on RedNote by signaling their connection to Chinese communities through symbolic gestures. This includes posts showcasing their visits to Chinese restaurants or photos taken at Lunar New Year community events. Candidates of Chinese background often highlight their connections with prominent white Australian politicians, such as former prime ministers Tony Abbott and John Howard, to show their standing and political credibility within the party. Discussions of party policies, especially controversial ones such as Australia-US-China relations, are rare. When they do occur, they are often selectively focused on matters of concern to Chinese migrants, matters deemed safe for discussion on RedNote. Chinese-Australian candidates often organize their offline campaign events to target Chinese-Australian influencers. The influencers then disseminate relevant content on RedNote. As a result, candidates rely on content creators, influencers, supporters, migrant businesses and Chinese-language media outlets to promote their campaigns. Candidates usually follow authorization disclosure rules on their English social media pages. These rules, however, are often disregarded on RedNote or WeChat. Candidates often outsource their campaigning work to Chinese media and marketing agencies. This means the candidates have minimal oversight of the activities taking place on these platforms, raising concerns about whether electoral regulations may be inadvertently violated in the process. We've found instances of unauthorized pages of politicians and candidates that have gone unnoticed by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC). These are hard to find because the content is largely shadowbanned. If users or the AEC searched a particular candidate's name, they wouldn't be able to find much. In April, the AEC advised rules around authorizing this sort of content. It said electoral communications distributed by people or organizations that are not political entities still require authorization if monetary or gifts-in-kind transactions are involved. The AEC's guidance further says political parties should include an authorization if they repost collaborative content. The general principle is: 'when in doubt, authorize it'. The key challenges here are identifying who collaborates with whom, on which platform, how content is remixed and whether the collaboration is voluntary or involves monetary or in-kind transactions. The AEC doesn't actively monitor Chinese social media platforms. This makes enforcing any regulations almost impossible. Given how much political candidates are using these apps, there needs to be better regulatory oversight of what happens on them. Authors: Fan Yang is a research fellow at Melbourne Law School, the University of Melbourne, and at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, the University of Melbourne. Dan Dai is a PhD candidate at the Digital Media Research Center, Queensland University of Technology. Luke Heemsbergen is a senior lecturer in communication at Deakin University. Stevie Zhang is a research assistant at the RECapture Project, The University of Melbourne. Also contributing research were Robbie Fordyce and Mengjie Cai This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
ABC News
26-04-2025
- Politics
- ABC News
Election battle on Chinese apps intensifies as Liberals target crucial voters
An intensifying election battle is unfolding on Chinese social media apps — as the Liberals ramp up efforts to win back a crucial group of voters who abandoned the party at the 2022 election. Researchers monitoring Australian political advertising and campaigning on popular apps WeChat and RedNote have noticed a surge in activity by the major parties and independents in recent weeks. Read more about the federal election: Want even more? Here's where you can find all our 2025 University of Melbourne research fellow Fan Yang said one party appeared to be campaigning particularly heavily on Chinese platforms. "We have seen a higher number of political advertising by Liberal Party members," she told ABC News. Dr Yang is leading the RECapture project, along with Robbie Fordyce from Monash University and Luke Heemsbergen from Deakin University. Since January, the team has found more than 220 authorised Liberal ads on WeChat and about 30 for Labor. Political attack ads have appeared on Chinese social media recently. ( Supplied: RECapture Research Project ) In the past fortnight, the campaign battle on Chinese platforms has escalated, as political attack ads targeting Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton — authorised by the major parties — have appeared. Dr Yang said the WeChat battleground had also been evolving in the final weeks of the election campaign. "Just in recent weeks, the candidates have diversified. We're seeing more independents and minor parties," she said. Both major parties seek to win over Chinese-Australian voters. ( Supplied: RECapture Research Project ) Key seats targeted with Chinese social media campaigns The Liberal candidate for the ultra-marginal Sydney seat of Bennelong appears to have one of the largest Chinese social media campaigns. Scott Yung has appeared in more than 100 authorised ads found by the RECapture team since January. Mr Yung is aiming to oust Labor MP Jerome Laxale from the electorate, which is now notionally Liberal due to a boundary redraw. Photo shows A graphic showing a range of reader comments about potential issues in Australia's 2025 federal election. What do you need to know before you vote in the upcoming federal election? What would you ask the candidates? Have Your Say. About 30 per cent of residents in Bennelong have Chinese heritage. It was among a handful of seats lost by the Liberals in 2022 after there were significant swings against the party in areas with large Chinese-Australian communities. An internal review found the backlash was partially driven by the Morrison government's criticisms of the Chinese government and an "incorrect perception" it was also aimed at the wider Chinese community. It recommended "rebuilding the Liberal Party's relationship with the Chinese community" as a priority. Blue-ribbon Bradfield on Sydney's north shore is the electorate with the fifth largest population of Chinese voters in Australia. Candidates for Bradfield and Bennelong have been appearing on Chinese platforms. ( Supplied: RECapture Research Project ) It's also among the seats the Liberal Party is at risk of losing at the upcoming election, as former government minister Paul Fletcher retires. The Liberals' pick for Bradfield, Gisele Kapterian, has appeared in dozens of authorised ads on WeChat this year. Nicolette Boele, the teal independent candidate regarded as Ms Kapterian's toughest competition, has also recently appeared in campaign material on the Chinese platform. A spokesperson for the Liberals declined to comment on the ads appearing on Chinese social media, as it is against the rules of major parties to publicly discuss campaign strategy. "Liberal candidates are communicating with their communities about the important choice they have on May 3," he said. 'Important tool' to speak to community The RECapture project has also been examining campaign material on the Chinese version of Instagram, known as RedNote or Little Red Book. Dr Yang said posts on this platform often differed in tone from content shared on the English-language social media accounts of MPs and candidates. "What I find interesting is some of the content is tailored to Chinese migrant communities — for example, content about Australian politicians going to a Chinese restaurant, drinking bubble teas, going to Asian grocery stores," she said. "This kind of content is not necessarily visible or published on English-language social media services like Instagram, but they're on RedNote to target Chinese-Australian voters." It's harder for politicians to campaign on RedNote — due to the platform discouraging political content and a "shadow ban" preventing a number of MPs and candidates from being found on the app via a name search. Some MPs regularly use Chinese social media to stay in touch with members of their multicultural communities. Dr Yang co-leads the RECapture project. ( ABC News: Peter Healy ) Labor MP Sally Sitou described it as a "really important tool" to communicate directly with the large Chinese community in her inner-west Sydney electorate of Reid. "You wouldn't expect to be speaking to young people through The Australian newspaper — you'd expect to be speaking to them through the channels they use, like Instagram and TikTok," she said. "The same can be said for the Chinese community. They are mostly now on WeChat and Little Red Book (or RedNote), so that's the best way to get in touch with them." The Liberal candidate vying for Ms Sitou's seat, Grange Chung, has also been increasingly active on Chinese social media — including links to the apps on his campaign posters. "We're a very diverse electorate, so I need to reach out to particularly, say, the Chinese community, through the social media they use and we're going through all available channels in that regard," he said in a recent TV interview with ABC News. 'A good way to pass on information' Justin Zhang has lived in Reid for more than a decade, after migrating to Australia from China. The father-of-one, who works in the banking sector, stays up to date using a combination of traditional news services, English-language social media platforms and Chinese apps. Mr Zhang is happy to see more Australian politicians using Chinese social media apps to communicate with migrant communities. ( ABC News: Berge Breiland ) He told the ABC he was glad to see more Australian MPs and political candidates on Chinese platforms. "It's good they're exploring the new social media for new migrants like me," he said. "We use social media a lot." Jack Fang is a Chinese-Australian who lives in the electorate of Bradfield — on Sydney's north shore. He uses both WeChat and RedNote. "The most interesting thing for me is where I can find the best restaurant," he said. "But there is a lot of information relating to elections as well. It's a good way to pass the information on — especially for people where English is not their first language." Loading Having trouble seeing this form? Try
