Amid the problems of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), several Pakistani social media handles have initiated a massive misinformation campaign in an attempt to show that lives of people in Pakistan would change overnight by Beijing’s multi-billionaire project.
China’s investment in Pakistan is already at risk of failing for numerous reasons like the crisis-ridden economy of the South-Asian country and deadly attacks on Chinese nationals in Pakistan, according to Investigative Journalism Reportika.
According to the report, both Pakistani and Chinese handles have been found responsible for initiating the fake campaigns, the very first of which commenced on October 5th with hashtag #CPECToReducePoverty. The propaganda took off very quickly.
Later on, around 416 handles participated and contributed to sprouting the hashtag which also managed to reach 2.6 million all by the efforts of the fake Pakistani accounts who managed to create their handles on an urgent basis to amplify the propaganda campaigns about the CPEC projects.
Along with the #CPECToReducePoverty, the other two hashtags which were used were: #PeacefulPakistan and #CPEC, Investigative Journalism Reportika stated.
Moreover, Ij-reportika came to know that over 19,120 followers of @Gwadar_Pro are fake, which makes up over 38 per cent of the total followers. The majority of the followers in these misinformation campaigns were from Pakistan followed by Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt.
The crucial thing to note here is that some of these accounts were created for the sole purpose of masking the ill-effects of China-funded CPEC projects. After pushing the agenda they changed their username.
These campaigns have been propagated on the basis of only assumptions to highlight the benefits of CPEC along with hashtag #PeacefulPakistan but no data and facts, moreover, these fake accounts have many fake followers who further escalate the narrative.