POLITICSNovember 5, 2024

Inside China’s cognitive warfare strategy

Aleksandra Gadzala Tirziu

Reading time: 13 min

Beijing is leveraging advanced technologies like AI to gain strategic advantages without conventional combat.

Amid rising geopolitical tensions, much attention is being paid to the need to rebuild and revitalize Western defense industries, particularly in the United States and Europe. The growing threat of conflict with China, especially over Taiwan, has sharpened this focus. Chinese President Xi Jinping has made clear that China is preparing for “worst-case and extreme scenarios,” ready to face “high winds, choppy waters and even dangerous storms.” Its military is fast modernizing, with a shipbuilding capacity that outstrips that of the U.S. by a factor of 200, and a nuclear arsenal expanding faster than that of any other nation. Meanwhile, the U.S. lacks the shipyards needed to build and maintain its fleets, and Europe’s military capacity is weak, at best.

In this context, the Western preoccupation with bolstering its military hardware is understandable. Yet what such a focus overlooks is that, for Beijing, the true battlefield is not one of missiles or ships, but in the domains of information and cognitive warfare. People’s Liberation Army manuals describe cognitive warfare as its “fundamental function” and “the basis for the ability to accomplish military tasks.” 

Soon after he took control of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), President Xi urged China’s military to expand an “ideological concept of information warfare,” to spread Beijing’s preferred narratives and silence global dissent, as well as one of cognitive warfare, to shape the perceptions and behaviors of its adversaries.

In contrast, since the end of the Cold War, the West has been primarily focused on conventional warfare. For the U.S., in particular, the Gulf War and later conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan seemed to reinforce this focus, with military spending having increased by 129 percent between 1989 and 2010. In the process, information warfare largely fell by the wayside. Now, with China, along with Russia and Iran, having intensified its efforts in this domain, the West is left to catch up. Should it fail to do so, and fail to deter Beijing, it risks the likely subversion of its citizens, the unraveling of critical alliances and the advance of China’s new world order.

‘Tell China stories well’

Information warfare is nothing new for the CCP. Since the 1920s, it has employed such tactics against Taiwan, seeking to sow division and weaken the resolve of its population, with the ultimate aim of annexing the island nation without recourse to overt military action. Taiwan often serves as a testing ground for Beijing’s political warfare strategies, which it then deploys elsewhere. 

China’s information warfare assumes a variety of guises. Chief among them is media influence, which includes disseminating propaganda through print, radio, television and social media, as well as censorship. It also includes training foreign journalists and social media influencers in CCP narratives and techniques. 

“Tell China stories well, spread China’s voice well,” President Xi told Chinese state broadcaster Central China Television (now China Global Television Network, or CGTN), in 2017. Since assuming the chairmanship of the CCP in 2012, President Xi has significantly boosted Beijing’s efforts to undermine its adversaries and promote ideological cohesion among its allies, particularly across the Global South. “If we do not actively educate and correctly guide [the foreign masses], others could preemptively seize discursive power,” warns a 150-page textbook released in 2022 by the CCP’s Central National Security Commission and its Central Propaganda Department.

This focus on narrative and discourse ultimately seeks to help achieve China’s national rejuvenation, rooted in a vision of China and the world that aligns with the CCP’s perspective of both. After all, it is difficult to emerge as a global superpower absent buy-in for your norms and ideals. Since 2012, then, China has spent upwards of $10 billion annually on its foreign propaganda efforts.

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Facts & figures

China’s cognitive warfare tactics

Across Africa, every CCP-affiliated news agency has established a presence. CGTN, which is overseen by the CCP’s Central Propaganda Department, operates 35 bureaus across the continent’s 54 nations. In Europe, it has bureaus in London, Paris, Berlin and Brussels, while its production center in Washington, D.C. anchors its American presence. Other CCP-controlled outlets, including China Daily, Xinhua, People’s Daily and China Radio International (CRI), have similarly extended their global reach. The aim is clear: to disseminate CCP-approved narratives and amplify China’s cultural presence around the world.

This ambition is pursued through a variety of methods, from direct broadcasts to more opaque approaches, like strategic content placements in partnership with local media outlets. CCP officials and state media documents have referred to this practice as “borrowing a boat to reach the sea.” In print media, China Watch, a paid news-like advertising supplement from China Daily, has appeared in major newspapers around the world. In the U.S., it has been periodically included in the print editions of papers such as the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. “Diaoyu Islands Belong to China,” declared one China Watch advertisement in the New York Times. “From Revolution to the Great Power,” asserted another in Switzerland’s leading daily, the Neue Zurcher Zeitung. An unsuspecting reader might readily accept both claims to be true.

Yet what Beijing calls the Diaoyu Islands are, in fact, the Senkaku Islands, which are internationally recognized as part of Japanese territory. And though Beijing may wish to be regarded as a “great power,” that does not necessarily make it so.

In the Czech Republic, commercial radio stations have received content, including pre-written scripts, from CRI. The content mirrors CCP talking points on issues like Taiwan and the Russian war in Ukraine, and routinely promotes positive narratives about President Xi. In France, the public television network TV5Monde has had a “content promotion agreement” in place with CCTV since 2014. 

Social media platforms such as TikTok, WeChat and Xiaohongshu – an Instagram-like app also known as RED – have opened up additional avenues for such efforts. Through these platforms, Beijing leverages seemingly apolitical content to promote its narrative of China’s global role, advance CCP ideology and dampen criticisms of its policies. A recent study by the U.S.-based Network Contagion Research Institute indeed found that TikTok, “through the use of travel influencers, frontier lifestyle accounts, and other CCP-linked content creators, the platform systematically shouts down sensitive discussions.” As much as 93 percent of TikTok’s content is either apolitical or pro-China, with users “appear[ing] to absorb these biased narratives unwittingly.”

In social media as in traditional journalism, the CCP trains and finances foreign influencers and journalists. Between January 2020 and August 2021, for instance, 156 CCP-controlled accounts on U.S.-based platforms posted more than 546 pro-CCP messages on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter), and shared content from state media outlets such as CGTN, Global Times, Xinhua and China Daily. Many of these posts followed CCP-organized tours for prominent foreign influencers, particularly to Xinjiang, in a bid to counter international outrage over Beijing’s genocide in the region. Ahead of the 2022 Winter Olympics, too, Beijing paid U.S.-based consulting firm Vippi Media $300,000 to recruit influencers tasked with amplifying CCP-approved narratives about “China’s history, culture, modern life, new trends.”

Each year, thousands of journalists from across Africa, Latin America, Asia and Europe are trained in China on similar themes, as well as CCP media tactics. Courses are hosted by institutions like the Communications University of China, under the CCP’s Ministry of Education, and the School of Journalism and Communication at Renmin University, supported by the China Media Group. 

Given the CCP’s rejection of Western notions of journalism and its insistence that “the media and publishing should be subject to Party discipline,” the content of such trainings can be readily inferred. The result is a growing global network of voices ready to “tell China stories well.”

Fighting in the cognitive domain

It is one thing to attempt to indoctrinate foreign audiences with your worldview; to try to exert direct control over an adversary’s will is quite another. Yet the CCP has been pursuing such a strategy through its concept of “intelligentized warfare.” First introduced by the CCP in 2019, this innovative military concept centers on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to manipulate human cognition. It is defined by four key features: enhanced information-processing capabilities, rapid decision-making, swarm tactics and cognitive warfare. In the near term, this strategy is being honed to enable the CCP to bring Taiwan under its control without resorting to conventional conflict. Yet it is likely Beijing aims to eventually extend this tactic further afield.

While the Party has yet to provide an official definition of intelligentized warfare, several Chinese military strategists have described it as “integrated warfare waged in land, sea, air, space, electromagnetic, cyber, and cognitive arenas using intelligent weaponry and equipment and their associated operation methods, underpinned by the IoT [Internet of Things] information system.” Chinese researchers maintain that human cognition is at the core of such an approach – indeed, at the core of future warfare – and that through direct interference or subconscious control of an adversary’s mind it might be possible to induce mental damage, confusion or even hallucinations – conditions which could compel enemies to yield to Beijing’s demands or surrender.

How Beijing intends to operationalize this concept remains uncertain. Currently, the CCP appears to pursue a strategy that combines intimidation through military action with information warfare, as previously described. Looking ahead, Chinese strategist Pang Hong Liang, a pioneer in intelligentized warfare, has proposed, for example, that advanced unmanned systems designed to mimic small animals could be used to stealthily infiltrate the spaces of key decision-makers, such as presidents or combatant commanders, with the intention of intimidating or eliminating them.

Success in such operations would require large volumes of detailed personal information to accurately identify and target individuals. Beijing, fortunately for its purposes, has already amassed a vast trove of personal data on, for instance, U.S. citizens. This includes the confidential records of 21.5 million individuals from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, as well as sensitive data concerning more than 100,000 U.S. Navy personnel. China has also gathered data on thousands of European officials, which it has selectively used to influence discussions on Europe-China ties. While data from the Global South is less readily available, the breadth of China’s economic, political and military operations in those regions suggests similar volumes of personal information are being gathered.

There remains considerable debate about whether the Chinese military can achieve these aims. Questions persist around the coordination of such operations across its armed forces, and whether the People’s Liberation Army would be able to execute such strategies on a global scale, beyond its immediate focus on Taiwan. Doubts also persist as to whether the CCP is able to attract and retain the talent needed to successfully integrate AI into its military operations, and whether it might keep pace with its rivals, which are also advancing their own AI-driven capabilities. Nevertheless, should the West ignore CCP efforts, it could find itself outflanked in the future.

Tepid Western deterrence

Despite such looming threats, Western national security policymakers remain largely unprepared to systematically operationalize information warfare strategies. In the U.S. Air Force, for instance, information warfare operations are “conducted on an ad hoc basis,” without “clearly delineated roles and responsibilities,” which makes them unsuited for large-scale, sustained campaigns.

The U.S. Navy similarly lacks a cohesive operational and tactical framework for future maritime warfare. A “War of 2026” scenario recently published in Proceedings, the U.S. Naval Institute’s monthly magazine, highlighted that under its current force structure, the U.S. Navy would be cognitively outmaneuvered. The scenario suggested that “thousands of U.S. sailors – avid users of TikTok and other media under China’s influence” would be “manipulated to the point that many [would refuse] to fight.”

More by Aleksandra Gadzala Tirziu

• China’s strategic evolution in the Middle East: From oil to security
• China is making waves in the Pacific
• Peak China

The European Union has also recognized “foreign influence manipulation and interference” as a growing threat. However, the bloc has yet to establish a standardized terminology or develop a cohesive, actionable framework to combat this threat effectively. Current efforts remain fragmented, with notable emphasis placed on countering “disinformation and misinformation” – terms that are often encompass domestic EU narratives that diverge from those endorsed by Brussels technocrats. The use of the EU’s Digital Services Act, intended to curb “illegal or otherwise harmful content and activities online,” against figures such as Elon Musk and Telegram founder Pavel Durov reflects this tendency. Such actions also suggest a tendency toward reactive, rather than broader strategic, initiatives in information warfare.

In the domain of cognitive, or intelligentized, warfare, Western military forces and policymakers have similarly struggled to align their institutions and infrastructures to detect and combat the cognitive warfare campaigns being waged by China and other adversaries against their populations – or those yet likely to emerge. While NATO’s Allied Command Transformation is in the process of developing a “Cognitive Warfare Concept” and the U.S. Department of Defense has increased spending on electronic warfare and expanded its cyber operations budget, neither has yet put in place wider operational concepts necessary to employ their cognitive warfare capabilities in support of their security aims. The proposed U.S. defense budget for 2025 also includes cuts to Military Information Support Operations – commonly known as psychological operations – that target foreign audiences. 

Ongoing kinetic conflicts in Ukraine and across the Middle East make it unlikely that Beijing will abandon the physical domain entirely in favor of cognitive and information warfare. As Western nations hone their conceptions of information and cognitive warfare, then, they face the added challenge of integrating such approaches with more conventional military tactics. Coordination is key: The effective shaping of adversarial perceptions depends not only on controlled information flows, but also on the projection and use of physical force, in tandem with digital campaigns. The West would do well to grasp this sooner than later. 

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