A little cautionary tale about mass migration and Chinese social media apps.
With days left to the election, Australian opposition candidates have been wooing a crucial group that turned its back on the conservative Liberal-National coalition in the last election: Chinese Australian voters.
And they are trying to reach them on platforms that their party once talked of banning over national security concerns: Chinese social media apps like WeChat and RedNote.
Nearly six in 10 Chinese Australians use WeChat at least once a day, according to a poll by Lowy Institute in 2022.
Despite making up just 5.5% of Australia’s population, Chinese Australians were said to be a crucial to the Labor party’s win in 2022, which broke nearly a decade of rule by the Liberal-National coalition.
Henry Luo, secretary of the Reid Business Community, says he has observed more “extensive targeting” of Chinese Australian voters in this campaign, including candidates displaying ad banners on popular WeChat accounts and collaborating with well-known Chinese celebrities or influencers.
WeChat is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. RedNote is likewise under Party control.
That means the Chinese Communist Party will decide which party and which candidates are favored by the algorithms.
And it appears to mean that Beijing will decide the outcome of Australia’s elections.
We’ve already seen China intervene in Canada’s elections. The questions that nobody is meaningfully looking into is to what extent China controls at least some elections in California and New York?
And how long until China’s political footprint continues to grow as it wields TikTok to influence U.S. elections?
