of disinformation from outside governments. In December 2019, weeks before their elections, Taiwanese media reported that Facebook removed 118 fan pages, fifty-one accounts, and ninety-nine groups aimed at targeting the island (Magnier 2020). In general, analysts say that Beijing’s global cyber campaigns tend to focus primarily on Taiwan, Hong Kong, and India’s Tibetan enclave. This is in contrast with Moscow’s more global strategy that is arguably not afraid to go after the inner workings of other global countries. According to Magnier (2020), it seems that China has decided to take on a more globally responsible image, believing this image will serve it better than the Russian “chaos” approach, while still growing its influence within the bounds of its current system and region. Despite this, recent events regarding COVID-19 have provided evidence for the existence of a more global and active state media messaging strategy that “demonstrates disinformation tactics more familiar to coordinated and persistent Russian state sponsored disinformation” (European External Action Service 2020). Computational propaganda and the manipulation of online content is often used alongside traditional forms of censorship and information control. As early as 2009, news outlets reported that the Chinese Communist Party had raised a "50-Cent Army" of astro-turfers who are rumoured to be paid RMB 0.50 ($0.70) for each patriotic pro-Chinese comment they posted on blogs and social media sites. Despite this rumour, in a study conducted by King et al. (2017) they find that almost all 50c workers in their sample were actually government employees. In the study they argue that most of the posts are about cheerleading the government and promoting positive discussion of valence issues. This is consistent with their theory that the “strategic objective of the regime is to distract and redirect public attention from discussions or events with collective action potential” (Ibid). In terms of activity levels, the study estimates that the “army” writes approximately 448 million 50c posts a year. In addition to government actors involved in the manipulation of social media, there is evidence to suggest that private companies also operate in China, typically serving the interests of commercial businesses. Since May 2018, more than two hundred people in China have been arrested, and thousands of others confronted by police for taking part in illegal online groups called "wǎngluò shuǐjūn," or Network Navy ("network water army"). Network navies are considered loose organizations of thousands of people recruited through various sites similar to Mechanical Turk, who offer services to companies looking to boost their online presence through “grassroots” marketing and campaigns. According to Chinese government officials these groups have engaged in various illegal activities such as creating spam, fraudulent news sites, and social media trolling in order to shape public opinion. (Gallagher, 2018). Last year, ProPublica obtained a copy of a contract won by OneSight Technology, a Beijingbased online marketing company, to boost the following of China News Service, the second largest state-owned news agency in the country. They also uncovered a group of coordinated accounts linked to OneSight, indicating the company’s involvement in social media manipulation campaigns regarding Hong Kong and the spread of COVID-19. On the agency’s client list one can find prominent companies like Alibaba and Huawei, but also government media outlets directly run by the government’s propaganda department, like China Daily and CGTN (Kao and Li 2020). 71