Another private actor operating in China is the American-based company Devumi, which sells Twitter followers and retweets to celebrities, businesses and anyone who wants to appear more popular or exert influence online. Most of the Twitter accounts managed by Devumi resemble real people, and some are even associated with a kind of large-scale social identity theft. At least 55,000 of the accounts use the names, profile pictures, hometowns, and other personal details of real Twitter users, including minors (Confessore et al., 2018). According to The New York Times, an editor at China’s state-run news agency, Xinhua, paid Devumi for hundreds of thousands of followers and retweets on Twitter. Even though the Chinese government has blocked Twitter in the country, it is widely used for propaganda abroad (Ibid). Citizens and youth groups also contribute to computational propaganda campaigns in China. One notable example is the nationalist volunteer social media army known as “little pink”, or xiao fenhong, a name derived from the colour of a popular online forum used by nationalists. These young nationalist volunteers usually spread positive messages about China, but also coordinate “mass bombings” of public figures’ social media platforms, flooding targets with intimidating posts and shutting down online debate. Their targets are varied, from Taiwan’s pro-independence president, to international airlines accused of mistreating Chinese customers (Yang, 2017). Many members of the “little pink” army belong to the “Emperor’s Board”, an online forum followed by 29 million people, where “crusades” are coordinated. China's troll army also organises via private groups on Facebook. The most popular of these has 40,000 members, who must express their support for the party before joining. According to the Financial Times, the Communist party provides support for the little pinks, arming them with memes produced by state agencies as well as private studios (Ibid). In 2014, leaked documents detailed how the Chinese government employed influencers to post pro-government messages on the internet, as part of a broader effort to “guide public opinion” (Sonnad, 2014). Among the leaked documents were instructions, their posting quotas, and summaries of their activity. The emails revealed hundreds of thousands of messages sent through Chinese microblogging and social media services like Sina Weibo, Tencent video, and various internet forums, including working links to the actual posts (Ibid). Table 1: Organizational Form and Prevalence of Social Media Manipulation in China Initial Government Agencies Private Civil Society Citizens & Report Contractors Organizations Influencers Chinese embassy in Rome, Beijing based Nationalist Influencers Chinese Foreign Ministry company volunteer social State owned China Radio OneSight media army, International in Italy Technology, known as “little Cyberspace Administration of American-based pink”, China (CAC) company Devumi or xiao fenhong The China News Service Source: Authors’ evaluations based on data collected. Blank spaces indicate no evidence was found. Strategies, Tools, and Techniques Hong Kong protests: Strategies being used by Beijing’s cyber units in relation to the prodemocracy protests in Hong Kong are focused around two main strategies: promoting specific 72