Pro-Duarte Chinese Disinformation Campaign Targets Philippines Elections

Chi­nese dis­in­for­ma­tion accounts have emerged as a sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence oper­a­tion tar­get­ing the coun­try’s polit­i­cal land­scape, with inau­then­tic net­works ampli­fy­ing pro-Duterte con­tent while pro­mot­ing Bei­jing-friend­ly nar­ra­tives amid ris­ing ten­sions with Pres­i­dent Fer­di­nand Mar­cos Jr. On 14 July 2025, For­eign Pol­i­cy report­ed that tech analy­sis firm Cyabra found approx­i­mate­ly one-third of all pro-Duterte accounts on X were fake, with these net­works boost­ing con­tent from pro­pa­gan­da sites and state media while attack­ing the cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion. The arti­cle begins:

When for­mer Philip­pine Pres­i­dent Rodri­go Duterte was arrest­ed under an Inter­na­tion­al Crim­i­nal Court war­rant in March, an army of online defend­ers sprang into action. The Philip­pine midterm elec­tions for local and con­gres­sion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tives were just two months away, and a group of pro-Duterte Sen­ate can­di­dates was chal­leng­ing a slate loy­al to Duterte’s ally-turned-rival, Pres­i­dent Fer­di­nand Mar­cos Jr. But accord­ing to expert ana­lysts, many of Duterte’s online defend­ers weren’t real. There were some gen­uine pro-Duterte influ­encers, with real peo­ple man­ning the accounts, but they were bol­stered by a vast net­work of inau­then­tic accounts, all of which pum­meled the Philip­pine elec­tions with a del­uge of dis­in­for­ma­tion, gen­er­a­tive arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, and deepfakes.

           Read more: https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/07/14/china-philippines-disinformation-elections/

Key Points

• Dou­ble­think Lab iden­ti­fied X account net­works post­ing “pro-Duterte, anti-Mar­cos stuff but also ampli­fy­ing some pro-Chi­na stuff” while boost­ing con­tent from pro­pa­gan­da sites and state media
• Philip­pine Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil offi­cials report­ed indi­ca­tions of Chi­nese state-spon­sored infor­ma­tion oper­a­tions attempt­ing to prop up pre­ferred can­di­dates while attack­ing others
• Deep­fake con­tent tar­get­ed Mar­cos includ­ing viral audio autho­riz­ing mil­i­tary attacks against Chi­na and video show­ing drug use, both flagged as fake by the government
• Pro-Duterte can­di­dates won five of twelve open Sen­ate seats in May elec­tions, demon­strat­ing the poten­tial impact of coor­di­nat­ed influ­ence oper­a­tions on elec­toral outcomes

 Chinese Influence Operations in the Philippines: Soft Power Strategies, Disinformation, Global Patterns

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.