Leaked: How China's Communist Party Pays Influencers to Push Its Propaganda

Tim Pool, the host of the wildly popular TimCast show, has exposed how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is paying off influencers to push its narrative, including attacking Falun Gong and Shen Yun.

Pool shared how the CCP unsuccessfully tried to recruit him, noting that they have a task force devoted to attacking Falun Gong.

“The Falun Gong people were handing out flyers and stuff, and it’s funny because China started hiring YouTubers,” Pool said.

“They offered – I’m pretty sure I got offered this at one point – they said they’d give me $200 to post a video to my YouTube channel.”

“It was a video of a white dude complaining about this group. And I’m thinking ‘I’m not posting this to my channel.’ But a lot of people were like, ‘two hundred bucks, I’m gonna take it.’”

Watch:

The Populist Times reports:

Joshua Philipp, the host of the show Crossroads, had a similar story, specifically regarding how the CCP was boosting The New York Times’ recent hit pieces on Shen Yun.

For background: Since August 2024, The New York Times has ramped up attacks on Shen Yun Performing Arts, a renowned organization dedicated to reviving traditional Chinese culture before the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took over, uprooted traditional culture, and began violently silencing dissent. The frequency of these hit pieces borders on obsession, with The Times publishing ten articles on the topic within just the past six months.

These pieces, authored by so-called “investigative reporter” Nicole Hong and co-author Michael Rothfeld, allege mistreatment of performers and financial improprieties within Shen Yun.

Over 60% of Hong’s articles since August have been solely focused on trying to discredit Shen Yun. Performers quoted in these articles as critics of Shen Yun have, in turn, spoken out to discredit The Times’ shoddy reporting.

Interestingly, Hong’s father is a visiting professor at the CCP-affiliated Zhejiang University and Jiangxi Normal University in China. The former is a public university affiliated with China’s Ministry of Education, while the latter is co-sponsored by the Ministry of Education and the communist Jiangxi Provincial Government. Meanwhile, Rothfeld was a member of the first cultural delegation from the United States to the People’s Republic of China.

It would be shocking if they didn’t have any pro-CCP bias.

As Philipp explained:

“It turns out, a network of thousands of CCP-linked accounts – fake accounts, some of them may be operated by Chinese spies on the internet – were promoting The New York Times*. The New York Times was writing hit pieces on Shen Yun Performing Arts, which the CCP is targeting. As a result, Shen Yun got targeted with bomb threats and death threats, but* The New York Times is not covering that. Instead, they’re using these hit pieces targeting Shen Yun, doing the exact thing the CCP wants, and then the Chinese Communist Party-linked accounts are promoting The New York Times articles. Thousands of these fake accounts tied to the CCP. Some of them have now been removed by X. This is confirmed—our investigation has shown.”

Watch:

According to the report Philipp is referencing, over the past month, Twitter/X has removed thousands of accounts suspected of being linked to the CCP. These accounts were primarily used to promote articles from The New York Times that criticized Shen Yun, which showcases traditional Chinese culture and exposes CCP human rights abuses.

One Chinese-language article attacking Shen Yun became the most shared New York Times piece on X in over a year, amplified by the banned fake accounts.

Cybersecurity experts said the activity resembles a nation-state automated bot attack. X has confirmed it removes millions of accounts weekly for spam and manipulation violations, including these. Every one of the ten articles The Times has published attacking Shen Yun has been artificially promoted by CCP bots.

Their motivation is Shen Yun’s connection to Falun Gong, a group the CCP has targeted for destruction since 1999. The CCP has specifically targeted Falun Gong since 1999 with its campaign to “eradicate” (its phrasing) the religion to maintain state atheism.

China has been documented as detaining practitioners for “reeducation through labor” (i.e., slavery), torturing 2,000 to death as of 2009, and killing 65,000 to harvest their organs between 2000 and 2008 alone.

Whistleblowers with ties to CCP security confirmed a 2022 campaign launched by Xi Jinping to discredit Falun Gong overseas, using Western media and social media platforms like X. The New York Times articles align with this effort.

Data analysis revealed that 80% of accounts sharing these articles had zero followers, indicative of bot activity. Signs of inauthenticity included repetitive posts across accounts and crude anti-Falun Gong content mirroring CCP propaganda.

Some accounts, active since 2019, shifted to exclusively anti-Falun Gong posts over time, often using stolen or AI-generated profile images.

New bot accounts continue to emerge, leveraging AI to create believable profiles and amplify content efficiently.

Even accounts with over 10,000 followers showed inauthentic behavior, often hijacked, purchased, or repurposed from older, dormant profiles.

This operation reflects a bold escalation, with the CCP increasingly operating openly rather than in the shadows, raising significant concerns about foreign influence on American platforms.

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