Researchers have uncovered a network of more than 330 social media accounts linked to China that targeted U.S. President Donald Trump, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, human rights organizations, and other countries to push pro-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) narratives, according to a Feb. 26 policy brief.
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a think tank based in Washington, discovered the network coordinating to push these narratives between December 2025 and February 2026 across X, YouTube, Tumblr, Blogger, and Quora.
The researchers identified six “clusters” of accounts that focused on different narratives, which were aimed at attacking political figures seen as acting against the CCP’s interests.
The largest nexus included 151 accounts that targeted audiences in the United States, including ones posing as American citizens and criticizing Trump’s policies, such as claiming that he had caused or worsened the fentanyl crisis. Notably, accounts with few or no followers made posts that generated thousands of replies, indicating the use of what researchers say is an “inauthentic amplification network.”
“This tactic is used to manipulate platform algorithms into pushing content into the feeds of real users,” the brief reads.
Another cluster attacked Takaichi before the Japanese election, portraying her as “corrupt and militaristic.”
A separate cluster of activity targeted Uyghur activists and promoted anti-Uyghur sentiments among Canadian and Japanese users. The CCP has persecuted the Uyghur minority in the Xinjiang region for years, conducting mass surveillance and forcing them into slave labor. There is also emerging evidence of forced organ harvesting from the group. The United States has designated the Uyghur persecution as a genocide.
A fourth narrative accused U.S. organizations of “collusion” with Taiwan and payouts to undermine China while denying the CCP’s human rights abuses.
A fifth cluster accused the United States of interfering with Honduran elections, and a sixth amplified criticism of and supported protests against the Philippine president.
In some cases, the inauthentic accounts adopted names and images similar to those of official organizations, such as U.S. agencies.
Hellbound and Down 