A new report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) has found the Chinese Communist Party is looking to influence international perceptions of the Chinese regime’s policies in the Xinjiang region through social media. The campaign, which has featured videos from Uyghurs saying they’re happy with their life in the Xinjiang region, promoting Xinjiang as a tourism destination, and praising Beijing’s policies on the Uyghur people, have all been linked with a new hashtag #StopXinjiangRumors on Twitter. In the new report titled ‘#StopXinjiangRumors: The CCP’s decentralised disinformation campaign,’ ASPI analysed the CCP’s online disinformation campaign to influence discussions about Xinjiang and distract from international criticisms of its human rights violations against the Uyghur population. Despite abundant evidence and international condemnation, the CCP has been constantly denied accusations of committing human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region towards Uyghurs, which includes forced labour, mass detention, sterilisation, and alleged genocide. The study revealed that …