Throughout the election season, disinformation has penetrated the Chinese language circle on social media, where fact checking is lacking. Media veterans and experts worried that it could further undermine people's trust in journalism and pose threat to the roots of democracy. https://twitter.com/VOAChinese/status/1356748746847997952

"You don't find disinformation, it finds you," said Dou Jiangming, chief editor who runs Niuyue Shijian, a news platform on WeChat serving Chinese diaspora and 1st-gen immigrants in America, when describing how prevalent disinformation has been.

The phenomenon prompted him and Niuyue Shijian's main writer Zhan Juan to start a fact checking segment on their platform, where they debunk disinfo, rumors, and conspiracies. But compared to disinfo, their articles get much less attention.

How disinfo tends to spread in Chinese circle, explains @dikaioslin: English proficient users on Twitter/FB translate it into Chinese, which gets picked up by media personalities on YouTube, which then gets shared on WeChat/Weibo, which then gets re-shared back on Twitter/FB.

Many overseas Chinese are staunch supporters of Trump, whose "tough on China" stance has been extremely popular among them. The disinfo and conspiracies that get shared the most tend to be the ones that play into their fear of China's infiltration in the US.

But many of them also hold strong conservative and right-wing values, so disinfo that centers on drug legalizations, gender issues, race, or America going "socialism" receives the most clicks. Much of the disinfo originates in QAnon.

What makes the situation worse, besides the lack of fact checking, is that social media companies don't invest as much effort in non-English circles as they do in the English one. One possible explanation is that Chinese Americans have little political impact, said @fangkc

WeChat and Weibo wouldn't regulate disinfo, because painting American democracy in a negative light fits China's narrative, which could explain why QAnon content can be read and shared on WeChat with no problems.

There's no quick solutions to the problem, said @fangkc, when so many readers are into conspiracies long before QAnon, believing that there's a black hand behind everything/背后有一盘大棋.

To improve things, @dikaioslin suggests an independent fact checking platform, free from China's censorship in case it touches on sensitive topics. Dou Jiangming would like to see more transparency from media on how they conduct investigative reporting.

@fangkc recommends news literacy education. But the key is that ppl need to start thinking about this issue and making changes. If the info we rely on is false, we make wrong electoral decisions, which undermines the roots of democracy, that we know our own interest best.