As Chinese ships fired water cannons at Philippine vessels in the South China Sea in November 2021, Beijing’s then-ambassador to Manila asked Filipinos on Facebook to share their favorite things about China.
Among the hundreds of gushing responses were three from a young man named “Vince Dimaano.”
The firm, InfinitUs Marketing Solutions, waged a cyber campaign paid for by China to weaken support for Philippine government policy and to sow discord over Manila’s security alliance with the United States, according to a review of the documents and the fake Facebook (META.O), opens new tab accounts, as well as interviews with two former company employees and two Philippine officials.
The Chinese-owned company also used the fake profiles to amplify anti-American content created by Filipino writers, including some who had received money from Beijing, Reuters found.
InfinitUs and its owner Paul Li did not respond to questions. The company has previously denied any involvement with “illicit digital activity.”
A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson told Reuters that Beijing doesn’t interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. Allegations of Chinese influence campaigns made by some Filipino politicians “have failed and instead have backfired,” the spokesperson said.
The explosion of social media has turbocharged influence operations in the Philippines , according to Jonathan Malaya, until recently a senior official with the Philippine National Security Council. Manila is of increasing strategic importance to Washington and Beijing due to its proximity to Taiwan. China’s leaders have asked their military to be ready to seize the democratically governed island by 2027.
InfinitUs first came under the spotlight at an April Senate hearing, when then-Majority Leader Francis Tolentino accused it of using fake accounts to boost the embassy’s profile and conduct an “influence operation” against the Philippines. Tolentino produced a copy of a check from the embassy to InfinitUs and highlighted posts by accounts that Reuters later identified as inauthentic, but he did not elaborate further.
The scope of InfinitUs’s activities went beyond the pro-China propaganda that Tolentino alleged, Reuters reporting revealed.
Its work included disparaging the U.S.-Philippine alliance and Western-made COVID vaccines. The news agency also uncovered that InfinitUs had created Ni Hao Manila, a media outlet designed to look Filipino-run, according to the former employees.
InfinitUs employees used accounts masquerading as pro-Beijing Filipinos to attack the U.S. and abuse a prominent nationalist lawmaker, the profiles and company records show. The documents include an August 2023 contract tasking InfinitUs with “guiding public opinion” on Facebook and X, as well as work-progress reports created for the embassy.
Reuters identified at least ten Facebook accounts that were part of what InfinitUs called an “army” in the documents. The platform’s owner Meta did not comment on the influence campaign but confirmed the accounts violated policy and removed them after being alerted by the news agency.
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