The Beginners Guide To CCP Shill-Spotting

What is a CCP shill ? How many kinds are there ? How would you spot one ? What to do if you encounter one ? Are they endangered or flourishing ? All your questions answered in 120 seconds.

Photo by McGill Library on Unsplash

Tragically, the DODO is extinct. Tragically, the CCP SHILL may be with us for some time to come.

What is a Shill ?

In the context of CCP influence and interference work, there are many different species of CCP Shill. Let’s start with the oracles of all knowledge, Siri (who didn’t know so she asked Wikipedia) and Apple’s default dictionary.

Based on the above definitions, beginner spotters should focus on four of the more common species.

1. Politicians (common)

2. Journalists (rare but with toxic venom)

3. Academics and Thinktank Shills (flourishing)

4. Business (believed endangered, but this may be due to effective camouflage)

5. Ex Politicians and Diplomats (less common but most dangerous)

While there is some migration across habitats, these five species develop and congregate in their own unique environmental ranges.

Politics:

Politician Shills exist in all major parties and independents can be shills as well. Shilling for the CCP provides supplementary nutrition that could mean life or death. For some shilling is a way of life but for many it is just one of the many roles they play and can be simply a component of appearances at CCP related events, CCP friendly statements in parliament, capitulationist op-eds in news media, “nuanced” comments in think tank webinars and discussions on ABC shows hosted by Stan Grant¹ . Not all politicians are CCP shills but at one time or another in small ways or large it is surprising to many beginner spotters how many are CCP shills or exhibit shill like features. It is possible to evolve into a CCP shill and may even be possible to evolve out of shill - ness, although this is likely to be a painful experience.

Journalism:

Journalists by their nature and training are often passionate about the truth, believe in freedom of speech and bristle at the idea of being part of 新闻舆论管理 / xinwen yulun guanli / public opinion management for the CCP. A mutant version of the journalist species can become Shills, especially if retirement nest eggs are not hatching as planned or finding their nest inadequately feathered.

Do not approach these mutants as they are particularly cunning, and can spray toxic “nuance” from their protected nests on high, well defended platforms. Departing from the avian analogy (just for a second!), they can say mean things about you if you say mean things about them, but they will get away with it. Any attempt to defend yourself means you will learn all about Australia’s unique defamation laws very fast and at your own expense.

Academics and Thinktanks:

Academic and Thinktank Shills often have a parasitic relationship with Business Shills that in turn rely on CCP links to function profitably in or due to China. They exist in symbiosis with United Front organisations and explicitly CCP connected organisations to the point where they could be regarded as locally installed weapons of information warfare. We could think of them as “the Beak of the Phoenix”©². They are flourishing in Australia as despite poor camouflage, no one is trying that hard to spot them.

Business:

Business Shills exist, often extending gratuitous, capitulationist advice to politicians who may have been de-shilled or insufficiently shilled to do the work of the CCP in Australia. They may echo Peoples Daily talking points, in unison with Politician Shills, but often they simply take a punt on what the CCP wants to hear and only get it partly right. This has been easily spotted and the risk of losing Australian government support or in an extreme case, blowback from Australian consumers, has led to a sharp decrease in their numbers over recent years. Capricious trade attacks that not just prevented exports but actually stranded cargoes on the water has dealt business shills such a hard blow that where possible, many will seek more reliable habitats altogether, and be loathe to re-shill. There is however, the possibility that they are either well camouflaged or in hiding, and will shill up again if they perceive the environment has changed and such evolution is required to maximise the chance of survival.

Ex-Politicians and Ex-Diplomats:

These shills are uncontrolled, often desperate, and dangerously attention seeking. Often they are elderly, and it is now that they have flown from the rooks they once jealously guarded, it is clear that the policies they implemented, the strategic eggs they laid and guarded in some cases decades ago, have hatched in ways that are sub - optimal for Australia’s sovereignty, weakened our democratic institutions and fractured our unity, all to the benefit of the CCP, enhancing its power in this country and the region. They are easy to spot by their loud squawking, should be ignored rather than provoked, and are as impressive as a peacock with no feathers. They have a symbiotic relationship with journalists, think tanks and sometimes current politicians, making them indirectly dangerous.

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How To Spot A Shill:

While there are many tools that can be used by advanced spotters of the species, for beginners we recommend starting with the following three methodologies.

1. Linguistic Analysis

2. Coordinated Communication

3. Subliminal Messaging

Linguistic Analysis:

CCP Shills not only seek to fool Australians into accepting defeat by CCP interests and mould our thinking to fit a narrative crafted in Beijing. They seek to ingratiate themselves with CCP or CCP aligned interests by making public statements that translate well into Chinese, and are easily and accurately reported in CCP mouthpiece the People’s Daily, which requires they translate smoothly into Chinese, even if this makes the original in English seem somewhat stilted or incorrect. An alternative explanation is that they have been told what to say by someone who has Chinese as a first Language, and good but not native English skills.

An example of this would be Tim Pallas and Dan Andrews, among many others, who have claimed that the Federal Government were “vilifying” China.

I think the vilification of any single nation is dangerous, damaging and probably irresponsible in many respects. (The Age, May 13, 2020)

While this author was unable to locate requoting of this in Chinese media, “vilification” is a weird word choice, from the English context, one would generally use the word “slander” in the sentence above, since vilification implies use of abusive or insulting language, which of course was never used by anyone in the federal government. The CCP would consistently say they were lying, slandering China. They may also say “vilifying” but this suggests imperfect English skills.

莫里森污蔑中国国军援俄罗斯 Morrison slandered / vilified China’s military aid to Russia.

We at Prairie Fire contend that “slander” is the more appropriate translation in this and many cases from Chinese media. 网易首页 2022-05-25。

污蔑 - wu mie: Its first definition in the standard dictionary is “vilification”. It also gets used like “slander” . To complicate matters further there is 诬蔑， which is pronounced identically, second character identical, and tends to be used to say, “slander” or “smear”. Both these terms turn up in official Chinese media a lot these days, but in English the word “vilify” is most commonly used, likely because the dictionary posits vilify as the first option in translation, resulting in it’s misuse, even by people who don’t speak Chinese, but are repeating what they have been asked to say publicly.

Vilify ? or Slander ?

So the Shill-spotting clue is does the suspected shill use the word “vilify” when in English they really should be using the word slander ?

Coordinated Communication:

Shills travel in flocks, and when one tweets, others retweet. It might hatch from a Shill nest like johnmenadue.com , but once the tweeting begins, the same message will be repeated by CCP shills of different species, seemingly working in a coordinated fashion.

Consider the recent “要求” (yāo qíu) debate. After Wang Yi met with Penny Wong it was reported he made four demands of Australia to “normalise” relations with China. Some Shills popped up quite fast suggesting they were not demands. On July 11 the team at Prairie Fire debated this amongst ourselves and produced our own opinion, concluding that it is understandable that journalists would assume they were demands since the word used in the Chinese media reports and the Chinese - English dictionary commonly used in China translated the word used, 要求 (yāo qíu) - as demands, or requirements. Reading the text in its entirety, we felt it meant demand, and that all four demands (or whatever) were wildly unreasonable, whether you call them demands or not.

A flock of Shills fluttered into action promptly after ABC news reported on the Wong / Wang meeting.

David Brophy on Twitter July 11.

David Brophy @Dave_Brophy

ABC news just reported that China had issued 4 demands, then cut to Albo saying that Australia won’t bow to demands, without at any point telling people what these “demands” were.

Follow the thread and he gets more heated and Jenny Leong and James Curran flap along and retweet.

Then:

James Laurenson on Twitter July 12

James Laurenceson 罗震 @j_laurenceson

“⁦@mcgregorrichard⁩ did not interpret Mr Wang as making demands…⁦”; “@JakobsonLinda…⁩said Mr Wang’s remarks should not be construed as demands and were better described as a “statement of atmospherics China hopes to achieve with Australia”.”

afr.comAustralia does not respond to China’s ‘demands’: AlbaneseThe prime minister says he wants a constructive relationship with Beijing, but he will put the national interest first instead of bowing to diplomatic pressure.

James Laurenson of ACRI, amplifying Linda Jacobson of “China Matters”, both implying the official Chinese dictionary used by 1.4 billion Chinese (and me) is wrong.

And then,

Sun WanNing in Crikey (link) July 13 stated:

Misconstruing China’s ‘demands’, Australian media beat the drums of war

Do journalists deliberately mistranslate statements or are they just ignorant as they continue the Chinese 'threat' narrative?

So ABC and other journalists, by looking up 要求 in the standard dictionary and quoting it for what it is, are warmongers now ? I’m hearing “it’s all the fault of the biased western media” (who else says that ? hint - People’s Daily).

CCP Shills of a feather, flock together, how apt they should tweet and tweet in seemingly (but not necessarily) coordinated chorus. The big question is: Do they get an instruction from the Lord Phoenix to pick an issue and push a viewpoint simultaneously, or (more likely) they simply know what is expected of them from their patrons and “egg” each other on ?

Subliminal Messages:

This is a favourite of academics, speaking in code that different audiences will interpret differently, one audience (CCP aligned) will know that the Shill is on their side, others, will be persuaded of the CCP argument, as expressed by the Shill. Only one major example comes to mind, but our researchers are confident that once we start digging we could find many more. Part of the reason we haven’t, is that Shills are often obvious without this type of clue, anyway.

Alan Behm’s Demonising China during Covid-19 is a personal favourite.

This, as our present crisis is reminding us every day, demands a new global consensus that allows governments to design and implement the rules by which the global community operates in the interests of humanity as a whole. And a new global consensus requires all states, especially the rich and powerful, to collaborate in the interests of the global community. In re-writing the global rules (and China, incidentally, was excluded from the rule-writing that took place in the immediate aftermath of WW2), as in managing the Covid-19 pandemic, that includes China. Demonising China, seeking to penalise China by squeezing its economy, will not generate the outcomes that the global community demands. Rather, the key to ‘fixing’ both the present coronavirus pandemic and preventing, so far as possible, a reoccurrence lies in an active, confident, constructive and energetic international diplomacy that reflects and promotes the fundamental truth that all human beings have dignity and worth because of our shared humanity.

This has 共同构建人类命运共同体 (gong tong gou jian ren lei ming yun gong tong ti) - Together Construct a Community of Shared Destiny for Mankind - scrawled all over it. And this is bad.

China as a nation signs international documents never intending to keep with either the letter or spirit of the agreements, but as a tactic to get later what was left on the table at the time of signing, eg Law of the Sea / The Sino-British Joint Declaration / WTO accession / 158 separate peace talks in the Korean War just to sneak troops forward - the list goes on.

China has systematically undermined the values and mechanisms of international organisations such as the UN to make it more dictatorship friendly and weaken tools to uphold or defend human rights and mechanisms that support freedom, such as the global growth of the only true new political idea, democracy as a political system. Dictators who are afraid of their own people, are easier to control, Solomon Islands - watch this space.

Expansion of the Sinosphere, is marketed as Constructing a Community of Shared Destiny for Mankind. It appeals to dictators. It is bollocks. It is evil, and to use CCP terminology, should be resisted in every “front” - including diplomatic, military, economic, - and Academic and Media “fronts”.

For a more academic takedown of China’s plans, please read Nadege Rolland’s January 2020 NBR special report: China’s Vision For a New World Order.

Are you an experienced CCP Shill spotter ? Can you provide more methods for Shill detection ? Please send us your thoughts by signing up to Prairie Fire, let’s get some sparks flying !

1. Are there any shows on ABC these days not hosted by Stan Grant ?

2. I’ve been doing this CCP / China / Australia blog for a month, written eleven articles and not once NOT ONCE have I stooped to using the words “Panda” or “Dragon”. Forgive me this “Beak of the Phoenix”© one please !