Draft:HaiEnergy

HaiEnergy was a propaganda campaign in which stories supporting the Chinese government were placed on fake news websites—as well as the webpages of legitimate news organizations via press release newswire services—by Shanghai-based public relations company Haixun.

Haixun
Haixun, also known as Shanghai Haixun Technology Co., Ltd (上海海讯社科技有限公司) or Shanghai Yihuan Cultural Communication Co., Ltd, is a public relations firm based in Shanghai.

The company claims that it was first founded in 2012, that it is able to provide marketing services in 40+ languages targeting 100+ countries and regions, and that it is able to perform placement of news stories and conduct content translation using native speakers. Among the offerings named in an August 2022 report by Google-owned cybersecurity firm Mandiant were marketing service packages for disseminating "positive energy" (正能量) content in English overseas. The clients listed in the company's publicity material include various Chinese government entities.

Positive energy and pro-China messaging
"Positive energy" is a term in Chinese political discourse referring to content that portrays the Chinese government and Chinese Communist Party favorably.

Since 2017, the Chinese government and private Chinese entities have increased their efforts to purchase positive coverage of China abroad. One employee of a public relations firm that works with the government, speaking anonymously to The Washington Post in 2023, indicated that government agencies have budgets for promotional activities overseas that are also used for platform manipulation.

Discovery
HaiEnergy was publicly reported on in a Mandiant report on August 4, 2022. The report states that Mandiant had discovered 72 fake news websites linked to Haixun as well as several social media accounts that promoted the campaign's content. Citing the identical HTML templates and article content used across multiple sites, a shared web server hosting the websites' graphical assets, and a spreadsheet of fake news websites hosted on Haixun's website, Mandiant was able to link the websites to each other and to Haixun. Mandiant named the campaign "HaiEnergy" after Haixun's "positive energy" offerings.

Propaganda narratives
Narratives promoted by HaiEnergy attempted to discredit China critics such as Guo Wengui and Adrian Zenz, criticized actions of the United States government and American politicians relating to China and Taiwan, and praised Chinese policies in Hong Kong.

Attribution
It is currently unclear whether the Chinese government commissioned the HaiEnergy campaign.