Pro-Chinese regime social media influencers and accounts are capitalizing on the assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk to attack the United States and sow division, an Epoch Times investigation has uncovered.
Additionally, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has allowed information and comments about Kirk to spread widely on the Chinese internet, including many comments that use the assassination to argue that the U.S. system of governance is inferior to the CCP’s. In China, the internet is tightly controlled by Beijing’s censors, and topics can only spread and be discussed freely when the CCP allows it.
Kirk was assassinated on Sept. 10 during a public speaking event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.
While his death was widely condemned by people on both sides of the political aisle, pro-CCP accounts have amplified the spread of disrespectful and offensive comments, as well as comments celebrating Kirk’s death or spreading conspiracy theories about who was behind the assassination. Some comments have suggested that the U.S. government or Israel was behind it.
In social media posts, Zhao DaShuai, a self-described propagandist for the Chinese People’s Armed Police, jumped between blaming the incident on U.S. society and Israel and insinuating that the U.S. government was involved.
When U.S. War Secretary Pete Hegseth posted a Bible quote—“Well done, good and faithful servant”—in Kirk’s honor, Zhao replied: “What did he mean by this? Won’t be surprised if the shooter was ex-military.”
Zhao’s account has more than 200,000 followers and has been pumping out dozens of posts on X about the incident.
In one post, she included video footage of Kirk interviewing conservative political commentator Ben Shapiro, who is Jewish.
“You can’t see Ben Shapiro’s hands, but they are dialing his contact in the Mossad to plan the hit,” she said in the post.
User @USA_Silly, who lists the Chinese Ministry of Public Security as his location and has more than 120,000 followers, called Kirk “Android redneck” and posthumously scolded him for calling the Chinese regime authoritarian.
Meanwhile, user @leige88888, who has nearly 40,000 followers on X and routinely calls Chinese critics of the CCP “traitors,” suggested that Kirk invited his assassination, saying, “Those who argue without virtue will surely be put to death.”
Carl Zha, who hosts a pro-regime podcast with nearly 200,000 followers on X, blamed the assassination on “a dysfunctional country which will become even more dysfunctional” before replying “yes” to claims that Kirk was an “ignorant buffoon” who “helped to make [America] dysfunctional.”
Both Zha and DaShuai also claimed that President Donald Trump’s address after the incident was generated by artificial intelligence.
Even some non-Chinese pro-CCP accounts followed the pattern.
User @loongkingdom, a self-described Italian who often travels to China and has more than 20,000 followers, claimed that the assassination demonstrates that “the legal system in the US has collapsed.” She also posted a picture of a distasteful figurine showing Kirk’s death.
The CCP is known for using an army of online bots and trolls to push its agenda on U.S. social media. However, it appears that the accounts are getting more sophisticated at exploiting existing divisions in U.S. society.
Some influencers have reported receiving offers of cash or cryptocurrency in exchange for information and content that serves Beijing’s interests. Several Taiwanese influencers produced a documentary detailing a whole industry in China for creating pro-CCP social media personalities.
Earlier this year, The Epoch Times discovered a network of thousands of what X calls “inauthentic” accounts—referring to either paid or AI bot accounts—that were promoting CCP talking points on the platform. They were largely employed to attack the spiritual group Falun Gong, which the CCP has been trying to eliminate in China and abroad since 1999. Many of the accounts were also used to attack other Chinese dissidents and the United States more broadly. X removed most of the accounts upon being alerted to the issue, but new ones are continually being created.
AI has become a major tool of the CCP in streamlining the production of sophisticated fake accounts, multiple experts previously told The Epoch Times.
In recent years, Beijing appears to have become more adept at roping in non-Chinese influencers and producing English-language content.
Typical themes include glorifying the CCP’s communist system and governance, usually through touting state-sponsored infrastructure and planned high-tech projects, as well as claims of low crime rates in China. Others include portraying the U.S. system of governance as dysfunctional by highlighting issues such as crime and homelessness.
Currently, pro-CCP influencers appear to be especially focused on inflaming divisions over the Israel–Hamas war.
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