China’s 50-Cent Army Invades US Cyberspace

Commentary

When does a political commentator genuinely believe the words coming out of his own mouth, and when is he simply saying them to get people’s clicks? One clue that you are dealing with the latter is when the commentator says the U.S. government or a U.S. political party is worse than the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). He might even say he would rather move to China than continue living in the United States. However, this is just clickbait, nothing more.

The CCP is in a despicable league of its own. There are many reasons for this (especially their murder of innocent people in order to sell fresh organs), but I recently became intimately acquainted with one particular reason: the 50-Cent Army.

My website, ClassicalPoets.org, was unusually slow and was receiving a poor ranking for online ads. The website manager informed me that we were receiving a huge number of visitors from China. Visitors are good, but these visitors stayed for zero seconds and only hurt us.

My New York-based nonprofit, the Society of Classical Poets, carries poetry about human rights in China, but it accounts for less than 1 percent of what we publish. Yet a foreign entity saw fit to attack it online. Nothing that U.S. political forces do to other countries or to their own people can compare to this degree of extended thought control and over-sensitivity to criticism.

This is why it is so important for Americans to fully understand the nature of the beast we are dealing with. For the CCP, the internet is the battlefield, information is a weapon, and continued political power is its plunder. My website was successfully attacked, and the U.S. military and government were nowhere to be found. We are losing this virtual war.

Smothering Citizens’ Real Concerns

Perhaps nowhere is the online threat of the CCP more evident than in the 50-Cent Army. Originally, the term “50-Cent Army” referred to Chinese internet agents who posed as ordinary citizens and were supposedly paid 50 cents for each post that advanced the CCP’s agenda.

An archive of leaked comments from a propaganda office in China’s Jiangxi Province contained 50-Cent Army comments such as these: “Carry the red flag stained with the blood of our forefathers, and unswervingly follow the path of the CCP!” and “We hope the central government provides us with even more support.”

These comments seem almost blandly patriotic, but remember, they are supporting a one-party, totalitarian system, and, rolled out in force, they smother Chinese citizens’ real concerns about their government. According to an in-depth 2017 study by Harvard researchers, the Chinese regime fabricates more than 400 million such social media comments a year.

A few of the leaked directives of the 50-Cent Army give insight into the mind games played by the CCP:

• To the extent possible, make America the target of criticism. Play down the existence of Taiwan.
• Use America’s and other countries’ interference in international affairs to explain how Western democracy is actually an invasion of other countries and is forcibly pushing Western values.
• Use the bloody and tear-stained history of a weak people [pre-communist China] to stir up pro-Party and patriotic emotions.

While Chinese diplomats talk nice for trade deals, these comments reveal the real battle lines: The United States and Western nations are enemies. Of course, these are directed at a Chinese audience, but the 50-Cent Army has not stopped there. It has also taken to English-language social media to push public opinion in the direction that the CCP wants.

Invading America

An in-depth investigative report from Epoch Times reporters Petr Svab and Eva Fu in 2025 found that “signs of the Chinese regime’s influence are becoming more prevalent on YouTube, especially in English-language content about China.”

“Paid agitators are flooding comment sections, propaganda videos are being masked as grassroots content, and influencers are being offered cash or crypto to push the regime’s message,” they wrote.

At the beginning of 2025, Google released a report indicating that it had terminated more than 15,000 YouTube channels as part of its “ongoing investigation into coordinated influence operations linked to the People’s Republic of China.”

Last year, Svab uncovered thousands of fake accounts on X promoting New York Times articles sympathetic to lawsuits against Shen Yun Performing Arts, a thorn in the CCP’s side. X closed the fake accounts.

All of this tells us that we are already in a virtual war with China. Divisions among Americans distract from the bigger story: The 50-Cent Army has broken through the gates and is in our midst. This is something worth protesting about.

As Americans in virtual wartime, we need our own directives to combat those of the CCP. This is what I suggest:

Don’t be so quick to criticize the United States, and instead, do not forget the great U.S. contributions to the international community.

Recognize that Taiwan naturally doesn’t want to unify with China because communism and socialism might sound nice but are brutal and horrific in practice.

Go see a Shen Yun performance and celebrate “China Before Communism.” China has an incredible and beautiful history to be proud of, and one that the world can enjoy.

With these, the United States can win the information war against the invading 50-Cent Army.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.