LONDON - The Chinese Communist party is using social media influencers from troubled regions like Xinjiang, Tibet and Inner Mongolia to whitewash human rights abuses through an increasingly sophisticated propaganda campaign, a report has claimed and cited by The London-based Guardian.

The report published on Thursday by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), described the videos by “frontier influencers” as a growing part of Beijing’s “propaganda arsenal”.

Under the increasingly authoritarian rule of Xi Jinping, the CCP’s oppression of ethnic minorities has worsened, with major crackdowns in Xinjiang, Tibet and Inner Mongolia. Global condemnation has mounted, with a recent United Nations report finding there was a likelihood it was committing crimes against humanity in Xinjiang. The Chinese government has vociferously denied accusations it has detained an estimated 1 million people in re-education camps and suppressed religious and cultural activities, saying the policies are to counter extremism and alleviate poverty.

The report examined about 1,700 videos created by 18 popular YouTube accounts each with between 2,000 and 200,000 followers over the last few years. It said the videos were mostly hosted by young women from ethnic minority communities, sharing mostly positive lifestyle content and presenting Xinjiang and other regions as happy and stable. Some videos explicitly attack western critics, including one showing the influencer speaking at one of the foreign press conferences organised by the CCP in recent years to deny accusations.

“Xinjiang is the same as other places in China,” a Uyghur influencer says in one video. “People live and work in peace and happiness. There is no genocide and no forced labour … People from all over the world are welcome to Xinjiang.”