‘Na-budol’ by disinformation

Reports that disinformation agents backed by China are trying to influence the outcome of the Philippine midterm elections do not surprise me. Chinese disinformation activities in the Philippines have been documented in several studies and reports over recent years.

The Jamestown Foundation, a US-based non-partisan defense policy think tank, published in 2023 an article that provides an overview of China's foreign influence operations in the Philippines. It discusses the activities of the United Front Work Department (UFWD) and examines a major disinformation campaign related to the South China Sea.

“In the run-up to the May 2022 Philippine gubernational elections, for instance, the UFWD reportedly attempted to manipulate Manuel Momba, the Governor of Cagayan Del Sur, into opposing the annual U.S.-Philippines Balikatan exercise, part of which was to involve an amphibious landing in the province’s waters off Claveria,” says the article in the think tank’s China Brief Volume23 Issue9.

On February 14, 2025, academics from the Ateneo School of Government, University of the Philippines Diliman, and Far Eastern University published a study (Ona, Silva, Arceo, & Garcia, 2025) that examines the manifestations of the Chinese Communist Party’s political influence in various areas, including electoral politics and covert operations in the Philippines. “The CCP uses sharp power to project its influence internationally often by limiting open discourse, spreading misinformation, and shaping the democratic political landscape to further its strategic objectives in the Indo-Pacific,” says the study.

With all due respect to our Philippine-based political marketing strategists, I don’t expect the high level of sophistication we are seeing in the disinformation circulating in the country right now to have come organically from them. The disinformation we're seeing in the Philippines is too strategic, too sophisticated, to have been developed by local firms alone; it points to foreign (likely Chinese) involvement.

What is new now is that foreign interference in our information ecosystem has finally been acknowledged by top state security officials. Last week, in a Senate committee hearing led by Senator Francis Tolentino, Jonathan Malaya, assistant director general of the National Security Council, said that “there are indications that information operations being done in the Philippines are Chinese state-sponsored and are actually interfering in the forthcoming elections.” Malaya added that “third-party individuals and proxies” based in the Philippines are being used to “amplify” the “narratives coming out of Beijing.”

It’s about time that the Philippine government employs serious and smart tactics against disinformation agents that threaten our democracy and national security. No more Mr. Nice Guy when it comes to online disinformation. By 'Mr. Nice Guy', I mean that we can no longer cling to an overly libertarian defense of free speech when it comes to online disinformation. We must be capable of determining when organized manipulation is taking place and apply the fullest extent of the law to counter and stifle it.

Of course, it is not unusual for countries in this day and age of digital communication to be subjected to sophisticated state-backed disinformation operations. The United States, for example, is subjected to such operations --and it, too, might have been doing the same to its rivals. The problem for the Philippines is that, unlike the US, our society and democratic institutions are fragile and prone to manipulation --and may not survive.

Just look at many of our supposedly-educated and highly-informed citizens, both here and abroad --many of whom are heavily reliant on social media and smartphones-- who now readily express unwavering support for former president Rodrigo Duterte. A friend aptly described them as having been 'na-budol' by disinformation.