Borrowed Mouths and Laundered Messages: China’s Influence Playbook in Europe 

Chinese foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI) in Europe is growing – and becoming harder to detect. Drawing on over a decade of research into Chinese influence operations in Central and Eastern Europe, this paper identifies a coherent and evolving FIMI playbook that Beijing is deploying across the continent. While crude, explicitly branded propaganda has not disappeared, it is now increasingly complemented by subtler attribution-blurring techniques: “borrowing mouths” of local influencers and intermediaries to lend domestic credibility to Beijing-linked narratives; “bait and switch” strategies that build trusted channels before pushing strategic messaging; “laundering” of content through alternative media until it appears locally produced; “cloaking” that disguises Chinese sponsorship from the outset; and “amplification” of ideologically polarised domestic voices. 

Originally published by ECFR as part of a joint AMO–ECFR–OSW project, the paper also documents how Chinese FIMI supports Russian messaging on Ukraine and promotes a vision of inevitable Chinese technological and civilisational dominance. With Chinese AI tools such as DeepSeek found to embed the same narratives, the authors argue that Central and Eastern Europe – long treated as a test case for Beijing’s influence efforts – now serves as Europe’s best early-warning system. Building “China literacy” across the continent is, they conclude, the most effective first line of defence.