Chinese military scholars recently published a study stating that China should learn from Ukraine’s information warfare experience when exploring new wartime messaging models, because in a complex modern information environment, advanced technology alone is still not enough. The key to success lies in closely integrating information strategy with military operations to undermine the enemy’s sense of security, consolidate domestic determination, and win support from the international community.
Hong Kong's "South China Morning Post" reported on the 6th that the report, written by Lin Jiawei (transliteration) and Yang Qingqing (transliteration), scholars at the National University of Defense Technology of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, was published in the academic journal "Defence Industry Conversion." The article provides an in-depth analysis of Ukraine’s military operation codenamed “Spiderweb” launched in June 2025. At that time, the Ukrainian army hid hundreds of drones in ordinary commercial trucks and went deep into Russia to attack five air force bases. Ukraine claimed to have destroyed 41 military aircraft, while independent agencies assessed that at least a dozen were destroyed.
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Scholars pointed out that this attack was deliberately chosen on the eve of the second round of peace negotiations and was coordinated within hours with a carefully planned information offensive in an attempt to rewrite the war narrative.
The study pointed out that Ukraine constructed three interlocking narratives after the attack: first, it framed the air strike as legitimate self-defense against Russia's long-term aggression; second, it framed itself as a restrained actor, emphasizing that the target was only targeting military aircraft bombing Ukrainian cities to reduce civilian suffering; and finally, it demonstrated intimidation by striking high-value targets in multiple regions and time zones in Russia, forcing Moscow to recalculate the cost of the war and debunking its long-term propaganda of "absolute homeland security."
This set of narratives spread rapidly on social media through official accounts, open source intelligence agencies, military Internet celebrities, and real videos of eyewitnesses, providing a grassroots sense of reality that official statements lacked, achieving a chain amplification effect, reaching Russian officials and people, war-weary Ukrainians, and Western policymakers. Scholars call on Beijing to pay attention to this kind of "multi-party coordination" network, allowing the government, think tanks and online opinion leaders to simultaneously deliver messages, and actively use generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools to produce, promote and defend their narratives.
In recent years, the Chinese military has invested heavily in "intelligent" warfare and AI military applications in the hope of weakening the enemy's will in the field of "cognitive warfare." The study emphasized that Ukraine's experience shows that AI can quickly produce graphic, text, and audio-visual content customized for different audiences, and monitor emotional trends in real time, allowing messages to be adjusted "within hours instead of days."
The study concluded that for China, which intends to integrate AI in the military and information fields, the focus is not only on adopting new tools, but on establishing an adaptive system composed of the government, media, Internet celebrities and the general public. While promoting concepts such as "a community with a shared future for mankind" to the outside world, we must also actively counter Western discourse and strictly guard against false information and deepfakes to ensure that the domestic information space is tightly controlled.
