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China's foreign ministry is using social media to exploit tensions about the performance of the World Health Organization, a security think tank says in a new report. An Australian Strategic Policy Institute analysis of social media during the coronavirus pandemic has said elements of the superpower's messaging used tactics similar to those in Russian state-sponsored disinformation campaigns. China's diplomats and state media were also using comments from US officials and politicians, and foreigners living in China, as a means to manipulating information, the institute said. "The Chinese state's efforts to contest the information domain are supported by coordinated, although not necessarily inauthentic, pro-China patriotic trolling," the think tank said in the report. ASPI said in one example, after WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom accused Taiwan of racial attacks against him, a network of 65 Twitter accounts claiming to be Taiwanese citizens apologised to him with the hashtag #saysrytoTedros. However 60 per cent of these accounts originally tweeted in simplified Chinese characters, used on the mainland, but switched to traditional characters used in Taiwan to tweet the apologies, the think tank said. READ MORE: Sixty per cent of the 65 accounts posted more than 100 tweets apologising on behalf of Taiwan between the first such tweet at 8pm on April 9, to 5am the next day, the institute's analysis said. The think tank's international cyber policy centre said an analysis of those Twitter accounts showed they might be inauthentic and part of a broader campaign. They were created recently and followed similar accounts, including Chinese state associated accounts, and popular Western accounts with a lack of non-celebrity or genuine accounts. Few accounts had followed them back, and they had periods of inactivity and inconsistent activity, the institute said. Their tweets were closely aligned in content and time frame with Chinese state-driven messaging, but were not necessarily state-directed, it said. ASPI said it found elements of China's social media messaging shared techniques in common with Russian disinformation tactics. The themes of tweets aligned in time between the Twitter accounts of diplomats, embassies and state media, the ASPI report said. In one tactic similar to that of Russian state media, China's coordinated messaging directly mirrored themes that emerged from Western media coverage. US President Donald Trump has halted funding to the WHO over its handling of the pandemic, and accused it of promoting "disinformation" from China about the coronavirus. Taiwan has also said it was denied access to vital information as the virus spread, a claim rejected by the WHO. Our COVID-19 news articles relating to public health and safety are free for anyone to access. However, we depend on subscription revenue to support our journalism. If you are able, please subscribe here. If you are already a subscriber, thank you for your support. If you're looking to stay up to date on COVID-19, you can also sign up for our twice-daily digest here.

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