‘Muddying the waters’: Narrative DoppelGängers, information operations and US–China competition in the South China Sea

Beyond military and economic domains, strategic competition also unfolds in the international information ecosystem as great powers vie for influence through strategic narratives. In the context of US–China strategic competition, the South China Sea disputes have increasingly become a theatre for ‘image wars’ as political actors use narratives and counter-narratives to assert and defend their legitimacy. This article is concerned with how narrative competition occurs through ‘mirroring’ – what is described as ‘narrative DoppelGängers’ – that aims to produce alternative realities that obfuscate, confuse and blur the lines between ‘truth’ and ‘fiction’. Political actors borrow or mimic concepts, images and websites to construct and reify different political realities by developing legitimate-appearing narratives that make it difficult to tell fact from fabrication. Using the South China Sea as a case study, the article identifies forms of narrative mirroring to provide new insights into how great powers compete in the information ecosystem.