China Excels in Google Rankings on Xinjiang and Covid-19 Searches

HONG KONG—China’s global campaign to expand the reach of its political positions is helping it secure a coveted piece of online real estate: first-page search results on Google and other major Western portals.

Content reflecting Beijing’s position on its human-rights record and the origins of Covid-19 now regularly appears among top results on Google, Bing and YouTube, according to a new report from the Brookings Institution and another Washington think tank, the Alliance for Securing Democracy, which seeks to study and resist the influence of authoritarian governments.