Or is this supposed to be one part of a larger effort, tasked to work on stories that are actually of global concern, having nothing to do with Shanghai?
Of course it's important for the CCP to shape opinion abroad, it's seeking to supplant the US as a global power and needs the soft-influence that the US has.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/07/houston-rockets-gm-morey-del...
The has the power it does because, aside from being very rich, before the 20th century they made extremely reasonable foreign policy decisions.
The US has been losing influence for some decades already.
International relations are indeed law of the jungle though, if that's what you mean.
The authorities used a phrase common among China’s internet police that refers to tracking down the actual person behind a social media account: “touching the ground.” With growing frequency, the country’s internet police have hunted down and threatened internet users who voice their opinions. At first, its agents focused on local social media platforms. In 2018, they began a new campaign to detain users of Twitter inside China — account owners who had found ways around the government’s blocks — and force them to delete their accounts.
Now, the campaign has extended to Chinese citizens who live outside of China. The document spells out how the Shanghai police want to discover the identities of people behind certain accounts and to trace their users’ connections to the mainland. Its officers can then threaten family members in China or detain the account holders when they return to the country in order to compel online critics to delete posts or even entire accounts.
The supplier should publish designated content on overseas forums. They should increase the number of views of the post and ensure that the post appears at the top of the forum. The service should be provided at least 10 times per month. Page 14 of the bidding document detailing what services the police required.