| I read those two sentences to describe an existing misconception among BOTH (sentence 1) academics/journalists/activists AND (sentence 2) people posting on social media. The misconception is that the strategy of 50c party posters is to argue loudly from the perspective of the CCP. The following sentence in the abstract helps put it in context:
"Yet, almost no systematic empirical evidence exists for this claim, or, more importantly, for the Chinese regime's strategic objective in pursuing this activity. " This third sentence presents the paper's challenge to the supposed misconception. Therefore, the concluding quote you highlight makes perfect sense as the paper's thesis for what strategy drives 50c party posts. Edit: I agree those sentence are a bit awkward. To help parse them, eliminate some of the connecting words: 1: "Academics/journalists/activists claim 50c posts argue for government's side." 2: "This is also true of posts accused on social media of being 50c" (this = argue for government's side) 3: "Yet, no evidence exists for this claim" |