According to new research, China has carried out an extensive COVID-19 disinformation campaign through news and social media aimed at advancing a conspiracy theory according to which the United States created and released contagion as a weapon. biological.
A nine-month investigation published Monday by the Associated Press details how the communist government has spread the malicious lie as a virus in itself.
On January 26, 2020, less than a week after the first case of coronavirus was diagnosed on U.S. soil, a man from China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region posted a video on Chinese app Kuaishou stating that the then new virus was designed by the United States, according to the study.
The video was deleted and its creator was arrested, detained for ten days and fined for spreading the false narrative.
But in a matter of weeks, the same theory was being advanced by Chinese diplomats around the world, as well as the vast network of state-run media at home.
The mismanagement came when China was under intense scrutiny for its early handling of the coronavirus – which had escaped the country’s quarantine and had internationalized – and faced a similar theory that the outbreak originated. in a Chinese laboratory, which has since been considered “extremely unlikely.” by international health experts.
On February 22, the People’s Daily, an international newspaper that served as a speaker for the Chinese Communist Party, fired again, publishing a report based on speculation that the U.S. military had introduced the coronavirus. in China, according to the AP report.
This report not only resonated in his home, but also gained strength, appearing in insertions in the New Zealand Herald and the Finnish Helsinki Times.
On March 9, a trial circulated claiming that the U.S. military created the virus in a laboratory in Fort Detrick, Maryland and released it at the World Military Games athletic competition (held in October 2019 in Wuhan). , China, from which the virus arose). WeChat, another Chinese social networking platform.
The next day, an anonymous online petition was filed on the White House’s “We the People” site, which required the U.S. government to respond to Fort Detrick’s theory, according to the AP.
Although the petition garnered less than 2 percent of the 100,000 signatures needed to get a response from the White House, the same fact that was filed was widely published in the Chinese media.
Days later, Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, unleashed a wave of tweets that amplified the peculiarity of the theory proposed in the essay.
“When did patient zero start in the US?” Zhao wrote to his hundreds of thousands of followers. “How many people are infected? What are hospitals called? It could be the US military that brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make your details public. The US owes us [sic] us an explanation! ”
Subsequently, Twitter slapped the post with a data check warning, according to the AP, but only in English, leaving the Mandarin version of the tweet intact.
All in all, the 11 tweets that Zhao fired during March 12 and 13 were cited more than 99,000 times in at least 54 languages over the next six weeks, according to the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Laboratory, which with the PA for research. .
In turn, the accounts that referred to these tweets have about 275 million followers, according to the AP, which notes that this sum almost definitely includes some degree of overlap.
Ironically, tweets critical of Zhao’s conspiracy theory, such as Donald Trump Jr.’s disadvantages, spread the premise to the wider public, AP noted.
Dozens of accounts related to Chinese diplomats, based in countries in France in Panama, also echoed the theory, exposing European and Latin American audiences to the conspiracy.
Accounts related to the Saudi royal family also gave weight to the joke, as did state media in Russia and Iran, according to the investigation.
The broadcast created a cycle of self-sufficiency, where Russian and Iranian leaders weighing on the China-created conspiracy made headlines in China, further fueling speculation.
“Did you intentionally hide the reality of COVID-19 with the flu?” was the main question asked in a publication published by China Radio International on March 22nd. “Why did the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases in Ft. Detrick in Maryland, the largest biochemical testing base, close in July 2019?”
In a few days, this piece was reprinted more than 350 times worldwide, mainly in Chinese, but also in English, Arabic, French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish, according to the AP.
Accounts promoting the option on various social media platforms reached 817 million accumulated followers, a total, again, almost certain to include some redundant accounts, according to an audit.
The Fort Detrick conspiracy has never died at all, being resurrected by Zhao in tweets over the summer and last month by a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, who backtracked on other suggestions at the time. Trump administration, which then came out, that the virus could have escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan.
“I would like to stress that if the United States really respects the facts, they should open the biological laboratory in Fort Detrick, give more transparency to issues like its more than 200 biological laboratories abroad, invite experts from the WHO to track the origin in the United States, “spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a Jan. 18 press conference that went viral in China.
In a statement to the PA, the ministry insisted that China was within its rights to defend itself from conspiracy theories and devoted itself to correcting the record.
“All parties should say unequivocally‘ no ’to the spread of misinformation,” the ministry said. “In the face of the accusations passed, it is justified and appropriate to raise lies and clarify rumors by setting out the facts.”