It took just three months for the rumor that COVID-19 was designed as a biological weapon to spread from the fringes of the Chinese Internet and take root in the minds of millions of people.
In March 2020, the belief that the virus had been made by man and possibly turned into a weapon was widespread, indicated several surveys. The Pew Research Center found, for example, that one in three Americans believed that the new coronavirus had been created in a laboratory; one in four thinks it was intentionally designed.
This chaos was, at least in part, fabricated.
ARCHIVE – In the archive photo of this Monday, February 24, 2020, the spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, Zhao Lijian, speaks during a daily meeting at the office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing. Zhao repeatedly suggested on Twitter that the coronavirus may have come from the U.S. Army. (AP Photo / Andy Wong, Archives)
Powerful forces, from Beijing and Washington to Moscow and Tehran, have struggled to control the narrative about the origin of the virus. Leading officials and allied media in all four countries functioned as super propagators of disinformation, using their stature to sow doubt and amplify politically convenient conspiracies already in circulation, a nine-month Associated Press investigation on state-sponsored disinformation conducted in collaboration with the Atlantic Found the Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. The analysis was based on a review of millions of social media posts and articles on Twitter, Facebook, VK, Weibo, WeChat, YouTube, Telegram and other platforms.
When the pandemic swept the world, it was China – not Russia – that took the lead in spreading foreign misinformation about the origins of COVID-19.
Beijing was responding to weeks of fiery rhetoric from top US Republicans, including then President Donald Trump, who was looking to rename COVID-19 as “the virus in China”.
CORONAVIRUS IN THE USA: DISTRIBUTION FROM STATE TO STATE
China’s Foreign Ministry says Beijing has been working to promote friendship and serve the facts, while defending itself against hostile forces seeking to politicize the pandemic.
“All parties should firmly say ‘no’ to the spread of disinformation,” the ministry said in a statement to the AP, but added: “In the face of forged charges, it is justified and appropriate to burst out lies and clear up rumors by exposing the facts.”
The day after the World Health Organization designated the outbreak of COVID-19 as a pandemic, Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, fired a series of nighttime tweets that launched what could be the first truly digital experiment global party with open disinformation.
ARCHIVE – In this February 7, 2020 archive photo, people wearing masks participate in a vigil by Chinese doctor Li Wenliang in Hong Kong. The wave of sadness and anger provoked by Li’s death was an unusual display – and for the Chinese Communist Party, unsettling – in China’s closely monitored civic space. (AP Photo / Kin Cheung, Archive)
Chinese diplomats have only recently mobilized on Western social media platforms, more than tripling their Twitter accounts and more than doubling their Facebook accounts since the end of 2019. Both platforms have been banned in China.
“When did patient zero start in the USA?” Zhao tweeted on March 12. “How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It could be the US army that brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Disclose your data! The US owes us (sic) an explanation!”
What happened next shows the power of China’s global messaging machine.
MIKE POMPEO URGES BIDEN TO ‘CONFRONT CHINA HEAD-ON’ AS THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION
On Twitter alone, Zhao’s aggressive spray of 11 tweets on March 12 and 13 was cited more than 99,000 times in the next six weeks, in at least 54 languages, according to an analysis conducted by DFRLab. The accounts that referred him had almost 275 million followers on Twitter – a number that almost certainly includes duplicate followers and does not distinguish fake accounts.
Influential conservatives on Twitter, including Donald Trump Jr., hammered Zhao, bringing his tweets to the largest audience.
China’s Global Times and at least 30 Chinese diplomatic accounts, from France to Panama, rushed to support Zhao. Venezuela’s foreign minister and RT correspondent in Caracas, as well as Saudi accounts close to the kingdom’s royal family, have also significantly expanded Zhao’s reach, helping to launch his ideas in Spanish and Arabic.
ARCHIVE – In this September 4, 2020 archive photo, Russian Igor Nikulin speaks during a press conference in Moscow, Russia. Nikulin argues that the United States created the virus and used it to attack China. Nikulin says he is a former UN weapons inspector, but the man who would have been his boss said he never heard of him. (AP Photo / Pavel Golovkin, Archive)
His accusations received uncritical treatment in the Russian and Iranian state media and were countered by the QAnon discussion forums. But its largest audience, by far, is within China itself – despite the fact that Twitter is banned there. Popular hashtags about his storm of tweets have been viewed 314 million times on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, which does not distinguish unique views.
Late on the night of March 13, Zhao posted a message of gratitude on his personal Weibo: “Thank you for your support for me, let’s work hard for the motherland 💪!”
China relied on the Russian disinformation strategy and infrastructure, using an established network of Kremlin proxies to sow and spread messages. In January, Russian state media was the first to legitimize the theory that the United States created the virus as a weapon. Russian politicians soon joined the chorus.
UNITED KINGDOM OPENS HOTELS IN QUARENTINE, STARTS WITH VACCINE DRIVE
“One enlarged the other … how much was controlled by command, how opportunistic it was, it was hard to say,” said Janis Sarts, director of NATO’s Center for Excellence in Strategic Communications, based in Riga, Latvia.
Iran also interfered. The same day, Zhao tweeted that the virus could have come from the U.S. Army, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, announced that COVID-19 could be the result of a biological attack. He would later cite this conspiracy to justify refusing US COVID-19 aid
Ten days after Zhao’s first conspiracy tweets, China’s global state-owned media apparatus went into action.
“Did the US government intentionally hide the reality of COVID-19 with the flu?” asked a suggestive Mandarin article published by China Radio International on March 22. “Why was the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases at Ft. Detrick in Maryland, the largest biochemical test base, closed in July 2019?”
ARCHIVE – In this March 11, 2020 archive photo, the leader of the Russian Democratic Liberal Party Vladimir Zhirinovsky speaks during a session at the State Duma, the Lower House of the Russian Parliament in Moscow, Russia. Zhirinovsky, the nationalist leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, suggested that the United States and its greedy pharmaceutical companies were to blame for the coronavirus. (AP Photo / Pavel Golovkin)
In a few days, versions of the piece appeared more than 350 times in Chinese state-owned vehicles, mainly in Mandarin, but also worldwide in English, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Arabic, the AP found.
The Chinese Embassy in France promoted the story on Twitter and Facebook. He appeared on YouTube, Weibo, WeChat and on a number of Chinese video platforms, including Haokan, Xigua, Baijiahao, Bilibili, iQIYI, Kuaishou and Youku. A seven-second version with music to drive appeared on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.
“It is clear that promoting these types of conspiracy theories, misinformation, does not usually result in negative consequences for them,” said Mareike Ohlberg, senior researcher with the Asian Program of the German Marshall Fund.
THE UNITED KINGDOM CORONAVIRUS VARIETY FOUND IN THE USA MAY BE DEAD, SCIENTISTS SAY
In April, Russia and Iran dropped the biological weapon conspiracy in their open messages.
China, however, continued.
In January, while a team from the World Health Organization was examining records in China to try to locate the origins of the virus, MOFA spokeswoman Hua Chunying urged the US to “open the biological laboratory in Fort Detrick, give more transparency to issues like a More than 200 bio-laboratories abroad, invite WHO experts to conduct screening of origin in the United States. “
His comments went viral in China.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APPLICATION
China’s Foreign Ministry has told the AP that it is strongly opposed to the spread of conspiracy theories. “We have not done this before and we will not do it in the future,” the ministry said in a statement. “False information is humanity’s common enemy, and China has always been opposed to the creation and dissemination of false information.”