China has been waging a wide-ranging disinformation campaign COVID-19 through news and social media aimed at promoting a conspiracy theory that the United States created and disseminated contagion as a biological weapon, according to a new investigation.
A nine-month investigation published on Monday by the Associated Press details how the communist government spread the malicious lie like a virus in its own right.
On January 26, 2020 – less than a week after the first coronavirus case was diagnosed on U.S. soil – a man from the autonomous region of Inner Mongolia of China posted a video on the Chinese Kuaishou app claiming that the then new virus was developed by the US, according to the study.
The video was deleted, and its creator was arrested, detained for 10 days and fined for divulging the false narrative.
But in a matter of weeks, the same theory was being developed by Chinese diplomats around the world, as well as by the vast network of state-owned media outlets at home.
The orientation error came when China was under intense scrutiny for the initial treatment of the coronavirus – which escaped the country’s quarantine and went international – and facing 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 internationally circulated newspaper that serves as a spokesman for the Chinese Communist Party – struck back, publishing a story based on speculation that the US military introduced the coronavirus into China, according to the AP report.
This report not only resonated at home, but also gained global momentum, appearing in inserts in the New Zealand Herald and in the Helsinki Times of Finland.
On March 9, an essay claiming that the U.S. military created the virus in a laboratory in Fort Detrick, Maryland and released it in the athletic competition at the Military World Games – held in October 2019 in Wuhan, China, from where the virus originated. – circulated on WeChat, another Chinese social media platform.
The following day, an anonymous online petition was submitted to the White House’s “We the People” website demanding that the U.S. government respond to Fort Detrick’s theory, according to the AP.
Although the petition obtained less than 2% of the 100,000 signatures required to get a response from the White House, the very fact that it was submitted was widely covered by Chinese media.
Days later, Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China, launched a wave of tweets broadening the bizarre theory postulated in the essay.
“When did patient zero start in the USA?” Zhao wrote to hundreds of thousands of followers. “How many people are infected? What are the names of hospitals? It could be the US army that brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make your data public! USA I must [sic] one explanation! “
Twitter later slapped the post with a fact check notice, according to the AP – but only in English, leaving the Mandarin version of the tweet intact.
In all, the 11 tweets that Zhao fired on March 12 and 13 were cited more than 99,000 times in at least 54 languages in the next six weeks, according to the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Laboratory, which partnered with AP for research.
In turn, the accounts that referenced these tweets have almost 275 million followers, according to the AP, which notes that this sum almost definitely includes some degree of overlap.
Ironically, tweets that criticize Zhao’s conspiracy theory – like news from Donald Trump Jr. – spread the premise to a wider audience, the AP noted.
Dozens of reports linked to Chinese diplomats, based in countries from France to Panama, also echoed the theory, exposing the European and Latin American public to the conspiracy.
Accounts linked to the Saudi Arabian royal family also weighed in on the rumor, as did state media in Russia and Iran, the investigation found.
The spread created a cycle of self-feeding, where leaders from Russia and Iran who gave their opinion on the conspiracy created by China made news in China, further fueling speculation.
“Did the US government intentionally hide the reality of COVID-19 with the flu?” was the main question asked in an opinion article published by China Radio International on March 22. “Why the US Army Medical Infectious Disease Research Institute in Fort. Detrick in Maryland, the largest biochemical test base, closed in July 2019? “
In a few days, the piece was reprinted more than 350 times around the world, mainly in Chinese, but also in English, Arabic, French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish, according to the AP.
Accounts promoting the article on various social media platforms reached a total of 817 million followers, a total, again, almost certain to include some redundant accounts, an audit found.
The Fort Detrick conspiracy has never died entirely since then, being resurrected by Zhao in tweets over the summer, and last month by a spokeswoman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, resisting further suggestions from the then outgoing Trump administration that the virus could have escaped from a Wuhan laboratory.
“I would like to emphasize that if the United States really respects the facts, it should open the biological laboratory in Fort Detrick, give more transparency to issues such as its more than 200 bio-laboratories abroad, invite WHO experts to conduct screening of origin in the United States, ”spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a news conference on January 18, which went viral in China.
In a statement to the AP, the ministry insisted that China had a right to defend itself against conspiracy theories launched in its path and dedicated itself to clarifying things.
“All parties must firmly say ‘no’ to the spread of disinformation,” said the ministry. “In the face of forged charges, it is justified and appropriate to decipher lies and clarify rumors by presenting the facts.”