Image source,Getty Images
As the US intelligence agency’s report on the tracing of the new crown came out, a false news propaganda campaign claiming that the virus originated from a military base in Maryland is gaining more and more popularity in China.
In May of this year, US President Joe Biden ordered a 90-day investigation to investigate whether the new crown virus came from a laboratory accident or from contact between humans and infected animals.
Prior to this, most scientists always believed that the “Wuhan laboratory leak” theory was not worth discussing, and regarded it as a fringe conspiracy theory.
But now, as the deadline for the publication of the US report is approaching, China has launched an offensive. In the past few weeks, various Chinese sources have been propagating an unfounded accusation suggesting that the new crown virus was created in the United States.
Their methods are varied, from rap music to fake Facebook posts. Experts said that these propaganda efforts have successfully persuaded Chinese domestic audiences to have doubts about the international voices criticizing China’s role in the new crown epidemic, but this has not helped in building the rationalization of China to the outside world.
Allegations
Most Americans may have never heard of Fort Detrick (Fort Detrick), but now the name is becoming a household name in China.
A conspiracy theory promoted by Chinese propagandists claims that the new crown virus was created and leaked inside the U.S. military facility, which is about 80 kilometers north of Washington, D.C., in Frederick County, Maryland.
It used to be the center of the US biological weapons program, and is now home to a number of biomedical laboratories that study viruses such as Ebola and smallpox. Its complicated history has caused some speculation in China.
Image source,Getty Images
The Chinese nationalist rap group “Tianfu Incident” released a song that meant that the laboratory was planning some evil conspiracy. This song was recently supported by the spokesperson of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Zhao Lijian.
The rhythm of this song is embarrassing, and the lyrics in it read, “What conspiracy and tricks are being considered in the laboratory/how many creatures were destroyed for this/the emperor’s new clothes/open the door and don’t hide it again”, and Zhao Lijian in August this year Twitter stated that the song “tells our heart.”
Zhao Lijian himself is known for his aggressive diplomatic style, and he also plays an important role in spreading the “American Origin” theory. Last year, several of his tweets made Fort Detrick get a lot of attention for the first time. “What is behind the closure of Fort Detrick Biolab?” he wrote in July 2020. “When will the United States invite experts to investigate the source of the virus in the United States?”
In recent months, Zhao Lijian’s call has been responded to by Chinese diplomats stationed in many countries. China Central Television has even broadcast a 60-minute feature film “The Shady of Deborg”, which focuses on violations of the laboratory in 2019. Control and manage incidents in order to promote Chinese officials and official media to respond to allegations of lax laboratory safety management. On the Chinese social platform Weibo, a topic related to this has been viewed more than 100 million times.
Image source,Twitter
Ira Hubert, a senior research analyst at the social media account analysis company Graphika, said that for Fort Detrick, “we see a more sustained publicity campaign to promote this narrative account. The number is larger and the geographical distribution is wider.”
Another popular theory was promoted by the nationalist tabloid Global Times. This statement attempts to link the source of the virus with US coronavirus expert Ralph Baric and researchers at Fort Detrick.
According to the Global Times, Barrick created a new coronavirus that can infect humans and cited a paper published in the journal Nature Medicine jointly signed by Barrick. The content of the paper is similar to this. This kind of virus spreads from bats.
“Nature Medicine” stated in an editor’s note that it noted that this paper was used to spread false theories, but the “Global Times” report did not mention this editor’s note.
The Global Times also launched a public co-signature on the Internet calling on Chinese netizens to ask the WHO to investigate Fort Detrick. Participating netizens only need to click the mouse to “sign”. It is reported that more than 25 million “signatures” have been collected in this joint letter.
From Switzerland to Fiji
Experts said that to make things more complicated, Beijing is trying to bring non-Chinese audiences into the debate about the origin of the new crown.
An obvious example came in July this year, when many Chinese state media began to spare no effort to report a critical remark posted on Facebook by a person named “Wilson Edwards” who claimed to be As a Swiss scientist.
“Edwards” believes that Washington “is too obsessed with attacking China on the issue of traceability to the extent that it is reluctant to open his eyes to look at the data and discoveries.”
However, the Swiss Embassy in China later stated that no nationals of the country registered with this name and urged the Chinese media to remove “false” news reports.
Experts believe that the person “Wilson Edwards” may not exist, and the person’s page may be a fictitious propaganda material. His Facebook page was created on the same day that he published a new crown traceability post. On the same day, a new Twitter account called “Wilson Edwards” posted the same information.
The first report on the “Wilson Edwards” news appeared to be an unnamed Chinese-English bilingual media in Fiji-“Voice of South Pacific”.
It is not clear whether “Nantai Voice” is officially supported by China, but its mobile app is developed by a wholly-owned subsidiary of China News Service. The China News Agency was also the first major Chinese official media to report on Edwards’ claims.
The BBC found that even before Edwards’ Facebook post received a lot of attention, the post had been reposted by hundreds of Facebook accounts claiming to be in Southeast Asia, such as “Eastman Tyla” in Malaysia and “Tyree Schmidt” in Indonesia. .
Image source,facebook
The two people also reposted a lot of the same pro-China news on their Facebook pages, which praised Beijing’s response to the epidemic.
These accounts often directly quote the statements of Chinese official spokespersons or major official media, and there is no conclusive evidence to show who is operating these social media accounts.
And Graphika has discovered that there is a hidden network of pro-China fake accounts on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. These accounts play a key role in the spread of Fort Detrick’s theory.
What does this explain about the problem of Chinese propaganda?
China’s recent global influence propaganda campaign on the new crown epidemic may not have brought it many new friends overseas, but analysts said that this work has successfully convinced domestic audiences in Beijing.
“In most cases, the biggest concern (of the Chinese government) is domestic legality,” Maria Repnikova, assistant professor of global communication at Georgia State University, told the BBC.
More and more Chinese diplomats have recently poured into the banned Twitter platform in the country, but the audience for their aggressive messages seems to be domestic audiences.
Repnikova said that China has been blurring the line between internal and external propaganda for many years, but this strategy is not without risk, because if the external propaganda work has little effect, it may put pressure on China’s foreign relations.
At the same time, Chinese state media is also carefully selecting more foreign sources of information, and foreign video bloggers are becoming more and more prominent in Beijing’s false propaganda activities. Repnikova said that these efforts are intended to “rationalize China from the outside.”
The increase of foreign elements in China’s false propaganda offensive marks a change in Beijing’s propaganda strategy.
“It’s not just telling a story,” Repnikova said, “it’s making a story.”