Misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic by China
The Chinese government and its state media outlets have launched a disinformation campaign to play down its failure to contain the early outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, Hubei, lack of coordination between its central and provincial disease control as the disease spread across mainland China, and the subsequent worldwide epidemic.[1][2]
Origin disinformation[edit]
Multiple origin locations[edit]
The Chinese government has made repeated claims that COVID-19 did not originate just in Wuhan, but across multiple locations around the world, from Autumn of 2019.[3][4]
In March of 2020, The Washington Post reviewed Chinese state media as well as posts in social media and discovered that the anti-American conspiracy theories that were circulating among Chinese users had "gained steam through a mix of unexplained official statements magnified by social media, censorship and doubts stoked by state media and government officials"[5]
In March of 2020, Chinese state media propagated the theory that the spread of the virus may have started in Italy before the Wuhan outbreak, pointing to an interview Italian doctor Giuseppe Remuzzi gave to National Public Radio, wherein he mentioned reports of unusual pneumonia cases dating back to November and December of 2019.[6] Remuzzi later said that his words were "twisted".[7]
In November of 2020, Chinese state media propagated a misleading account of statements by World Health Organization's top emergency director Michael Ryan, speculating that the virus could have originated outside of China.[8] In an interview with Reuters on November 27 2020, Ryan said "It is clear from a public health perspective that you start your investigations where the human cases first emerged" and repeated that the WHO would seek to send an investigative team to China to probe the origins of the virus.[9]
In December of 2020, Chinese state media misconstrued research from Alexander Kekulé, the director of the Institute for Biosecurity Research in Halle, suggesting it was Italy, not China, where the virus began.[10] In media published by Xinhua News Agency, China Daily, and China Global Television Network, excerpts from an interview Kekulé gave gave to ZDF were quoted, purporting that 99.5 percent of the coronavirus spreading around the world at the time was from variant originating in northern Italy.[11] In follow on interviews, Kekule said his words were twisted, calling the Chinese media's reports "pure propaganda".[12]
In December 2020, the Chinese Communist Party's flagship newspaper featured a study by scientists associated with the state-backed Chinese Academy of Sciences positing that the earliest human-to-human transmission occurred on the Indian subcontinent three to four months before the Wuhan outbreak. The study, which was not peer-reviewed, was posted on the preprint platform SSRN. It was later withdrawn from the platform at the authors' request.[13]
Food chain transmission origins[edit]
The Chinese government has claimed that COVID-19 may have first been transmitted to Wuhan from abroad, via frozen food imports.[14][4][15]
Scientists from the World Health Organization, the United States Food and Drug Administration, the European Food Safety Authority, the UK Food Standards Agency as well as the Food Standards Australia New Zealand, have said there is no evidence for Covid-19 being transmitted through the food chain and that the risks are "negligible".[16][17][18][19]
US Army and Fort Detrick origins[edit]
On 12 March 2020, two spokesmen for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Zhao Lijian and Geng Shuang, alleged at a press conference that Western powers may have "bio-engineered" the coronovirus, alluding to the US Government, but more specifically to the US Army as having created and spread the virus.[20]
In January 2021, Hua Chunying renewed the conspiracy theory from Lijian and Shuang that the SARS-CoV-2 virus originating in the United States at the U.S. biological weapons lab Fort Detrick. This conspiracy theory quickly went trending on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, and Chunying continued to cite evidence on Twitter, while asking the government of the United States to open up Fort Detrick for further investigation to determine if it is the source of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.[21][22]
Questions raised about government tally[edit]
As of March 27, 2020, the Chinese government's official report showed 2,548 people had died from COVID-19 in Wuhan, where the virus first emerged in December 2019.[23] Some Chinese raised questions about the government's official tally as thousands of urns were shipped to several funeral homes, giving rise to growing skeptism in light of "Wuhan’s overwhelmed medical system, authorities’ attempts to cover up the outbreak in its initial stages, and multiple revisions to the way official cases are counted."[23] After the increase in the death count was revealed, the Chinese government denied any attempt to cover-up or spread misinformation about the actual numbers.[24] French President Emmanuel Macron, and other Western leaders questioned China's transparency and expressed doubt over the accuracy of the official statistics. Updated numbers indicated an increase of nearly 1,300 deaths in Wuhan, raising the death total to 3,869. As of April 17, 2020, the official nationwide death toll in China was 4,632.
By the end of December 2020, China had the virus under control. The BBC published a retrospective into how the state-controlled media and China's online government censors had supressed negative information and propagandized what was reported.[25] Blame ran rampant, and in mid-January 2019 Chinese President Xi Jinping no longer appeared in China's media, in public, or in photographs on the pages of traditional government publications. Some speculated that his sudden disappearance was to avoid blame. In February, after the blame had been shifted away from the Chinese president to the leadership in Wuhan and other local governments, the Chinese president reappeared.[25]
Treatment disinformation[edit]
Chinese traditional medicine[edit]
In June 2020, the Chinese government published a white paper, claiming over 92% of COVID-19 cases in China were treated with traditional Chinese medicine.[26]
Pfizer Vaccine[edit]
In January of 2020, multiple Chinese state media outlets, including CGTN and Global Times raised doubts about the efficacy of Pfizer vaccine, calling for an investigation into the deaths of elderly people in Norway and Germany after receiving the vaccine. According to Reuters, the reports made allegations of "deliberately downplaying the deaths” and “using propaganda power to promote the Pfizer vaccine and smearing Chinese vaccines" and touted Chinese vaccines as "relatively safer due to their mature technology". [27]
International response[edit]
On March 25, 2020, the "intentional disinformation campaign" by China was discussed among the Group of Seven.[28]
References[edit]
- ↑ Cook, Sarah. "Welcome to the New Era of Chinese Government Disinformation". thediplomat.com.
- ↑ Wong, Edward; Rosenberg, Matthew; Barnes, Julian E. (April 22, 2020). "Chinese Agents Helped Spread Messages That Sowed Virus Panic in U.S., Officials Say" – via NYTimes.com.
- ↑ "Wuhan marks its anniversary with triumph and denial". January 23, 2021. Retrieved January 24, 2021 – via www.bbc.co.uk.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 "Genome sequences on patients in Harbin show coronavirus has multiple origins: virologist - Global Times". www.globaltimes.cn. Retrieved January 24, 2021.
- ↑ Shih, Gerry. "Conspiracy theorists blame U.S. for coronavirus. China is happy to encourage them". Retrieved January 24, 2021 – via www.washingtonpost.com.
- ↑ Staff, Quartz. "An Italian doctor is now key to China's efforts to sow confusion over the coronavirus's origins". Quartz. Retrieved January 24, 2021.
- ↑ Beijing, Didi Tang. "Beijing twisted my words on coronavirus's Italian origin, says scientist Giuseppe Remuzzi". Retrieved January 24, 2021 – via www.thetimes.co.uk.
- ↑ Hernández, Javier C. (December 6, 2020). "China Peddles Falsehoods to Obscure Origin of Covid Pandemic". Retrieved January 24, 2021 – via NYTimes.com.
- ↑ Staff, Reuters (November 27, 2020). "WHO says would be 'highly speculative' to say COVID did not emerge in China" – via www.reuters.com.
- ↑ Hernández, Javier C. "'Pure propaganda': China pushes case that coronavirus began elsewhere". The Irish Times. Retrieved January 24, 2021.
- ↑ "Kekulé wehrt sich gegen Vereinnahmung durch China". www.zdf.de. Retrieved January 24, 2021.
- ↑ "'Pure propaganda': German scientist rebuts Chinese media on Covid origin". Hindustan Times. December 14, 2020. Retrieved January 24, 2021.
- ↑ Hua, Sha (8 December 2020). "China Floats Covid-19 Theories That Point to Foreign Origins, Frozen Food". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on 19 January 2021. Retrieved 19 January 2021. Unknown parameter
|url-status=ignored (help) - ↑ Stanway, David (November 26, 2020). "With frozen food clampdown, China points overseas as source of coronavirus". Retrieved January 24, 2021 – via www.reuters.com.
- ↑ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7676848/
- ↑ https://theconversation.com/could-frozen-food-transmit-covid-19-148735
- ↑ Gunia, Amy (November 3, 2020). "COVID-19 on Food Packaging: Why Experts Aren't Worried". Time. Retrieved January 24, 2021.
- ↑ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-frozenfood/chinas-sweeping-covid-controls-put-frozen-food-importers-on-ice-idUSKBN27T0YK
- ↑ https://www.foodmanufacture.co.uk/Article/2020/08/24/Scientists-claim-Coronavirus-can-remain-on-frozen-and-refrigerated-food-for-three-weeks
- ↑ "Chinese diplomat promotes conspiracy theory that US military brought virus to Wuhan - CNN". March 18, 2020. Archived from the original on 2020-03-18. Retrieved January 24, 2021.
- ↑ Li, Jane. "China's gift for the Biden inauguration is a conspiracy theory about Covid-19's US origins". Quartz. Retrieved 2021-01-21.
- ↑ Davidson, Helen (January 20, 2021). "China revives conspiracy theory of US army link to Covid". Retrieved January 24, 2021 – via www.theguardian.com.
- ↑ 23.0 23.1 "Report of Urns in Wuhan Raises Questions About COVID-19 Death Toll". Time. 2020-03-27. Retrieved 2021-01-30.
- ↑ Sandford, Alasdair (2020-04-17). "China denies 'cover-up' after Wuhan COVID-19 deaths rise 50%". euronews. Retrieved 2021-01-30.
- ↑ 25.0 25.1 "China Covid-19: How state media and censorship took on coronavirus". BBC News. 2020-12-29. Retrieved 2021-01-30.
- ↑ "Covid-19: China pushes traditional remedies amid outbreak". June 28, 2020. Retrieved January 24, 2021 – via www.bbc.co.uk.
- ↑ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-vaccine-china/chinese-media-criticise-pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-tout-local-shots-idUSKBN29P1HT
- ↑ Staff, Reuters (March 25, 2020). "Pompeo says G7 discussed China's coronavirus 'disinformation'". Retrieved January 24, 2021 – via www.reuters.com.
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