Covid conspiracy shows vast reach of Chinese fabrication

BRUSSELS: It took just three months for the rumor that Covid-19 was engineered as a bioweapon to spread from the fringes of the Chinese internet and take root in millions of people’s minds.

By March 2020, belief that the virus had been human-made and possibly weaponised was widespread, multiple surveys indicated.

Powerful forces, from Beijing and Washington to Moscow and Tehran, have battled to control the narrative about where the virus came from. Leading officials and allied media in all four countries functioned as superspreaders of disinformation, using their stature to amplify conspiracies already in circulation, a nine-month Associated Press investigation conducted in collaboration with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab found. The analysis was based on a review of millions of postings and articles on Twitter, Facebook, Weibo, Youtube, and other platforms.

It was China — not Russia — that took the lead in spreading foreign disinformation about Covid-19’s origins. Beijing reacted to weeks of fiery rhetoric from then-president Donald Trump, who sought to rebrand Covid as “the China virus”.

The day after the World Health Organization (WHO) designated the Covid-19 outbreak a pandemic, Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, shot off a series of tweets that may be the party’s first truly global digital experiment with overt disinformation. “When did patient zero begin in US?” Zhao tweeted on March 12. “It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan.”

On Twitter alone, Zhao’s aggressive spray of 11 tweets was cited over 99,000 times over the next six weeks, in at least 54 languages, according to analysis by DFRLAB. China’s Global Times and at least 30 Chinese diplomatic accounts, from France to Panama, rushed in to support Zhao. Venezuela’s foreign minister and RT’S correspondent in Caracas, as well as Saudi accounts close to the kingdom’s royal family also significantly extended Zhao’s reach.

In January, Russian state media were first to legitimise the theory that the US engineered the virus as a weapon. Iran also jumped in. The same day Zhao tweeted, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei announced Covid-19 could be the result of a biological attack. In April, Russia and Iran largely dropped the bioweapon conspiracy in their overt messaging.

China, however, has carried on. W.H.O. TEAM