From Beijing and Washington to Moscow and Tehran, political leaders and supporting media functioned effectively as propagandists, using their influence to amplify politically useful conspiracies already in circulation. But it was China — not Russia — that took the lead in spreading foreign disinformation about the origins of COVID-19 after it came under fire for its early handling of the pandemic outbreak.
Rumors started almost as quickly as the disease itself. Claims that a foreign enemy had unleashed a biological weapon appeared in every corner of social media on the same day that China first reported the outbreak of a mysterious virus.
“Watch out Americans!” wrote one Weibo user on December 31, 2019.
Today, a year after the World Health Organization warned of an epidemic of misinformation about COVID-19, that conspiracy theory lives on, pushed by Chinese officials eager to cast doubt on the origins of a pandemic that has taken more than two million lives across the globe.
From Beijing and Washington to Moscow and Tehran, political leaders and supporting media functioned effectively as propagandists, using their influence to amplify politically useful conspiracies already in circulation. But it was China — not Russia — that took the lead in spreading foreign disinformation about the origins of COVID-19 after it came under fire for its early handling of the pandemic outbreak.
The double pandemic
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A nine-month Associated Press investigation into state-sponsored disinformation, conducted in collaboration with the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, shows how speculation that the US created the virus that causes COVID-19 was weaponized by the Chinese government. spreading from the darkest corner of the internet to millions across the globe. The analysis was based on a compilation of millions of social media posts and articles on Twitter, Facebook, VK, Weibo, WeChat, YouTube, Telegram and other platforms.
Chinese officials were reacting to a powerful narrative, doctored by the groups QAnon, Fox News, former President Donald Trump and leading Republicans, that the virus was manufactured in China.
China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said Beijing has used the West's big social media megaphone to promote friendship and serve facts while defending itself against hostile forces seeking to politicize the pandemic.
"All parties must firmly say 'no' to the spread of disinformation", the ministry announced in a statement to AP. But he added that "in the face of fabricated accusations, it is justified and appropriate to break the lies and clarify the rumors by determining the facts".
By March, just three months after COVID-19 emerged in central China, the belief spread that the virus had been created in a lab and was a weapon. The Pew Research Center has found, for example, that one in three Americans believe that the new coronavirus was created in a laboratory; one in four that it was created on purpose. In Iran, senior leaders cited the bioweapons plot to justify their refusal of foreign medical aid. Anti-isolation and mask-wearing groups have called COVID-19 a hoax and a weapon, complicating public health efforts to slow the spread.
"Misinformation is like a virus, like COVID, a media pathogen," said Kang Liu, a professor at Duke University who studies cultural politics and the media in China, comparing the spread of misinformation about the virus to the spread of the virus itself. "We have a double pandemic - the real pathological virus and the pandemic of fear. Fear is what is really at stake"
Rumor spreading
On January 26, a Mongolian man released a video claiming that the new virus ravaging central China was a bioweapon created by the US. The video received 14 views on the Chinese app Kuaishou and was immediately deleted. The publisher of the video was arrested and detained for ten days, while he was fined for spreading misinformation.
The People's Daily, a television mouthpiece of the Communist Party in China, broke the news of his arrest in early February. It showed the detainee in handcuffs and sitting on a chair. It was a moment of reminder to China's citizens that fake news can lead to arrest and become part of a broader effort by Chinese state media to expose COVID-19 conspiracies.
But just six weeks later the same rumor would be broadcast by China's Foreign Ministry, picked up by at least 30 Chinese diplomats and missions and amplified through China's vast and global network of state media.
During those six weeks, China's leadership was embroiled in fierce internal criticism. On February 7, Li Wenliang, the doctor punished for circulating the early warning of the spread, died of COVID-19. The outpouring of anger over Lia's death was an unusual display - for the ruling Communist Party, of concern - in the civic space closely monitored by China.
Meanwhile, powerful voices in the US—from former President Trump to congressional Republicans—were working to rebrand COVID-19 as the "China virus," reinforcing theories that were created by Chinese scientists.
Social media accounts that appeared to be pro-Trump or QAnon followers pushed the disinformation, repeatedly posting identical content that claimed China created the virus as a bioweapon, researchers at the Australian Institute for Technology Center found.
As US rhetoric intensified, China launched the offensive.
On February 22, the People's Daily published a report highlighting speculation that the US military brought the virus to China, prompting the article to be published in newspapers such as the Helsinki Times in Finland and the New Zealand Herald.
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The New Zealand Herald clarified that it has an "ad hoc commercial relationship with 'People's Daily'", and that it labels their content as sponsored and reviews it before publication.
"After further review of the article you mentioned, we have removed this particular article from our website," a spokesperson said via email.
"Helsinki Times" has announced that it has a content "exchange" agreement with "People's Daily". It tags this content, but does not control it.
"We believe that the coverage of the Western media in some cases is extremely one-sided", said Alexis Kouros, the editor of the "Helsinki Times". "Although 'People's Daily' is state-owned, like the BBC, we believe it is beneficial for a global audience to have both sides of the story."
As China embraced open disinformation, it relied on Russian disinformation strategy and infrastructure, turning to a long-established network of Kremlin proxies in the West to receive and spread messages.
"One was amplifying the other... How much was controlled by the command, how much was opportunistic, it was difficult to say," said Janis Sarts, director of NATO's Strategic Communication Center, based in Riga, Latvia. In the long term, he added, China is "the most formidable competitor and adversary, because of the technological capabilities it brings to the table."
"Truth as we see it"
In January, long before China began spreading the disinformation, Russian state media began to legitimize the theory that the US created the virus as a weapon.
On January 20, Russian military media outlet Zvezda reported that the explosion in China was linked to a bioweapons test, citing a political candidate named Igor Nikulin.
Nikulin claims to have worked with the United Nations on disarmament in Iraq from 1998 to 2003, including as an adviser to former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. But the United Nations has no record of his service.
Richard Butler, the UN's chief weapons inspector at the time, told the AP he had never heard of it. Hans Corelli, who served as Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs and UN Legal Adviser from 1994-2004, was of the same opinion, where he worked closely with Annan.
Nikulin has claimed that records of his work at the UN may have been destroyed and supported his theory that COVID is a US bioweapon – a claim that has been repeatedly debunked.
"What other proof is necessary?!", he wrote in an email to the AP.
Over the next two months, more than 70 articles appeared in pro-Kremlin media making similar claims about bioweapons. The articles appeared in Russian, Spanish, Armenian, Arabic, English and German, according to an AP analysis of a database compiled by EUvsDisinfo, which tracks disinformation about the European union.
Online magazines identified by the US State Department and others as proxies for Russia picked up on the bioweapons story, increasing the reach and resonance of the story.
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Russian politicians joined the chorus. Parliamentarian Natalia Poklonskaya argued that the new coronavirus could be a biological weapon created "by those who want to rule the planet" to undermine China.
After a while, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the nationalist leader of Russia's Liberal Democratic Party, suggested that the US and its greedy pharmaceutical companies were to blame. \ AP analysis of disinformation related to COVID-19
