{"id":54496,"date":"2020-03-24T15:05:41","date_gmt":"2020-03-24T04:05:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=54496"},"modified":"2020-03-31T17:29:19","modified_gmt":"2020-03-31T06:29:19","slug":"chinese-diplomats-and-western-fringe-media-outlets-push-the-same-coronavirus-conspiracies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/chinese-diplomats-and-western-fringe-media-outlets-push-the-same-coronavirus-conspiracies\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinese diplomats and Western fringe media outlets push the same coronavirus conspiracies"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

Against the backdrop of an escalating war of words between Washington and Beijing, and the Chinese Communist Party\u2019s broader campaign to rewrite the history of the Covid-19 outbreak<\/a>, the attempts by multiple Chinese diplomats to promote conspiracy theories that the virus originated in the US, not China have received widespread attention.<\/p>\n

What has been less discussed, however, is how Western fringe and conspiracy media have been supporting these efforts and what the growing nexus between pro-CCP propaganda and conspiracy narratives may tell us about the role China is coming to play in the Western information ecosystem.<\/p>\n

There has long been a symbiotic relationship between Russian state propaganda outlets like Sputnik<\/em> and RT and certain elements of the fringe and conspiracy media in the West. They frequently echo, borrow or seed narratives from one another. In most cases, it\u2019s probably not deliberate collusion (at least, not on a large scale), but rather the result of opportunism and mutual benefits in singing from the same hymn sheet. And now, it appears, China may be joining the chorus.<\/p>\n

In perhaps the most notable example of this, on 13 March a spokesperson for China\u2019s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Zhao Lijian, used his Twitter account<\/a> to promote an article from the website globalresearch.ca<\/em>, titled \u2018COVID-19: Further evidence that the virus originated in the US\u2019. The article outlines a conspiracy which claims that the novel coronavirus originated in the US, and that \u2018it may therefore be true that the original source of the COVID-19 virus was the US military bio-warfare lab at Fort Detrick\u2019.<\/p>\n

To be clear: there is no evidence to support this claim, or to suggest that the virus originated anywhere outside China. Nonetheless, Zhao\u2019s tweets have not only remained up but have been re-tweeted by numerous other Chinese diplomatic accounts<\/a>. At the time of writing, Zhao\u2019s tweet had received over 20,000 likes and been shared 12,700 times.<\/p>\n

Among the many interesting issues this raises, one is the choice to promote that particular article from that particular site. There\u2019s no shortage of conspiracy theories on the internet\u2014so why that one?<\/p>\n

The Centre for Research on Globalization, also known as Global Research,\u00a0<\/em>is\u00a0a website run by Canadian economist and conspiracy theorist Michel Chossudovksy that has repeatedly<\/a> been<\/a> accused<\/a> of being a pro-Kremlin mouthpiece. It\u2019s not clear how deep the links between the site and Russian state-linked media run, but according<\/a> to the independent Russian newspaper Meduza<\/em>:<\/p>\n

What makes GlobalResearch.ca<\/em> different from other similar websites is the disproportional weight it enjoys in news coverage by the Russian state media. Global Research is prominently featured as the only source in numerous stories by Russia\u2019s leading newswire RIA Novosti<\/em>, where it\u2019s referred to as a \u2018think tank\u2019 or \u2018publication\u2019 whose \u2018experts\u2019 or \u2018journalists\u2019\u00a0regularly\u00a0reveal or uncover some fact that fits into the Kremlin\u2019s current foreign policy agenda … \u00a0[I]t is less a news outlet and more an\u00a0amateur conspiracy website whose founder has subscribed to the Kremlin\u2019s narrative simply because it opposes the one promoted by the \u2018deep state\u2019 and its subservient \u2018mainstream media\u2019.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sites like Global Research are valuable to state-linked actors because they put a Western, pseudo-academic face on conspiracy theories and disinformation narratives. They are useful tinder to spark entire narrative cycles, as this example clearly highlights.<\/p>\n

In the early days of the Covid-19 crisis,\u00a0Global Research\u00a0seems to have sensed an opportunity to reach out to new audiences. Indeed, the pivot to a Chinese audience<\/a> appears to have been so hasty that no one has yet fixed the typo in \u2018Chinese\u2019 on the site\u2019s About<\/a> page (figure 1).<\/p>\n

Figure 1: Screenshot of Global Research\u2019s \u2018About\u2019 page, 24 March 2020<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

Only two articles had actually been translated into Chinese before Zhao picked up Global Research\u2019s English-language piece promoting the US-origin conspiracy theory. Zhao\u2019s tweet was used as the basis for news stories in Chinese state media, including the Global Times<\/a><\/em> and People\u2019s Daily Online<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

It also appears to have driven a huge surge in searches for \u2018globalresearch.ca\u2019 on 13 March, the day Zhao\u2019s tweet went out (figure 2). What this demonstrates is that the quid pro quo\u2014the benefit (or at least one of the benefits)\u2014for sites like Global Research in aligning themselves with state-linked conspiracies is the enormous amplification which state-linked voices can give to pieces like this that would otherwise receive very little traffic.<\/p>\n

Figure 2: Google search trends for \u2018globalresearch.ca\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

Zhao\u2019s amplification is likely to have been multiplied many times over by the widespread media coverage of his tweets, which in turn will have driven still more traffic to the Global Research site. Not only does this help to propagate the conspiracy theory, it also provides Global Research with an incentive to lean in to the narrative. In the 10 days since Zhao\u2019s tweet, the site has published multiple<\/a> additional<\/a> articles<\/a> (including republishing one from CGTN<\/a>) on the US-origin conspiracy theory, some citing Zhao\u2019s tweets<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This mutually beneficial ouroboros of conspiracy narratives passing back and forth between state-linked and fringe media already exists in the context of Kremlin-backed outlets. If this example is anything to go by, we may well see Beijing\u2019s state-linked information efforts follow a similar path, as China becomes a more active and aggressive player in the Western information ecosystem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Against the backdrop of an escalating war of words between Washington and Beijing, and the Chinese Communist Party\u2019s broader campaign to rewrite the history of the Covid-19 outbreak, the attempts by multiple Chinese diplomats to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":899,"featured_media":54498,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1383,52,2658,2279],"class_list":["post-54496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-ccp","tag-china","tag-coronavirus","tag-disinformation","dinkus-coronavirus"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nChinese diplomats and Western fringe media outlets push the same coronavirus conspiracies | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/chinese-diplomats-and-western-fringe-media-outlets-push-the-same-coronavirus-conspiracies\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Chinese diplomats and Western fringe media outlets push the same coronavirus conspiracies | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Against the backdrop of an escalating war of words between Washington and Beijing, and the Chinese Communist Party\u2019s broader campaign to rewrite the history of the Covid-19 outbreak, the attempts by multiple Chinese diplomats to ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/chinese-diplomats-and-western-fringe-media-outlets-push-the-same-coronavirus-conspiracies\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ASPI.org\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-03-24T04:05:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-03-31T06:29:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/GettyImages-1202948882.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"683\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Elise Thomas\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Elise Thomas\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/\",\"name\":\"The Strategist\",\"description\":\"ASPI's analysis and commentary site\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/chinese-diplomats-and-western-fringe-media-outlets-push-the-same-coronavirus-conspiracies\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/GettyImages-1202948882.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/GettyImages-1202948882.jpg\",\"width\":1024,\"height\":683,\"caption\":\"BEIJING, CHINA - FEBRUARY 24, 2020: Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Zhao Lijian (L) during his first regular press briefing at the Chinese Foreign Ministry; on February 3-21, the Ministry's regular briefings were held online amid the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak. 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