As the WHO investigated coronavirus origins in China, Beijing pushed a conspiracy about the US

CNN — When World Health Organization investigators wrapped up their work examining the origins of the coronavirus in Wuhan this month, Chinese officials were clear where they felt the WHO should look next. Angela Xiao Wu, an assistant professor at NYU Steinhardt who has studied efforts at shaping online opinion in China, said it was “surely an effective tactic for the Party-state to direct people’s critical attention outwards as a way to channel their fears and frustrations,” though she added many other governments had adopted similar tactics, “including the Trump Administration.” CNN’s findings, detailed below, match those of a separate investigation published this month by the Associated Press in conjunction with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. At a press conference on May 6, in response to a question about the Wuhan lab origin, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying referenced reports about Fort Detrick, and called on the US government to “accept investigation and address these concerns,” driving the theory fully into the mainstream in China, with numerous outlets publishing reports on the alleged “cover-up,” while a widely-shared video compared it to Unit 731. As it did, China’s propaganda organs ramped up coverage of USAMRIID, with Hua, the foreign ministry spokeswoman, saying on January 18 that the US “should open the biological lab at Fort Detrick, give more transparency to issues such as its 200+ overseas bio-labs, and invite WHO experts to conduct origin tracing.” A video of Hua, uploaded by the state-backed Beijing News, was viewed almost a million times on Weibo, the Chinese Twitter-like service. Wu said it was common for supposedly non-political accounts to be used in what is called “online public opinion guidance,” including “through commercial deals.” “How it works in China bears resemblance to the commercial sector in Western countries where marketing firms take money to help their clients, including politicians and campaign organizers, by orchestrating all kinds of KOLs to amply their messages on social media,” she said, using an acronym for “key opinion leaders.” CNN has been unable to reach several of the most popular influencer accounts posting about Fort Detrick, and there is no evidence to suggest definitively that they were paid or induced to spread the message, they could have been posting about the theory simply because it was a popular news story at the time.