As the ruling Communist Party faces increasing skepticism about China's vaccines and renewed scrutiny of its early COVID-19 response, it is pushing back by promoting conspiracy theories that some experts say could cause damage.
State media and officials are sharing questions about Western vaccines and the origin of the coronavirus in an apparent effort to divert the attacks.
Both issues are in the spotlight because of the rollout of vaccines globally and the recent arrival of a World Health Organization team in Wuhan, China, to investigate the origins of the virus.
Some of these conspiracy theories find a vulnerable audience at home. The social media hashtag “American’s Ft. Detrick,” started by the Communist Youth League, was viewed at least 1.4 billion times last week after a Foreign Ministry spokesperson called for a WHO investigation of the biological weapons lab in Maryland.
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“It’s purpose is to shift the blame from mishandling by (the) Chinese government in the pandemic’s early days to conspiracy by the U.S.,” said Fang Shimin, a now-U.S.-based writer known for detecting fake degrees and other fraud in Chinese science. “The tactic is quite successful because of widespread anti-American sentiment in China.”
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Yuan Zeng, an expert on Chinese media at the University of Leeds in Great Britain, said the government’s rumors circulate so publicly that even well-educated Chinese friends have asked her whether they might be valid.
Inciting doubts and spreading conspiracy theories might add to public health risks as governments try to disperse unease about vaccines, she said, saying, “That is super, super dangerous.”
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In the most recent round, state media called for an investigation into the deaths of 23 elderly people in Norway after they received the Pfizer vaccine. An anchor at CGTN, the English-language station of state broadcaster CCTV, and the Global Times newspaper accused Western media of overlooking the news.
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Health experts say deaths irrelevant to the vaccine are probable during mass vaccination campaigns, and a WHO panel has resolved that the vaccine did not play a “contributory role” in the Norway deaths.
The state media coverage followed a report by researchers in Brazil who found the effectiveness of a Chinese vaccine lower than previously announced. Researchers initially said Sinovac’s vaccine is 78% effective, but the scientists revised that to 50.4% after including mildly symptomatic cases.
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After the Brazil news, researchers at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a government-supported think tank, reported seeing an increase in Chinese media disinformation about vaccines.
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