Chinese continues with information campaigns over Covid-19 origins
Nov 10, 2021
Hong Kong, November 10 : China is engaging in a sustained campaign involving different media elements to refute reports that coronavirus leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, according to Hong Kong-based publication.
This large scale effort to sway the COVID-19 narrative comes amid the renewed interest in the probe into the origin of the virus.
Several conspiracy theories are circulating on the Chinese social media portal suggested coronavirus came to China from other countries -- from marine and beef export to a military lab, The Hong Kong Post reported.
The publication said that the conspiracy theories are being circulated through political statements, state-run news media, social media as well as using rap songs.
The latest conspiracy story, as per the report pins the blame on lobsters from the US. According to the Post, a news article claimed a cargo containing 55 boxes of Boston lobsters, which had landed in Shanghai in November 2019.
The article claimed that the traceability of coronavirus pointed at the cold chain of US seafood products. "Therefore, it is entirely possible for the virus to attach to the cold chain packaging of this batch of seafood products in the United States and enter the South China seafood market," The Hong Kong Post quoted the article.
Last month, Chinese state media were seen pushing the theory that Brazilian beef, Saudi shrimps and Maine lobsters are reasons for the spread of Coronavirus, according to the findings of a researcher who studied hundreds of accounts with a pro-China agenda.
Writing for a global think tank Policy Research Group (POREG), disinformation researcher Marcel Schliebs has identified "hundreds of accounts affiliated with pro-China agenda-pushing forward the theory of exported cold meats being a reason for the spread of coronavirus.
The Chinese state media seems interested in proving that beef from Brazil, shrimp from Saudi Arabia and pork from the USA are the reason coronavirus is spreading."
The report said the latest Chinese claim is that lobsters from Maine are the reason that coronavirus is spreading.
Earlier this year, a WHO-led team of scientists that travelled to China to investigate the origins of the virus struggled to get a clear picture of what research China was conducting beforehand, faced constraints during its visit, and had little power to conduct thorough and impartial research.
