The Chinese government has launched a disinformation campaign to play down its failure to contain the early outbreak of Covid-19 in Wuhan, Hubei, lack of coordination between its central and provincial disease control as the disease spread across mainland China, and the subsequent worldwide epidemic.
The Chinese government is claiming that Covid-19 did not originate just in Wuhan, but across multiple locations around the world, during Autumn of 2019.[1][2]
Chinese State Media has misconstrued research from academics such as Alexander Kekulé, the director of the Institute for Biosecurity Research in Halle, suggesting it was Italy, not China, where the virus began.[3] Chinese state media also misrepresented statements from Michael Ryan, the World Health Organization's emergency director, insinuating that the virus may have originated outside of China.[4] Chinese state media had propagated the speculation that the virus may have spread in Italy before the Wuhan outbreak, after Italian doctor Giuseppe Remuzzi mentioned reports of strange pneumonia cases in November and December. Remuzzi later said his words were "twisted".[5]
A review of Chinese state media and social media posts in early March 2020, conducted by The Washington Post, found that anti-American conspiracy theories circulating among Chinese users "gained steam through a mix of unexplained official statements magnified by social media, censorship and doubts stoked by state media and government officials"[6]
The Chinese government is claiming that Covid-19 may have first been transmited to Wuhan from abroad, via frozen food imports.[7][8]
Several scientists have expressed doubts as to whether covid cases have been determined to come from frozen food.[9]
At a press conference on 12 March 2020, two spokesmen for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Zhao Lijian and Geng Shuang, alleged that the coronavirus may have been "bio-engineered" by Western powers and suggested that the US government, specifically the US Army, had created and spread the virus.[10]
In multiple statements in January 2021, China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying made a number of comments insinuating that Covid-19 could have originated in U.S. biological weapons lab Fort Detrick.[11]
On March 25, 2020, the "intentional disinformation campaign" by China was discussed among the Group of Seven.[12]