China blames the United States for coronavirus

In the midst of a national deadlock, desperate patients, anger over hiding, an economic crisis and a virus that is spreading beyond its own borders, the priorities of governments were clear: it was time to publish a brilliant book on what a wonderful manipulation of Beijing of the virus has been.

A battle against the epidemic: China will fight COVID-19 in 2020 compiles numerous state media accounts of President Xi Jinping's heroic leadership, the vital role of the Communist Party and the superiority of the Chinese system in the fight against the virus. It has received rave reviews in the Chinese media, not least because it was published by their ultimate advertising department of the Central Committee, formerly known as the Propaganda Department.

The Chinese audience will not be the only lucky reader. The book will be translated into English, French, Spanish, Russian and Arabic, with more chances to follow. Authorities know that the virus could irreparably damage the image of China in the eyes of the world, but they also see an opportunity to push their own tale of organization, success and triumph. Part of this involves brilliant propaganda texts, combined with more sophisticated and individually targeted efforts. Part of this is pushing a new set of conspiracy theories about the virus itself, targeting the ultimate enemy: the United States.

The downside of the epidemic for the image of China is obvious. There are legitimate reasons: Cover the early magnitude of the epidemic by authorities more concerned with politics than by pandemics gave it critical time to spread. But the Chinese government is also likely to be blamed for events beyond its control, especially since patients and victims are piling up.

Damage to the economy and the image of China is also of grave concern to leaders, who are trying to get people back to work. This damage is already visible in the United States, where the virus has pushed Chinese views to recordsand has made people less confident in China's economic future. Companies were already looking for suppliers outside of China following the trade war; the coronavirus gives a critical impulse.

However, Beijing is pushing a powerful counter-discourse: the idea that Chinese organization and authoritarianism have enabled a rapid and effective response to the crisis from which other countries can learn lessons. Export of authoritarian techniques has been one of the underestimated selling points of China’s global projects in recent years, Central Asia. The main audience, as always, is nationalbut this also includes foreigners, especially in developing countries.

In all fairness, it may be that general locking has really played a vital role in controlling the virus. Still, it's hard to know for sure due to government crackdown on reports, as well as the introduction of another set of news. media and internet controls, already planned before the coronavirus. At the provincial level, outbreak statistics range from doubtful obviously wrong. Troublingly, the World Health Organization, already faced with public criticism for its refusal to face Chinese failures, is a participant willing to push this narrative, by writing a comic strip sycophantic report on Chinese efforts based on a recent propaganda tour run in Hubei Province, where the virus first broke out.

Much of this is awkwardly obvious and will have little effect on the audience without the obligation to pretend that Xis speeches are rhetorical masterpieces. But other parts of the Chinese outreach are much smarter and more sophisticated, appealing to the huge diplomatic resources especially in Africa and the Middle East. Take this video produced by China Radio International, which was broadcast widely on Telegram in Iran, in which a Persian speaker explains how China has managed the epidemic and offers aid to Iran, One of the countries outside China most affected by the epidemic. It is the kind of commitment that can make a lasting difference for ordinary people rather than for other autocrats.

From the start, there was also a deliberate doubling of anti-United States. Propaganda. It was partly an almost instinctive reaction; Anti-Americanism has dominated the Chinese media so much in the past four years that it is the default position for writers. Even in the early weeks of the epidemic, Chinese officials blamed the United States for an alleged overreaction and mistakenly claiming that Washington was the first to impose travel bans. But there is also a clear desire to divert the anger of the administration and direct it towards an external enemy.

The next step in the propaganda campaign was to deny that the virus had started in China. (How the virus passed through the species is not yet clear, but there is nothing to suggest that it did not happen in China, which saw the first epidemic in Wuhan city. .) These claims erupted last week on Chinese social media, where conspiracy sites such as College Daily, already vectors of deeply racist and Islamophobic stories exposed by the propaganda authorities, push the idea that the virus actually originated in the United States. Extracts from Taiwanese television and poorly translated subtitles US reports are used to back up the case.

They're helped in this by China's poor registration flu statistics, which gives the impression that the country has only experienced a few hundred deaths from seasonal flu this year, when in reality 84,000 to 92,000 people die every year from the flu in China. Allegations of the death of the American flu emerged in January, which led officials to believe that American journalists were not afraid of the coronavirus because they were used to the disease. The explicit claim that the coronavirus started in the United States is relatively new, but reported conversations between Chinese overseas and their parents and grandparents at home has spread worryingly. The flu is not the only culprit to blame; another popular theory is that vaping death under President Donald Trump were a cover for coronavirus deaths.

It is unclear to what extent this is sanctioned by the state. The United States, of course, has hardly lacked conspiracy theories about the virus. When he returned later, Trump himself described the virus as fake news. Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom cotton also contributed to their dissemination. But the United States doesn’t thousands government and private sector staff dedicated to online censorship, who block key search terms and suppress unfavorable government stories and rumors with lightning speed.

The fact that these stories remain current in China shows that, at the very least, the government tolerates them. Even more worrying, top Chinese epidemiologist Zhong Nanshan, who has been at the forefront of the response to the epidemic, recently said at a press conference that the virus may not have originated in China by winking at these conspiracy theories without explicitly endorsing them. .

Even more than boasting about China’s effectiveness, conspiracy theories target a national audience, as well as the Chinese diaspora. But they are likely to be adopted elsewhere, especially in countries with their own tendency to spot American plots everywhere.

If the coronavirus is out of control, as many epidemiologists fear, the whole world will look for someone to blame and Beijing wants to make sure that the blame falls on Washington.