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WASHINGTON: The United States accused China and Russia on Friday (May 8) of stepping up cooperation to spread false narratives about the coronavirus pandemic, saying that Beijing was increasingly adopting techniques perfected by Moscow.
“Even before the COVID-19 crisis we evaluated a certain level of coordination between Russia and the PRC in the field of propaganda,” said Lea Gabrielle, coordinator of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, which tracks foreign propaganda.
“But with this pandemic, cooperation has accelerated rapidly,” he told reporters.
“We see this convergence as a result of what we consider pragmatism between the two actors who want to shape public understanding of the COVID pandemic for their own ends,” he said.
The Global Engagement Center previously said that thousands of social media accounts linked to Russia were spreading conspiracies about the pandemic, including the accusation that the virus first detected last year in the Chinese metropolis of Wuhan was created by the United States.
China angered the United States when a Foreign Ministry spokesman tweeted a conspiracy that the US military brought the virus to Wuhan, but the two countries reached an informal rhetorical truce in late March after telephone talks between President Donald Trump and his counterpart Xi Jinping.
Tensions have skyrocketed again as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo drives the theory that the virus originated in a laboratory in Wuhan, a position that Beijing in turn calls disinformation.
Both the World Health Organization and the main epidemiologist of the US government. USA They say there is no evidence that the virus came from a laboratory, and most scientists say it emerged from a Wuhan meat market that slaughtered exotic animals.
China’s ambassador to the United States, Cui Tiankai, recently lamented what he said was an effort to label “objective facts as disinformation and propaganda.”
“Behind the ‘always blame China’ mentality is a kind of dirty politics, championed by some people who shift the spotlight for political gain,” Cui wrote in The Washington Post.
Xi discussed cooperation on the pandemic on Friday in a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Russia “opposes attempts by some forces to use the epidemic as a pretext to blame China and will stand firm with China,” Putin said, according to the state news agency Xinhua.
China and Russia often find common cause and clash with the United States on Venezuela issues using economic sanctions for disarmament.
SUSPICIOUS GROWTH IN TWITTER FOLLOWERS
According to the Global Engagement Center, China has again stepped up its online campaign to defend its management of the pandemic, which has killed some 270,000 people worldwide, and is critical of the United States.
“Beijing is adapting in real time and using more and more techniques that Moscow has used for a long time,” said Gabrielle.
China has increasingly used botnets to amplify its message, Gabrielle said.
She said official Chinese diplomatic Twitter accounts suddenly witnessed an increase in late March, from adding around 30 new followers daily to more than 720, often from newly created accounts.
She said China was first observed using such online methods to “sow political discord” in its autonomous territory of Hong Kong, which has witnessed major pro-democracy protests.
Gabrielle said Russia and China found a “convergence of narratives” about the coronavirus, although it was not possible to know the extent of the coordination.
“I think there are some examples where we have basically seen a narration exposed by one state actor and then repeated by another,” he said.
“So we’re certainly seeing them bounce off each other and essentially play together in the information space.”
