When the news of a coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China first appeared in Western media outlets in January, China’s state-run news operation went into full propaganda mode, striking a phony tone of reassurance and transparency to the West with hashtags like #wuhancoronavirus and #wuhanpneumonia.
Then in February, the Chinese made a big shift away from that tone.
According to a new report by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, there were two distinct shifts. The first ignored details of the disease’s spread and origins in favor of social media posts that praised the response of the communist government and President Xi Jinping. Then, later in February, stories and posts began aggressively accusing the West of racism and xenophobia, and even doubted the origins of the virus.
The shift in message can be seen via Tweets, provided by Recorded Future. The first is from early January and the second from Feb. 29.
Both tweets are from a communist China propaganda account called, Global Times. It has 1.7 million followers. According to Recorded Future, Global Times and other such China-controlled propaganda outfits have posted tens of thousands of coronavirus-related items on services Twitter and Instagram.
Recorded Future’s story aligns with a similar report published by news site Pro Publica. It describes a massive Twitter disinformation operation run by the Chinese government.
As for the earlier Chinese media messages describing the coronavirus spread in Wuhan, Recorded Future said “censors and propagandists had not yet communicated coordinated guidelines for foreign messaging by state-run media.”
Many of the Chinese propaganda outlets continue to publish on Twitter, despite putting forth false information. A Twitter spokesperson told Fortune that they are aware of such accounts and, in some cases, are taking action against them (amazing these bastards at Twitter have shadow-banned a small time guy like me for the past decade, and yet they allow this dangerous commie propaganda continue, all in the name of free speech*).
“Using technology and human review in concert, we proactively monitor Twitter to identify attempts at platform manipulation and mitigate them,” said a Twitter spokesperson. “If we identify further information campaigns on our service that we can reliably attribute to state-backed activity either domestic or foreign-led, we will disclose them.”
All of this comes as the Chinese Communist Party attempts to portray its handling of the Wuhan situation as a marvelous success, and a wonderful model for the world to follow. Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports shared photos of thousands of funeral urns in Wuhan, suggesting the death toll is much higher than the official 2,535 number the government has put forth. Also, the International Business Times reported a soaring number of phone cancellations (in the millions) as evidence that the death toll in China owing to the coronavirus has been understated.
Thanks for reading and God Bless you all. Please don’t forget to pray for the millions of Christians under horrid persecution in China.
*By the way, because of my being shadow-banned I now only use Twitter to share encouraging Bible verses with my very modest number of followers (a number which hasn’t changed much since I began using the platform in 2009, despite the fact that I hosted an enormously popular San Francisco radio show and filled-in nationally for Michael Savage).