The Chinese government continues to press forward with its reputation repair campaign in the wake of all damages caused by the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan.
To date, a major part of the effort had centered on social media, where the government leaders have waged a campaign heavily focused on casting doubt on any narrative that lays blame for the pandemic at its feet.
The China Power Project has taken on the role of analyzing much of what has happened. As an arm of the Center for Strategic & International Affairs, China Power builds itself as providing “an in-depth understanding of the evolving nature of Chinese power relative to other countries,” according to its website.
Over recent times, China Power reports Chinese state-linked social media accounts, such as Twitter, have relentlessly focused on defending and commending their response to the COVID-19 pandemic, all while berating the responses of other countries.
While the report details that perceptions of the way the government has handled the crisis have improved, there is no way the government can legitimately distance itself from accusations that it is solely to blame for the outbreak.
“The government's reticence, due to an attempt to control information and prevent public panic, delayed an effective and timely response, thus causing a worse outbreak,” the China Power Project said. Recent polls conducted by YouGov-Cambridge and Pew Research Center seem to support that position, the Project said. One concluded that respondents believe that Beijing "tried to hide the truth" about the beginnings of the outbreak and the other found most respondents from 14 developed economies now have unfavorable views of China. Unfavorable views stood out as extremely high in Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.
World Health Organization (WHO) officials also indicate they were largely denied when requesting information at the start of the outbreak and an Oxford University study found the number of Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs diplomats using Twitter multiplied roughly five times over (from 39 to over 188) between January 2019 and December 2020, while Chinese state-linked media accounts on Twitter also grew simultaneously.
Further analysis by the Alliance for Securing Democracy found that between January 2020 and September 2021, Chinese state-linked accounts tweeted over 270,000 times about COVID-19, hitting a high in April 2020 when they soared to 29,400 tweets for the month. The monthly average is now around 11,000 tweets, according to China Power.
In addition, China Power said between January and March of 2020 nearly half, or 47%, of all tweets by Chinese state-linked accounts, defended or praised the government's methods related to the outbreak. Soon after that (April to June), 50% of all tweets were found to blast other governments over their handling of the pandemic.
The report also details the way Chinese leaders have deliberately spread false narratives and conspiracy theories that include such stories as the virus originated in Italy and that COVID-19 was spread by the U.S. military during an international sports competition held in Wuhan in 2019.
China Power also reports evidence showing the Chinese government has been less than forthright about the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the country, with one study finding that the number may be as much as 10 times greater than that reported by the government. The death toll from the pandemic was likely also higher than reported, with one estimate saying it may be as much as three times greater.
To get to the bottom of COVID origins, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that "laboratory hypotheses must be examined carefully, with a focus on labs in the location where the first reports of human infections emerged in Wuhan," according to China Power.
