The Impact of Covid-19 Fake News

Politicians from China and the United States (US) are using Covid-19 fake news to push

blame on each other to worsen their existing political tensions. At the end of 2019, the Covid-19 outbreak emerged in Wuhan, China. The city experienced an outbreak that killed more than eighteen hundred people and infected over seventy thousand individuals within the first fifty days alone (Shereen et al. 92). The political rivalry between the economic superpowers is nothing new. On 22 March 2018, US President Donald Trump announced a plethora of tariffs on imported Chinese products (Council on Foreign Relations). The US imposed tariffs of more than 360 billion USD as of January 2020. Beyond that, Trump has been accusing China of trading unfairly and stealing intellectual property (BBC). The circumstances surrounding the origin of Covid-19 are shrouded in mystery, thus the political tension gave rise to plenty of conspiracy theories from all sides. In that frame of mind, politicians in both countries are pinning blame on each other based on pure speculation regarding the origin of Covid-19.

Disinformation is magnified by the reporting of comments by politicians through mainstream

media. Firstly, it is integral to understand that media serves the function of correlation— to

interpret information about the processes, issues, events and other developments in society

and ascribe meaning to help individuals understand. In the US, their news media is known to be greatly partisan. There are three notable cable news organisations in the US with differing political stances: Fox News, CNN and MSNBC. According to the Pew Research Center, Fox News viewers lean toward the conservative right. Meanwhile, CNN and MSNBC viewers lean toward the more liberal left (Gramlich). As a result of this partisanship, cable news companies angle their articles and news presentations differently even though the story is ultimately the same. Nevertheless, both sides noted that Trump continually referred to Covid-19 as the “Chinese virus”. Fox News decided to describe Trump’s use of the term “Chinese virus” as “unapologetic” in an article. The article also began by blaming the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for mishandling the pandemic (Olson and Chakraborty). On the other side of the American political spectrum, CNN decided to cover this name-calling by pointing out the political reasons behind Trump referring to Covid-19 in such a way. CNN began the article by pointing out that Trump edited his script for addressing the coronavirus task force by striking through “corona” and replacing it with the word “Chinese”. They also described this edit as a “concerted effort” to manipulate the public into believing that China is responsible (Cillizza). Internally within the US, they had some conflict regarding the cause of this outbreak. This is a result of the difference in the interpretation of information from the two sides. Regardless, both sides still spread the term “Chinese virus” which amplifies Trump’s political agenda by using this incorrect terminology to address Covid-19.

Moving on, the debunking of Covid-19 fake news has been politicised to attack the opposing force. All media messages are constructed. Oftentimes, the inclusion and exclusion of certain information are driven by political or economic reasons. It is critical to understand that all forms of media are crafted in a manner meant to influence the audience in favour of the creator. This is best illustrated in the public statement, Reality Check of US Allegations Against China on COVID-19, released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China (MFAPRC). Just from the title alone, the MFAPRC framed this as a “reality check”. This diction was calculated to insinuate that the American allegations were something other than reality. The MFAPRC began the statement by accusing the US of the fabrication of preposterous allegations and outright deceit in the prologue (MFAPRC). It is clearly shown that they were going into this statement intending to discredit what the US politicians were purporting in their media. It was followed by 24 allegations that had been perpetuated by American media, as well as a direct response labelled as a “reality check”, which was what the Chinese claimed to be true. The “reality check” is supported by bullet points explaining the Chinese point of view. One poignant allegation contested was that “The Chinese contracted the novel coronavirus while eating bats”. The MFAPRC asserted that bats were not part of Chinese cuisine. They directly addressed the viral video of a Chinese woman drinking bat soup that was often used as faux evidence to blame the Chinese. Also, they provided the context behind the Internet clip. It came from a travel promotion show filmed on a small Pacific island in 2016 (MFAPRC). This is proven to be reliable when cross-referenced with the independent fact-checking site, Infotagion. Infotagion aims to dispel disinformation about Covid-19 and provides credible sources for all their fact-checking articles. They noted that the origin of Covid-19 and patient zero had not been identified and that the video was from 2016 in Micronesia, not Wuhan (Infotagion). Although the statement made by the MFAPRC is mostly factual, it is undeniably politicised to attack and discredit the Americans in an accusatory manner.

With both countries using Covid-19 fake news to politically attack each other openly, there

have been some serious unintended consequences. The Covid-19 disinformation that was spread to fuel Chinese-American tension has caused racial discrimination in China and the US. According to the Powerful Effects Theory (PET), media has an immediate and direct influence over the viewers. With the aforementioned constant reporting of false claims by politicians, it must be noted that American media covers American foreign policy in an ethnocentric manner (Aday 316). Around the time when Trump and other major political figures in the US were clearly pinning blame on the Chinese, there was a spike in hate crimes against individuals that look vaguely East Asian. As documented by the Pew Research Center, 58% of Asian adults believe that racist views about Asians have increased since the coronavirus outbreak (Ruiz et al.). Beyond the public perception, there were also many recorded cases of xenophobia against Asian Americans. According to Russell Jeung, professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University, there have been a few thousand incidences of racism against Asian Americans between 28 January and 24 February 2020 alone (Kandil). Keep in mind that the number of Covid-19 cases in America in February was still in the single-digits (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). Later on, when Covid-19 exploded into thousands of new cases every day in late March, coronavirus-related hate crimes against Asian Americans spiked dramatically (Buscher). The Stop Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Hate reporting center reported that in the last two weeks of March, 1100 incidents were documented. These incidents range in severity, from verbal assault to explicit violence. Some examples include the 14 March brutal stabbing of a Hmong American family in Texas and the acid attack on a Chinese American woman in Brooklyn on 5 April (Buscher). Similarly, in China, there have been a few recorded cases of xenophobia against Caucasians. One example reported by The Star would be a British woman facing discrimination in Shanghai (Torr). Referring back to the PET, the people seem to have been influenced by the aggression that their politicians have been parading on their televisions and social media. However, PET assumes that the audience is homogenous, passive and uncritical. Nonetheless, the numbers show that the media’s reporting of ethnically tinged fake news has influenced audience behaviour as a result of the political war of words between the US and China.

In conclusion, the origin of Covid-19 is still being investigated and has yet to be confirmed.

However, it is clearly shown that the perpetuation of this disinformation only serves to further dim prospects for a diplomatic truce between the superpowers (Shi). Polls by the Pew Research Center are showing an increase of Americans harbouring unfavourable views towards China. The negative view jumped from 47% of Americans in 2018 to 60% in 2019. Amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, it climbed even higher to 66% (Devlin et al.). Furthermore, the most recent decision from the Trump presidency to pull the US out from the World Health Organisation (WHO) truly displays the full extent of this political strife. Trump stated that the American exit is due to his belief that the WHO is under China's control. This move has drawn criticism from the Democrats like Senator Robert Menendez who is on the Foreign Relations Committee. The senator wrote on Twitter that Trump’s decision "leaves Americans sick and America alone” (BBC). Therefore, it can be said that Covid-19 fake news has indeed been used as a political weapon to further sour the relationship between China and the US.

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