Opinion | What is 'COVID atrocity propaganda' and how is China subject to it?
By Tom Fowdy
The COVID-19 pandemic has arguably been the most politicized pandemic in history, simply because from day one, it has been inseparable from a broader geopolitical current between the United States and China, leading to the virus becoming weaponized on multiple fronts as a means to propagandize and discredit Beijing. This has included accusing China of a coverup and a systemic failure in the emergence of the virus, portraying China's handling of the Wuhan outbreak as brutal and dystopian, scapegoating China for the pandemic going global, accusing it of doctoring its numbers, advocating a "blame game", attacking China's vaccines and aid to other countries, propagating a lab leak conspiracy, the list is literally endless.
It is no surprise that with the decisions of some countries to scrap their zero-COVID policies, and China pursuing a lockdown in Shanghai, that the propaganda cycle has gone "full-circle" and now the original narrative as what was seen in Wuhan, depicting China's lockdowns as heavy-handed, arbitrary and brutal, is now framing the headlines again in the West. Some newspapers, such as the Financial Times, have taken this to ludicrous extremes, such as describing the Shanghai lockdown as "Xi Jinping's Chernobyl moment". This leads to exploring what is known as "COVID atrocity propaganda" and the objective biases in these assessments visible in western discourse.
COVID Atrocity propaganda is a form of discourse in the West which seeks to politicize China's zero-COVID approach as a means of state brutality which inflicts unnecessary suffering on target populations. It draws on both ideological and orientalist discourse. For the former, it embeds the western assumption that freedom from the state is the ultimate virtue, and negates the massive COVID death tolls in western countries as inconsequential, whereas for the latter, it draws upon contrasting assumptions of "West and East"- which assume the West to be benevolent, civilized and superior, and the "East" (in this case China) to be backwards, brutal and uncivilized.
In utilizing this discourse, misinformation tends to flood around social media which emphasizes aspects such as Chinese authorities allegedly killing pets to stop the outbreak of COVID, rumors and allegations of food shortages and starvation, as well as blatant misrendering of certain video footage as evidence of apparent desperation or unrest. Such as for example, a video of a neighborhood going for COVID-19 testing being portrayed as a "protest". There are certain prominent figures, such as Ian Bremmer, a political scientist and chairman of the Eurasia Group (who despite his qualifications does not have any expertise in China whatsoever) who has spread this misinformation across Twitter and sent it viral.
But of course, chief to the motivation of all such "COVID atrocity propaganda"- is of course the longstanding and unspoken rule in western reporting above all ensures that China is to absolutely receive no credit or no recognition whatsoever for how it has handled the COVID-19 pandemic. This narrative has been almost religiously enforced, which is why the media has sought to seek out a negative angle wherever it is possible to do so and to otherwise pour scorn, distrust and skepticism around China's other professed achievements. If China has done well, it is simply lying, but if China is not doing well (as is the case in Shanghai right now) then it is evidence of the system's rigidness and brutality. In no matter what aspect, it might be in, China is not allowed to come out in glory or to have done well.
Of course, it is true so to speak that the situation in Shanghai has provoked a lot of local criticism and disillusionment. My personal opinion is that the increased transmissibility of the omicron variant, its reducing fatality rate, and the shift of the rest of the world towards opening, all mean that it is an inevitable, albeit uncomfortable choice, that China has to adapt and change its strategy. Saying that however, it is simply ludicrous and misleading to portray the country's pandemic organization and response as a whole as being disastrous and brutal, when it has indeed served to save millions of lives in a country of 1.4 billion people.
It still beggars all belief that the United States has allowed 1 million of its own people to simply die, and nobody seems to care. Yet if that were the case in China, it would be portrayed as a colossal failure of the system. Even the BBC portrayed the Wuhan situation as an "epic political disaster" in 2020, when that turned out not to be the case. So yes, whilst China needs to rethink and adapt, the lesson still holds true that western media and commentary continue to politicize and unfairly present China's pandemic handling in absurd and dishonest ways, as if the country could never have in any instance done anything right.
The author is a well-seasoned writer and analyst with a large portfolio related to China topics, especially in the field of politics, international relations and more. He graduated with an Msc. in Chinese Studies from Oxford University in 2018.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
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