By Tom Fowdy
Over the weekend the news agency Reuters unleashed a bombshell revelation that the United States Military waged a deliberate psychological warfare and propaganda campaign that was aimed at discrediting China's vaccines in South East Asia, in particular, the Philippines. The campaign, which was run out of Tampa, Florida, involved US military contractors creating hundreds of fake social media accounts that impersonated Filipinos and other Southeast Asian people, trashing the credibility of China's Sinovac vaccine. An anonymous source told Reuters that the intention of the campaign was to, in their own words, "Drag China through the mud."
The campaign falsely claimed the vaccine was not credible, as well as spreading other lies that the Sinovac inoculations contained "Pork" and therefore were Halal, targeting Muslim populations. Oddly enough, this is the 2nd time Reuters has revealed a US government-backed propaganda campaign against China taking place on social media. The first one revealed that Trump ordered the CIA to conduct one against the rule of Xi Jinping and China's reputation in general, which I strongly suspect was linked to a lot of coordinated Uyghur genocide content on social media around 2020. Although Reuters has shown some integrity in coming forwards with these, the key pattern in both instances was that the mainstream media at large pushed the narratives the US were seeking to astroturf.
The revelation of these two campaigns paints an ironic picture given that the US, as well as the mainstream media, waffle on repeatedly about "Chinese and Russian" interference in Western political processes, yet the reality is that there are concerted efforts going the other way. I, however, had known for years that the United States had waged a campaign to undermine China's vaccines, although not surprisingly few believed me at the time. There are a number of reasons behind this.
Protecting "Big Pharmacy"
The covid era ushered in an increased effort at "narrative control" by Western governments by essentially crushing all dissenting opinions with respect to vaccines and branding them as "misinformation", which is ironic given what they did to China simultaneously. Now while I am personally not a vaccine skeptic and lived in a country where it was mandatory anyway, I nonetheless recognized that Western governments sought to protect the monopoly of "big pharmacy" companies, namely of Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Moderna and shut out China. Those who were criticizing the financial motives of governments and companies in pushing the vaccines have a legitimate point, and the attempt to completely silence these people was wrong.
There was money to be made, and thus even without knowing about this social media campaign, the mainstream media started relentlessly pushing negativity concerning China's vaccines claiming, falsely that they "do not work." This even led to some ludicrous and outright dishonest stories such as citing cases where the population was fully vaccinated, but covid still "reappeared", which is with hindsight a disgraceful act of misinformation and unscientific. This was in line with a much broader propaganda campaign that sought to scapegoat and press the blame on China for the pandemic wherever possible.
The battle for the global south
Second, and more relevant to this story, the US was locked in a geopolitical struggle with China for influence across global southern countries over the distribution of vaccines. Now, because Western countries hoarded vaccines for their own populations first and could not match China's manufacturing capacity, China was able to take a huge head start and offer significant quantities of vaccines to the global south who were left stranded without Western support. This naturally, translates into "geopolitical influence" and the US subsequently became angst at this development, clearly seeing the situation as critical in Southeast Asia where the main fulcrum of US-China competition is playing out. Thus, unable to match China's vaccine capabilities, they resorted to a grotesque smear campaign to try and undermine their credibility. It is believed that this had a negative campaign in the Philippines and may have contributed to the deaths of tens of thousands.
But having now learned about all of this, the bigger question is, if the US runs a campaign to undermine China's vaccines, what else pertaining to China have they also pursued propaganda warfare against? There is an unhelpful assumption that propaganda only comes from one side, something that is "othered", but this is based on the complacency of the assumption that the West has a monopoly on "universal truth." It doesn't. The US government has an extensive history of lying and deceiving with respect to almost every foreign policy issue, ever, so why do people keep believing them? And moreover, who is the real threat to the Philippines and interfering in their sovereign affairs here?
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.
Read more articles by Tom Fowdy:
Opinion | The politicization of tragedy and the Jilin stabbings
Opinion | How the US uses arbitrary supply chain laws to undercut China
Opinion | The study on British media negativity pertaining to China is the tip of the iceberg
Opinion | The inconsequential and inevitable landslide, a British election without real choice
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