How China tried to influence the narrative on Coronavirus pandemic
Chinese censorship on information about outbreak began in early January, before decisive identification
China’s attempts to influence opinion regarding the coronavirus pandemic have been brought to light through secrete government directives and “reclaiming the narrative” after The New York Times and ProPublica reviewed hacked documents.
A hacker group known as CCP (Chinese Communist Party) Unmasked shared the documents, which reveal the Herculean efforts that the actual CCP invested in maintaining control of the Internet. “The Times and ProPublica verified the legitimacy of many of the documents, some of which had been acquired independently by China Digital Times, a website that follows Chinese Internet controls,” according to The Jerusalem Post.
Beijing was caught off-guard at the outpouring of emotion and became deeply concerned about creating a “butterfly effect,” in turn causing officials to get to work suppressing inconvenient news.
The Times also maintained that propaganda workers produced reports that ensured people saw nothing other than the calming message from the Communist Party, i.e. that the government had everything under control.
In addition to employing hundreds of thousands of people part-time to promote information that parrots the CCP’s ideology, WeChat, China’s version of WhatsApp also censored data at the beginning of the pandemic, according to The Post.
“Wired reported that by March, WeChat blocked mentions of international groups, such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Red Cross, in addition to censoring references to outbreaks in other countries.”
