Daily Times

The United States on Friday accused China and Russia of stepping up cooperation to spread false narratives over the coronavirus pandemic, saying Beijing was increasingly adopting techniques honed by Moscow.

“Even before the Covid-19 crisis we assessed a certain level of coordination between Russia and the PRC in the realm of propaganda,” said Lea Gabrielle, coordinator of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, which tracks foreign propaganda.

Proxies of both China and Russia appear to be working in coordination to magnify this narrative on the social media platform, leading Gabrielle to conclude the two governments are likely working together out of shared interest.

The Global Engagement Center earlier said thousands of Russian-linked social media accounts were spreading conspiracies about the pandemic, including charging that the virus first detected last year in the Chinese metropolis of Wuhan was created by the United States.

China outraged the United States when a foreign ministry spokesman tweeted a conspiracy that the US military brought the virus to Wuhan, but the two countries reached an informal rhetorical truce in late March after telephone talks between President Donald Trump and his counterpart Xi Jinping.

Tensions have again soared as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pushes the theory that the virus originated in a Wuhan laboratory, a stance that Beijing in turn calls disinformation.

Both the World Health Organization and the US government’s top epidemiologist say there is no evidence the virus came from a lab, with most scientists saying it emerged at a Wuhan meat market that butchered exotic animals.