WP4 Rough Draft: Government’s Spread of Conspiracy Theories

Around March 20th, the news that Moderna created COVID-19 topped the threads of Weibo (the Chinese counterpart of Twitter), alongside Russian troops’ discovery of U.S. laboratories in Ukraine. Apparently, the government was pushing the popularization of the trend as the top post under this thread was made by State-linked media Global Times, and 45 other state-owned media reposted (Business Insider). Hinting that COVID-19 was a conspiracy of the U.S. government, Global Times’ post cited “The Expose,” a British website with little to no influence and regularly spreads anti-vaccine conspiracy theories.

This was not the first time the Chinese government spread conspiracy theories regarding the U.S and COVID. In July and August 2021, State media outlets such as people’s daily and CCTV news repeatedly quoted a Twitter post of a Swiss biologist Wilson Edwards, suggesting that the virus originated from Fort Detrick, a U.S. military base outside of D.C., and U.S. authorities were pressuring the WHO investigators for that discovery (New York Times). However, the Swiss embassy soon discredited the report as they found no Swiss citizen named “Wilson Edwards.”

In recent years, China has taken a tough diplomatic stance with emphasis on nationalist narratives under Xi’s presidency, which is dubbed “wolf warrior diplomacy” due to the popular nationalist movie “Wolf Warrior II.” Such strategies have led to a worsened Sino-American relationship, with both countries citing each other as their biggest enemies (Yang). In other words, the implementation of new diplomatic strategies has coincided with the CCP’s propaganda on “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” which refuses any claim of China’s inferiority compared to the United States. It has thus become necessary for China to belittle the U.S. with whatever means. With all these cases of government spreading conspiracy theories, the Chinese authorities have made clear their stance on information as part of its “wolf warrior diplomacy”: they are willing to promote anything that makes the U.S. look bad regardless of authenticity.

Here, an argument can be made regarding the necessity of the conspiracy theory strategy. With the imminence of a “Cold War II,” proponents of such governmental propaganda claim that the spread of whatever information in favor of China would be an effective preventive measure of “cognitive warfare” launched by the U.S. or NATO. According to a NATO-sponsored study in 2020, the relatively new concept of “cognitive warfare” is a process that causes chaos in enemies’ societies by shifting the values of the populations through the spread of selected information (Claverie and Cluzel 2). Since the selected information can be either true or false but would be disadvantageous to the country under the attack, those who argue in favor of the government spreading misinformation would say that the position of the people is more important than the authenticity of the information. Yes, they would say, the information can be false, but at least it makes you hate the U.S., and that’s all that matters. Under such reasoning, it would be okay for the Chinese government to manipulate the mind of the Chinese people as long as it preserves the immunity of manipulation from other countries. Thus, the government shall maintain China’s social stability, which is beneficial for all.
While the argument for spreading conspiracy theories may be plausible, it is still hard to deny the inherent harm of spreading misinformation, specifically conspiracy theories. According to Jing-Bao Nie, an adjunct professor of medical humanities at Peking University, the spread of COVID-related conspiracy theories can be damaging to international relations as it enhances the trend of mistrust and promotes the exclusiveness of nationalism (Nie 570). The potential harms of spreading conspiracy theories that Nie pointed out are significant as they can do damage in both domestic and international scenes. Given that the upside of the conspiracy theory strategy is confined to the potentially better social stability, the claim for it is hard to outweigh that against it, not to mention that conspiracy theories can often be harmful to social stability. Therefore, it is much more likely for the conspiracy theories themselves to be a bigger problem than the “cognitive warfare” of the United States.

Domestically, alongside the spread of conspiracy theories, the Chinese government has imposed policies incentivizing people to report espionage, with the reward being as much as 500,000 CNY. The “500K” thing soon became an Internet meme in China and has most likely turned the action that supposedly promotes social stability into a witch hunt. People who are self-proclaimed patriots have started dubbing those they accuse of being online spies as “walking 500K,” and they are free to call anyone who disagrees with them a “walking 500K.” Saying that China is somehow not the best country? You are a 500K! Disagreeing with that COVID was created by the U.S.? Here comes another 500K… So on and so forth, those with the most extremist nationalist thoughts would eventually take over the Internet as those who can think for themselves would refrain from voicing their opinions. This trend of extreme nationalism would undoubtedly steer China towards the direction of populism and chauvinism, and if China continues its use of conspiracy theories as part of its propaganda, the conspiracy theories can only serve as catalysts of this process. Yes, the “patriots” shall prevail in the end with the spread of conspiracy theories, but only premised upon hunting down those who dare to doubt and the thought that “we” all believe in the government. But the problem is: who are “we”? The government’s spread of conspiracy theories would only narrow down the population of “we” as it precludes anyone with the ability to think, and the stable and harmonized internet that the government envisioned would turn out to be those who believe that 2+2=5 is correct if the government says so, instead of the uniformity of people who believe in 2+2=4. In that respect, as an old Chinese saying goes, the Chinese government is “drinking poison to stop its thirst” when seeking the political fiction of social stability in such a way.

While the risk of rising populism domestically is already sufficient to counterargue the upside of state-sponsored conspiracy theories, the threat of the conspiracy theory strategy would be even larger on an international scene. As globalized as the world currently is, international trade has become an inseparable part of every country’s economy, and one does not need much knowledge to know that all businesses are premised upon mutual trust. If a country spread baseless claims about another, especially one of the country’s largest trading partners, it would be hard to maintain such a trust if it ever exists, which would hurt the development of both countries in the long run. Not only that, but the spread of conspiracy theories internationally would lead to the abuse of “whataboutism,” which turns the nature of global competition from comparing who’s better to compare who’s worse. “Whataboutism” is a logical fallacy that has, unfortunately, been increasingly used in international relations for a country to attack another. If country A attacks country B with claim C1 premised upon P, country B can always counterargue with “what about C2” to demonstrate that P is being used inconsistently (Aspeitia 434). Since any C2 can shift the focus from C1 to the consistency of P regardless of authenticity, country B can use conspiracy theories to counterargue C1. Under such lines of argument, a country can make up as many conspiracy theories as it would like to so long as it distracts people’s attention, which would prevent the making of almost all diplomatic and economic progress. For example, China, facing human rights accusations from Western countries such as the U.S., is now spreading conspiracy theories about the U.S. to demonstrate how the U.S. has a double-standard approach to human rights. If this strategy is being continuously deployed, it would then be difficult for China to face its problems and make any possible progress.

The use of conspiracy theories to evade its problems is not confined to China. For example, in 2020, the Trump administration openly called COVID “China Virus” and accused China of creating the virus in Wuhan labs. This racist and xenophobic strategy was an attempt to distract America’s poor economic growth and failure to respond to COVID (Vazquez). Since it has been shown that we cannot trust individual governments to spread only accurate information, my proposed solution here would be the creation of an information-sharing website by neutral international organizations such as the UN and the legislation of relevant international laws. Under such a framework, members of the international organization would regularly meet and decide on the authenticity of information spread by governments. On each piece of information, countries would vote on whether the information is true and give out their reasons, and superpowers such as China or the U.S. would not have additional weight in their votes to prevent the manipulation of information. The opinions of all participating countries would then be collected and summarized in an article that would then be posted on the sharing website and translated to the official language of every country participating in the organization. To make this proposal enforceable, the organization shall make international law requiring all countries not to censor the site, and request all countries to impose economic and diplomatic sanctions if a country breaks the rule. While this proposal may be unrealistic given the complex dynamics of international relations, there cannot be a better solution than international cooperation as all countries would have the incentive to spread misinformation if acting individually. Also, while some may argue that international laws are often unenforceable, the international recognition of misinformation and conspiracy theories is still more potent than acts or sanctions of individual countries, specifically towards countries with rich histories in censorship and spreading misinformation.

To conclude, while the spread of misinformation, specifically conspiracy theories by the government is especially prominent in China, we can find and take as a concern a global trend of adopting such a strategy. There may be proponents of the strategy who defend it on the ground that it promotes national security in the era of “cognitive warfare,” such a defense cannot stand as it is outweighed by both domestic and global problems that it may cause, specifically the distrust within national society and in the international community. In that respect, there is a strong potential that the strategy would lead to the stall of development both domestically and globally. Therefore, for a more promising future for the global community and to prevent individual countries from adopting such strategies, we need global efforts to put us back on the track with progress, especially under the uncertainty and economic downturn that the world is facing.