China-Owned Paper Claims COVID Didn't Start in Wuhan, Twitter Fails To Fact Check Outright Lie
A mouthpiece for the People’s Republic of China is attempting to shift the blame for COVID-19 away from the communist powerhouse — and is seemingly being allowed to do so by a major social media company.
The pass given to the blatant propaganda is made even worse by the fact that the platform is actively flagging and censoring content posted by President Donald Trump.
China’s latest attempt to shift the narrative came Wednesday on Twitter.
The tweet, made by state-owned media group People’s Daily, claimed the novel coronavirus that appeared in the waning days of 2019 came from somewhere outside of the widely accepted ground zero of the city of Wuhan.
“All available evidence suggests that [COVID-19] did not start in central China’s Wuhan, but may come into China through imported frozen food products and their packaging,” the outlet said, citing “experts.”
All available evidence suggests that #COVID19 did not start in central China’s Wuhan, but may come into China through imported frozen food products and their packaging: experts https://t.co/PPakQ6vJzW pic.twitter.com/540HQNrrr1
— People’s Daily, China (@PDChina) November 25, 2020
The post linked to a longer report on the Facebook page of the People’s Daily, which in turn cites an article in the South China Morning Post.
As for the so-called expert who helped make this totally unbiased determination about the origins of COVID?
[firefly_poll]
It was none other than Zeng Guang, the former chief epidemiologist of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Wuhan was where the coronavirus was first detected but it was not where it originated,” Zeng said earlier this month, according to SCMP.
Further driving the point home that this is shameless propaganda, researchers behind an Italian study cited by Zeng actively deny that their work shifts blame away from China. Instead, they say, the study only shows the communist regime was too slow in reacting to the initial COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan.
Despite all evidence hinting that the People’s Daily tweet is total fake news, it has not seen a single overt restriction from Twitter.
The treatment being given to totalitarian state-owned media sits in stark contrast to Twitter’s ongoing censorship and restriction campaign against Trump.
Starting shortly after Election Day, the social media giant began flagging posts by the president with warnings about election security and the mainstream media’s decision to call the race for Democrat Joe Biden.
Even now, most of Trump’s recent posts have Twitter’s damning disclaimer attached to the bottom.
“Democrats suffered crushing down-ballot loss across America.” @nytimes. This is true. All statehouses won, and in Washington we did great. So I led this great charge, and I’m the only one that lost? No, it doesn’t work that way. This was a massive fraud, a RIGGED ELECTION!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 30, 2020
China’s claim, which has been up since before Thanksgiving, is still yet to be challenged by a Twitter fact check.
It’s beginning to look like the social media giant is less concerned with confronting false information and more preoccupied with working to silence the president.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
