Fake news or Chinese disinformation?

Global voices, a site that publishes independent bloggers, has republished an article by a Hong Kong professor about China's misinformation/propaganda campaign to cover up the covid virus and blame it on everyone (read, the USA).

This censorship started as early as December, when a local social media outlet (Weibo) started discussing those cases of pneumonia that were popping up:

On the afternoon of December 31, 2019, a Weibo post read, “Wuhan pneumonia cannot be judged to be SARS. Wuhan has the only virus laboratory in the country and is also a world-class virology laboratory. There are ways to deal with the virus. If Wuhan can’t figure it out, no one can handle it.” It was swiftly censored within an hour.

The post mentioned both the SARS-like nature of the virus, suggesting its high infection rate, and the Wuhan laboratory, signaling the origin of the virus.

Based on our knowledge of the government’s censorship system, both of these characteristics seem to be attributable to the decision to remove the post from the social platform.

At the time, social media was already seeing speculations that a new kind of pneumonia was linked to a SARS-like disease, according to Weiboscope data. Ophthalmologist Dr. Li Wenliang, who learned about the then-mysterious illness in a hospital, had sent a message in the popular Chinese private messaging app WeChat warning other medical doctors about the unnamed disease. Wenliang was then accused, along with another six people, of disturbance of public order by local authorities. He later died of the disease that would be known as COVID-19.

On December 31, 2019, the same day that post was removed from Weibo, and shortly after Wenliang’s warning, the Chinese government claimed that the “viral pneumonia cases” had “no apparent pattern of human-to-human transmission” and were “preventable and controllable.” It also informed the World Health Organization and the United States of those conclusions.

The article goes on about Chinese censorship of the story, and gives the background of China's censorship of information in general, their extensive surveillence of ordinary citizens, their propaganda war, etc.

Breitbart article notes how the WHO is busy pushing Chinese disinformation.

however, before you get feeling superior, just remember that in the US, the censorship is done by several huge internet companies.

bias? Moi?

Global Voices also has an article on China's search for six Hong Kong activists. all of whom are living overseas now, and notes that several western countries have stopped their extradition treaties to Hong Kong because of this and other worries.

and the BBC has an article on the problem with Hong Kong's elections: They gov't controls who runs. 

finally, one of the side effects of China's aggression on many fronts against the Philippines and other ASEAN countries is that the Philippines, who could use money for other things, is now busy spending money to buy ships for defense. Yes, I know: Pacifists would probably say how bad, but you know, China is stealing not only the resources of fish, petroleum, etc. and destroying the fragile ecosystem in the West Philippine sea, but they are also holding military drills in the area (an open threat to say they can close the busy sea lanes here so nyah nyah nyah).

and another story not noticed in the US: Chinese pressure to infiltrate Australian institutions. No links: I'm waiting for a summary.  But GV has an article on how China pressured an Australian university to censor a student who criticized China.

heh. That could never happen in the US, where Universities only are busy censoring those who oppose the fads of trans rights or (shudder shudder) whisper they might vote for Trumpieboy.

Sigh.