A secret US military propaganda operation that aimed to discredit China’s vaccines in the Philippines amounted to normalizing the “disposability of Global South lives” at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and has also exposed how the US treats developing countries as ‘mere pawns’ in a geopolitical power play, analysts said.
An in-depth report by Reuters published in June has revealed that the US military has orchestrated a social media campaign to sow distrust against vaccines and other medical items, including face masks and test kits, from China. The clandestine campaign, which was staged at the height of the 2020-21 pandemic, mainly targeted the Philippines, Middle East and Central Asia.
Reuters has identified at least 300 accounts on X, formerly Twitter, that were created in 2020 and promoted the hashtag #Chinaangvirus, which means ‘China is the virus’ in the Filipino language. Reuters said that after it asked X about the accounts, the social media company removed the profiles, determining they were part of coordinated bot campaign, based on activity patterns and internal data.
READ MORE: COVID: Reuters reveals Pentagon's anti-vax campaign against China
A check by China Daily of X in August to look for posts with the hashtag #Chinaangvirus, still found 10 posts, which were created in 2020, have remained on the social media platform.
Imee Marcos, who chairs the Philippine Senate’s foreign relations committee, conducted an inquiry on June 25 to investigate the anti-Chinese vaccine propaganda, noting this “gravely threatens” national security issues and public health.
At the Philippine House of Representatives, Party-list Representatives Arlene Brosas, France Castro and Raoul Manuel filed a resolution seeking an investigation into the US military’s secret campaign. Manuel told local media that the disinformation campaign shows the US military view Filipinos as ‘mere pawns’ in their agenda to counter China which they consider a “competitor as a global superpower”.
Nuurrianti Jalli, assistant professor at the School of Media and Strategic Communications and at the Oklahoma State University in the US, has seen screenshots of social media posts that were included in the Reuters report. She said all the posts have a “consistent narrative”.
“The posts consistently push anti-Chinese and anti-vaccine narratives using similar language… almost the same theme, and were created almost at the same time. That’s the give-away,” Nurrianti told China Daily.
Nurrianti, who has conducted research on mis/disinformation and propaganda in Southeast Asia, said the Pentagon-led disinformation campaign was done at the expense of public. “Why would you go and create this campaign (against) Filipinos who have not done anything wrong at all?” she said, adding that the Philippines and the rest of the Southeast Asia are “just pawns … because our region is a strategic region for them (US)”.
“Looking at this as a Southeast Asian, I feel like it’s an insult as well. Because why are we being easily put there in that situation, and why are our people being put in such a dangerous situation through this campaign?,” Nurrianti said.
In a commentary published on the online site Tech Policy Press, Jonathan Corpus Ong, inaugural director of the Global Technology for Social Justice Lab at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, wrote that people in the Global South have always been used as “political pawns in peak moments of geopolitical conflict”. He said policymakers and researchers should be more indignant in the wake of the Reuters report and organize better to hold both the US military and social media platforms to account for “normalizing the disposability of Global South lives during the pandemic”.
The campaigns were aimed at stoking “ethnic and racial divisions within the targeted countries and provoke social animosity”, Ong told China Daily. He said that while the US decried in 2016 how Russian digital operations has preyed on racial divisions in the United States, the US military has shown that it is doing the same thing in Global South countries “that they engage with as mere political pawns”.
Ong, who has extensively researched dis/misinformation in the Philippines, said the US military campaign preyed on the “latent and growing Sinophobia” in the country.
“Hateful speech and expression flow and travel in our online spaces. Just as then-US president Donald Trump amplified racist ‘China Virus’ rhetoric in his speeches, Sinophobic behaviors including anti-Asian hate crimes and online hate increased globally,” he said.
Ong noted that the Reuters report did not get a lot of traction in the Philippines as “there are huge power inequalities at play here”.
“Politicians and journalists in targeted countries would be wary of upsetting and calling out a military superpower they had previously engaged with as an ally. Crucially, many journalists, researchers, and civil society organizations have been historically positioned as being ‘obliged to be grateful’ to the US government for their foreign aid,” he said.
Ong said US foreign aid has been one of the biggest backers of journalism initiatives in the world, which is why “it is hard to call out US hypocrisy in the tech and democracy space when the US has been your donor for the past decades”.
Ong said an independent civil society-led investigation needs to be conducted to dive deeper into the actual reach of the disinformation networks across the targeted countries.
“The Reuters report indicated the campaigns lasted 18 months; it is unlikely all the accounts just kept on posting about COVID during that period. Did these accounts promote other policies, or amplify messages of any local politicians or agencies? We are only scratching the surface here by focusing on one topic of the campaign when clearly this is an international campaign that is meant to advance US geopolitical interests at the cost of human lives during a global tragedy,” he said.
A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in the Philippines, commenting on the Reuters report, said the US talks about respecting human rights but “does just the opposite regarding the fundamental human rights of life and health of the Filipino people”.
“The United States reaffirms the so-called ironclad commitment to its allies all the time, but when it comes to the critical moment of fighting the epidemic together, it is always America First, exploiting the vulnerability of the Filipino people for its ulterior geopolitical motives,” the spokesperson said in a statement issued on June 18.
The spokesperson said China, as a responsible major country, has provided global public goods such as vaccines to other countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. China was the first country to provide COVID response supplies and vaccines to the Philippines, the spokesperson said, noting that the two countries “have been mutually supportive and cooperative against the onslaught of the disease”.
The Philippines started its COVID-19 immunization program on March 1, 2021 after it received Sinovac vaccines donated by the Chinese government.
“However, such cooperation was not as smooth as it was supposed to be. Obstruction and sabotage from a third country and certain forces happened all along,” the spokesperson said. The Reuters report “is one of latest that connects the dots and tells the true picture to the world”.
The US Department of Defense (DoD) did not deny the Reuters report. In an interview with Russian news agency TASS, a DoD spokesperson, Lisa Lawrence, said the department conducts a wide range of operations, including operations in the information environment, to counter adversary malign influence.
She said several state and non-state actors use social media platforms and other media “to spread disinformation and conduct malign influence campaigns” against the US. Lawrence said China initiated a disinformation campaign in 2020 “to falsely blame” the US for the spread of COVID-19.
In line with the US National Defense Strategy, Lawrence said the DoD “continues to build integrated deterrence against critical challenges to US national security”, including deterring China’s “spread of disinformation”.
Philippine Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Singh-Vergeire told a June 25 Philippine Senate hearing that the Philippines’
Department of Health was aware of social media posts that smeared Chinese vaccines, and even conducted town hall meetings to better inform Filipinos about vaccination. She said they were not aware that these posts were part of an organized campaign, noting “we thought it was just random”.
Singh-Vergeire said health officials were worried about these social media posts “because we were trying to have all our population vaccinated, so we really needed to intensify our efforts”. She said the department requested social media platforms to take down these posts and that “some of the posts were actually taken down”.
Wilson Lee Flores, veteran newspaper columnist and honorary chairman of the Anvil Business Club in the Philippines, said he has facilitated donations from cities in China such as Shenyang and Guangzhou during the COVID-19 pandemic. While distributing these medical supplies across cities in the capital region of Metro Manila, Flores observed “a significant level of hesitancy and doubt” toward Sinovac vaccines.
“This skepticism was largely fueled by misinformation and fake news, which unfortunately clouded public perception and led to unwarranted fears. The challenge of combating this misinformation was just as critical as addressing the physical needs of the people,” Flores told China Daily.
Flores said the Reuters report is “shocking, but not entirely surprising”.
“The use of disinformation as a tool for geopolitical and economic gain is not new to the US. History is replete with similar instances,” he said. Flores recalled the “baseless claims” on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, saying they “serve as a reminder of how disinformation can be used to justify actions with far-reaching consequences”.
Flores was referring to the then-US president George W. Bush and UK prime minister Tony Blair’s claims that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction hidden in his country. Bush used this claim to launch the second Gulf War in 2003. In 2004, the US Senate released a report which said that the Bush administration’s statements about Iraq were misleading and not supported by the underlying intelligence.
READ MORE: Foreign ministry: China urges US to stop concocting, spreading false information
Flores said vaccine hesitancy exacerbated the public health crisis during the pandemic, and that the US misinformation campaign underscored “a broader strategy to undermine (Philippines’) relationship with China, and to sow distrust among the population at a time when unity and cooperation were desperately needed”.
Apart from jeopardizing public health by eroding trust in vaccination programs, Flores said such campaigns destabilize economies by prolonging the crisis, reduce consumer confidence, and strain healthcare systems. They can also deepen divisions within society, strain international relations and hinder diplomatic efforts.
“The ripple effects of such campaigns can therefore be profoundly destabilizing across multiple dimensions of society,” he said.
Contact the writer at prime@chinadailyapac.com
