How the US anti-vaccine disinformation on COVID-19 is appropriated in China · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Image from Globalvoices Civic Media Observatory Project
A heavily edited video commenting on US pharmaceutical corporation Pfizer’s research on the COVID vaccine and medicine produced by Project Veritas, a controversial far-right media outlet that spreads disinformation and conspiracy theories, has gone viral in mainland China with additional claims that the COVID-19 virus was mutated and spread by the multinational biotechnology giant, Pfizer.
Without verifying the content, China propagandists and spokespeople cited the source and urged the US government to respond to the claim and reveal the “truth.”
The viral video is a production of a deceptive undercover operation which claimed that a research lead, allegedly Jordan Tristan Walker, at Pfizer revealed that the company is exploring mutating COVID-19 for new vaccines.
In the video, a man casually talked in a bar after being asked if Pfizer is “ultimately thinking about mutating COVID”:
…one of the things we are exploring is like why don’t we just mutate it ourselves, so we could focus on, create, preemptively develop new vaccines, right? So, we have to do that. If we are gonna do that though, there’s a risk of like — as you could imagine no one wants to be having a pharma company mutating fucking viruses. You have to be like very controlled to make sure that this virus that you mutate does not create something like you know, goes everywhere. Which, I suspect is the way that virus started in Wuhan, to be honest. Like, it makes no sense that this virus popped out of nowhere…
As the video is heavily edited, it is unclear if the man was speaking parenthetically or hypothetically about Pfizer's research.
In the English-speaking world, conspiracies attached to the video are typical of anti-vaxxers, slamming Pfizer for allegedly unethical practices and China for allegedly leaking the artificially made COVID-19 virus in Wuhan.
Pfizer, in a statement on January 27, 2023, denied that the company mutated the virus in its development of the COVID-19 vaccine. But it added that it undertakes in-vitro work to identify potentially resistant mutations in the development of Paxlovid, an oral treatment for COVID-19:
[…] In a limited number of cases when a full virus does not contain any known gain of function mutations, such virus may be engineered to enable the assessment of antiviral activity in cells.
It also stressed:
these studies are required by US and global regulators for all antiviral products and are carried out by many companies and academic institutions in the US and around the world.
Major social media platforms, including YouTube, have taken down the video. Despite Pfizer’s clarification, China state-funded media outlets, including Daihe Daily, Global Times, and CGTN, continued distributing the video without verification or scrutiny on social media.
While Global Times’ chief commentator Hu Xijin acknowledged that Pfizer had clarified its research and that the content of the interview was ambivalent and out of the context, he redirected the focus to the role of the US government on Weibo:
如果在中国有人做了这样一个曝光，将会引发多么严肃的公众和官方对待，不仅所涉公司要出来详细说明，政府一定会迅速成立调查组，给公众以真相。但是美国现在就这样静悄悄的，只有个别媒体和影响力不大的人说此事，绝大部分媒体置若罔闻，负责食药监管的官员和平时满嘴跑火车的议员们全都装聋作哑。联邦调查局去哪里了？那些调查记者又去哪里了？退一步说，即使这段视频是编造的，那个沃克是个演员，是不是也应该把事情搞清楚，“还辉瑞清白”…
If there were a revelation like this in China, the government and the public would deal with it in a serious manner. All companies involved would have to explain and the government would form an investigation team to reveal the truth to the public. But the US has kept silent. Only very few media outlets and a few unimportant people have commented on this. Officials responsible for monitoring drugs and Congress members are playing dumb. Where’s the FBI? Where are the investigative reporters? Even if the video is fabricated, and Walker is indeed an actor, they have to clarify the picture and clear the guilt of Pfizer…
Hu’s comment resonated on Chinese social media. Zhou Chengyang, another commentator with more than 1.8 million followers on Weibo, for example, demanded the US government apologize to the world. Citing a large number of unverified claims, Zhou asserted that the COVID-19 virus originated from laboratory leakage in the US and that the US was responsible for the global outbreak.
Even China’s spokesperson Hua Chunying suggested on Twitter a probe into the US role in the global COVID-19 outbreak:
Interesting that the US government and media keep mum about this seemingly important relevation. Apparently “truth” and “transparency” are standards that the US holds other countries to. https://t.co/SfHEu8oo7A
— Hua Chunying 华春莹 (@SpokespersonCHN) January 30, 2023
The viral video has induced a large number of anti-US comments among online patriots.
However, many Chinese social media users are also aware of the infamous track record of  Project Veritas and rebuked the selective appropriation of the conspiracy theory in the deceptive video. A well-circulated post on WeChat pointed out (via Digital Times):
如果你选择相信这篇报道，那你就不能仅仅相信辉瑞制作了新冠病毒，也得相信virus started in Wuhan.
If you believe in the claims, you can’t just believe that Pfizer plays its part in the COVID-19 virus mutation, but also the claim that the virus started in Wuhan.
@dbezuqun, a mainland Chinese citizen news outlet on Twitter, was outraged by the Chinese social media discourse:
中共网宣又开始铺天盖地在抖音上发布“辉瑞制造散播病毒”的视频了，我就看不上它们这副猥琐相，有本事就官媒发，大大方方对着干，每次总找一波自媒体微公号暗搓搓带节奏。不就是欺负美国人不看抖音，中国人看不到外网，戳穿你们谎言的人发不了声吗？一群下流胚子。
— 豆瓣鹅组日报 (@dbezuqun) January 29, 2023
Online CCP propagandists keep distributing video clips about  “Pfizer manufactures and spreads virus” on Douyin [Chinese version of Tiktok]. Such a disgusting act. Why don’t they just make such allegations officially on their own state media and have a good fight? Every time they make suggestions via social media influencers. They are just taking advantage of the fact that the Americans do not watch Douyan, Chinese people can’t read from outside the great firewall and the critical ones can’t speak out? A bunch of despicable scoundrels.