China blames steamed buns for latest wave of infections as propaganda drive accelerates

China has waged a propaganda campaign to push its narrative that the coronavirus existed abroad before being brought into and discovered in Wuhan, even blaming an initial infection in a current cluster outbreak on an imported virus strain that had supposedly contaminated a package of steamed buns.

Since the start of the pandemic, Chinese officials have been quick to seed a number of conspiracy theories, including accusing the US military for infecting China. Another has been to label imported frozen seafood as the culprit.

Foreign minister Wang Yi has repeatedly asserted that the virus was present in multiple countries and that China was simply the first to spot it. “We raced to report the epidemic first,” he told state media last week.

For Beijing, the goal is to distract and deflect anger at home and abroad over its cover-up. All theories, no matter how wild, claim the coronavirus originated outside the country – the point being that China, and its leaders are not at fault for the pandemic that has plagued the world.

It also serves to redirect discontent within the country by whipping Chinese up into a frenzy, encouraging them to band together patriotically against ‘harmful foreign forces.’

But all this is a far cry from the experiences of doctors, including the late Li Wenliang and Ai Fen, both of whom were reprimanded by Chinese authorities after discovering coronavirus infections in December 2019 and seeking to warn colleagues.

Foreign journalists trying to report on the impact and origins of coronavirus, including from the Telegraph, have been harassed since the outbreak began at cemeteries in Wuhan and at caves deep in China where scientists had studied similar coronaviruses.

Beijing is so determined to stamp out dissent against its official story of what happened that authorities have disappeared citizen journalists who sought to report on the outbreak. In late December, one of them, Zhang Zhan, resurfaced in court where she was sentenced to four years in prison in a trial that the UK criticised as “secret.”

Authorities have even instructed some Wuhan residents not to speak to foreign journalists, reminding them that only praise for the government response is acceptable.

It hasn’t helped that an international mission led by the World Health Organization to investigate the origins of coronavirus has been plagued by delays.

On Thursday, two of the 15 experts due to arrive in Wuhan to begin the mission were barred by Chinese officials from boarding their final flight after failing to meet health-screening requirements.

As such it’s perhaps no surprise that there are persistent worries that China will whitewash and frustrate the investigation.

And unfortunately a lack of concrete answers will continue to feed conspiracy theories. What is China trying to hide? Did the virus escape from a lab? Was it even engineered there?

Claims the virus was manmade in a lab have been roundly dismissed by the global scientific community. But this kind of confusion is unlikely to go away until China is more transparent. The WHO mission is a good place to start.

But a change of tact is, sadly, unlikely.

China is more focused on crowing victory over the virus and to tout its vaccine diplomacy – state-owned Sinopharm said it’s on track to produce one billion doses this year.

Its priority lies in rehabilitating its image on the world stage, whatever the cost.