China-based propagandist created fake scientist to spread misinformation

Facebook researchers said on Wednesday that a China-based propagandist created an elaborate online disinformation campaign centered around an internet persona claiming to be a Swiss biologist in an effort to mislead the public about the origins of the coronaviruses epidemic.

The persona wrote on Facebook that the United States was putting too much political pressure on the World Health Organization to blame China for the coronaviruses, because of the name Wilson Edwards. Edwards isn't a real person, which was made clear in August by Switzerland's embassy in Beijing.

Facebook researchers said they found evidence that the person was the creation of a Chinese cybersecurity company.

Although the character received little attention in the West, he was credulously cited in Chinese state-sponsored media as a whistleblower on world health policy.

Facebook said it had traced the account creation to Sichuan Silence Information Technology, a company in central China. According to its website, Silence was founded in 2000 and offers a wide range of information security services and counts China's Ministry of Public Security among its customers. An email sent to an email address on the company's website bounced back as undeliverable. In a lengthy screed on Facebook in July, the fake scientist persona posted a conspiracy theory that the U.S. was trying to bully the WHO into blaming China for the coronaviruses epidemic.

Scientists have traced the first cases of Covid 19 to Wuhan, China, the home of the renowned virology laboratory and wet markets that many experts agree are the original source of the virus.

Facebook ties disinformation campaigns to government agencies, but it did not claim that the Chinese government was directly responsible for the campaign surrounding the fake scientist. Many people around the world who work for Chinese state infrastructure companies shared the post almost immediately after it was created, as did a number of fake accounts. China's state-owned media agencies jumped on the story based on claims that the persona had made, including in the People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, where the story is still live, and the Global Times, where it has been removed but is still archived. Western media largely addressed the story by debunking it or focusing on Switzerland's insistence that the scientist wasn't real.

China is trying to spread messaging that it is not responsible for the pandemic, but it has denied WHO officials access to Wuhan to investigate its origins. There have been several pro-China coordinated campaigns that attempt to spread doubt about the origins of the coronaviruses, including one that falsely blames the lobster trade.