In what could be described as a war for market control, a new investigative report by Reuters has exposed how the United States Department of Defence, Pentagon, secretly carried out an anti-vaccine campaign to discredit the Sinovac vaccine, which China produced. The report states that the campaign ran specifically in the Philippines between 2020 and 2021, at the height of the pandemic, which shook the world, claiming thousands of lives and paralysing the global economy. Published on Friday, the report revealed that American officials coordinated a clandestine effort during the administration of former President Donald Trump.
The campaign against Sinovac ran for many months into the administration of Mr Trump’s successor, Joe Biden. According to the report, the campaign aimed to sow doubt about the efficacy and safety of the Chinese vaccine and neutralise China’s rising influence in Asia and the world. At the same time, the American government quietly rolled out vaccines to its citizens.
The report states that the officials launched a disinformation programme using over 300 fake social media accounts, especially on X (formerly Twitter), to impersonate Filipinos, warning others to avoid China’s vaccine. These bot accounts reportedly posted a handful of purported gripes over the quality of face masks, test kits, and China’s Sinovac vaccine with the hashtag “Chinaangvirus” (“China is the virus” in Tagalog). “COVID came from China and the VACCINE also came from C.