This week, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman repeatedly used an official podium to elevate unproven ideas that the coronavirus may have first leaked from a research facility in Fort Detrick, Maryland
Outside the People’s Daily and Global Times in Beijing on June 21, 2019. Both publications have peddled theories about the coronavirus having originated in the United States; Image: Giulia Marchi/The New York Times
When a conspiracy theory started circulating in China suggesting that the coronavirus escaped from a U.S. military lab, it had largely stayed on the fringe. Now, the ruling Communist Party has propelled the idea firmly into the mainstream.
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