This is a very interesting development. I thought the Russian "discovery" of biolabs in the Ukraine was the first piece of Soviet style propaganda they've deployed in this war.
I did not expect China to jump on board so soon, I guess memories of the Wuhab biolabs propaganda weren't forgotten. How long until we find evidence of the genetic sequence of an early variant of COVID-19 in a Ukrainian lab? Or stored samples of COVID-19 precursors?
This is 100% aimed at influencing domestic American sentiment and giving ammunition to anti-vax groups. We'll have to wait and see how effective it is. Unfortunately the average American hatred of Chinese is much more than their distrust of their own politicians.
No, China did not "jump on board" just now. Chinese media was covering the absurd amount of biolabs of the US military from the very early stage of the pandemic. The earliest coverage of the US biolabs that I've seen from Chinese media is from March. I think it, together with Fort Detrick lab-leak theory, mainly serves as a counter to the US-government-purported conspiracy theory of Wuhan Institute of Virology lab-leak theory:
Compared to the
civilian-purposed Wuhan Institute of Virology which had
US scientiests doing research there before the pandemic and
invited WHO into the facility for investigation after the pandemic, the
Fort-Detrick that, according to US government record, had an
actual lab leak and
was shut down because of the lab leak in 2019 was a more suitable suspect for the lab-leak theory. Not mentioning the hundreds of
military-run US biolabs around the world that always have cases of the already extinct anthrax mysteriously pop up around those labs.