According to the Middle East Media Research Institute , numerous writers in the Arabic media have promoted the conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was deliberately created and spread by the United States , as `` part of an economic and psychological war waged by the U.S. against China with the aim of weakening it and presenting it as a backward country and a source of diseases '' .
The Middle East Media Research Institute claimed that several Arabic journalists were promoting the conspiracy theory that the US was using the 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic to wage an economic and psychological war on China .