How I learned to stop worrying and love the lab-leak theory
Follows are my reflections on the comments on this thread and on the article re speculation about why there have been no candidate natural viruses revealed, or a definitive origin.<p>People speculate China is concealing malicious intent and such is indicated these two facts (and many others).<p>I&#x27;d like to address these. I think that some people are misjudging why it might be in China&#x27;s interests to <i>not</i> reveal an origin, nor a candidate natural virus, even if it had concluded its internal investigation and discovered definitive answers, even if those answers exculpated China of any mal intent. I&#x27;m not saying they&#x27;re doing this, just offering another perspective with context and strategic reasoning.<p>As China has engaged with the world in the last 15 years, it has founds its soft power advances rebuffed, obstructed and aggressively countered, even as its international institutional standing, economic power and strategic dominance (at least in APAC&#x2F;MEA) has grown. Mainstream Western presses run night and day printing stories to support &quot;China bogeyman&quot; narrative staples like &quot;China virus&quot;, &quot;China debt trap diplomacy&quot;, &quot;China oppression&quot;, &quot;Foreign influence&quot;, &quot;Xinjiang genocide&quot;, &quot;HK freedom fighters&quot; to name a few currently popular ones.<p>Faced with this hostile international media environment what can China do? Domestically it must counteract and throw words-of-kind back, and diplomatically it has leant into the same. These are expected and required responses.<p>But the strange thing is, while it looks to be on the back foot, and while it may not be the sort of positive, glowing, appreciative and respectful international press coverage China might have dreamt of in its recent path of rapid growth, given that foreign presses and their audiences display an appetite for these stories, China might actually be serving its own interests by simply feeding those appetites and fanning the flames.<p>This sounds crazy. Why would China <i>want</i> the foreign press to gorge itself on anti-China stories and go off its rocker on &quot;China bad&quot;-conspiracy theories. Why would it be in China&#x27;s interests for people of other countries to receive this &quot;biased education&quot; about China? Why would China, if it had evidence, arguments, platforms and means to counter these narratives, not run its own operations night and day to paint a different picture?<p>I think there are a couple of advantages of what I&#x27;m proposing is a deliberate strategy, and there are certainly opportunities for China in the current hostile international media environment.<p>1. Controlled opposition. Once the &quot;rabid dog Western press&quot; has found its preferred China-hate narrative, it seems quite happy to continue munching on that big juicy bone and not letting it go. China could try to &quot;prize the bone from the mouth&quot;, but that will likely reinforce the rabid dog&#x27;s grip, no? Maybe a better strategy is to simply keep feeding the dog similar tasty tidbits and not reveal the &quot;tasty bone&quot; is actually rancid and expired (dog may not care, but hey), at least for now. In this way China achieves a measure of control of the anti-China stories. In this way China deftly turns the Western&#x27;s presses preferred appetite (and by some it&#x27;s perceived &quot;strength&quot;) into a vulnerability.<p>2a. Domestic mileage and protection. Chinese people might come across Western anti-China articles, which will only increase their proud nationalism and support any narratives the central government might want to launch about how biased and anti-China the western countries are. This incredible power actually insulates the central government from any foreign criticism, and weakens the ability of &quot;foreign adversaries&quot; to dislodge the Chinese government from their people (an likely impossible goal anyway, but many wedges have attempted to be inserted, no doubt to the amusement of regular Chinese who see foreigners trying to get Chinese to hate Chinese as a fool&#x27;s errand), because its so easy to dismiss the chorus of Western critics by how unhinged and hypocritical they are. The risk for China here is that it can insulate itself from internal legitimate critics, by the feintest association with &quot;crazy&quot; foreign ideas. So it will need to balance that insulation with practicality.<p>2b. Useful distraction. The loader and crazier the Western press and commentariat seems, the more China can allow such insanity to pierce its information control for useful effect. Bad press from provincial officials cramping the central government&#x27;s recent achievements style? A dash of &quot;China hate&quot; from the foreign press is sure to refocus netizen&#x27;s attention and bring people together in solidarity against external opposition. Again, the risk with this is China utilizes this massive power (of foreign hatred) too liberally to tune out of useful internal dissent. Given it&#x27;s rapid progress and stellar achievements I don&#x27;t think it seriously risks a lack of introspection, but the louder the Western &quot;evil CCP&quot; commentariat grows, the bigger this power grows, and so the bigger the risk that China might go overboard in using this domestically.<p>3. Future reveal payoffs. Just say China was manipulating foreign presses into printing anti-China narratives, but had bulletproof evidence against the claims (such as endless video evidence, investigations and interviews with people in Xinjiang, or legal arguments and foreign influence proof in HK, or a closest relative natural virus that originated in Italy in 2018), why would it hold off on providing that right now? Probably because the reasons above are so compelling and useful. China is interested in domestic narrative shaping and information control, and successfully achieves these objectives through many means. The above possibilities are useful tools that assist in this. But there&#x27;s another reason. A sort of &quot;kill shot&quot; to end the credibility of the Western press and paint China itself as &quot;unfairly and racistly persecuted victim&quot; (not altogether inaccurate). Say China brought out information (but didn&#x27;t reveal it had been sitting on it) to decisively end many of the anti-China claims, it would be able to constantly play that up to convince Westerners they can&#x27;t trust their own &quot;free press&quot;. A pretty strong card to have, particularly as soft-power will become more important as China&#x27;s influence ability grows. But not a card you&#x27;d need to play right now, not only because you&#x27;d miss out on the above. China can bide its time and watch the West score own-goals and commit unforced errors in its media game against China, that it can dredge up later to reveal Western incompetence and bias.<p>4. Catalysis for change. Say some place in China or some policy was an issue for the central government, but it was having a hard time cultivating the domestic momentum and provincial political will required for a successful change, what could it do? How could it utilize the current &quot;winds of chaos&quot; to assist it in its own goals? What if the West was directly inciting HK violence (or not involved, doesn&#x27;t matter here), and China knew, and allowed that to occur, until the time was right (and the justification big enough) for it to step in and change the law? Without every firing a single shot (itself), or ever sending in the troops (to do anything but clean up the roadway after people had departed). Guiding the winds of Western obsession and hate into the sails of a ship China is steering, could be a useful strategy for particularly challenging issues. All that Western press fanned those flames, blew those winds, puffed those sails --- to sail that ship right into China&#x27;s harbor. Pretty deft &quot;covert&quot; or &quot;paradoxical&quot; soft power. I think many of these issues are simply useful for reasons 1 - 3, but what other targets might be good candidates for this strategy? Xinjiang strategy needs a change, but is resisted by the elements who benefitted from version 1.1? Maybe. Need to send more people and money to build up naval supremacy in reefs and islands? Get the West to escalate its anti-rhetoric to show China how scared they are of that, and against China doing that, to lend support to it seeming like a good thing to do to counter Western projection, in that case. GZ or SZ having issues with provincial leaders, their cliques and ambitions? Seed some &quot;political oppression&quot; stories in the Western press to create a chaos and a grassroots movement for less central intervention, allow the movement to catch fire, then tie it to the South&#x27;s irresponsible leadership (and relative economic liberalism and Western links, for good measure) and use that to oust the provincial leaders as incompetent and complicit. It&#x27;s hard to think about these hypothetical candidates, but I&#x27;m sure there&#x27;s many opportunities. Probably the flames of Western narratives can be used in some manner or another as part of larger strategies.<p>As China&#x27;s control and stability (and success) increases, its ability to deploy these strategies will diminish. But now seems like a good time and many opportunities, as the West eagerly lurches from one &quot;China-hate&quot; to the next. One risk is the West might wise up to this, and start trying to &quot;counter manipulate&quot; China, by feigning outrage at a non-issue or trying to force a Chinese concession by successfully cultivating an irrational populist narrative in a Chinese area that&#x27;s to drive a change that&#x27;s against Chinese interests. Time will tell if the West develops this strategic narrative sophistication. They&#x27;ve been on top for so long, they may have grown soft and uncritical, while China has had to grow clever in the hostile climate it found itself emerging in internationally. Of the West, in this, perhaps it&#x27;s like Bane says, &quot;Victory has defeated them.&quot; In the soft power sense, in these aspects, I think that&#x27;s partly true.