From Anti-CCP to Anti-Vaccine. Published on Sep 9.

Misinformation continues to pollute Chinese social media circle.

Quite a portion of the Chinese dissident community went down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories last year. One of the most prominent examples is Ms. Li Juan, who, after tirelessly preaching QAnon, is now promoting a horse drug to cure Covid.

Ivermectin, shown in the above pic, has been causing a lot of controversies on the internet lately. The drug, designed to treat worms and other parasites in horses, is believed by some, without much sufficient scientific evidence, to be a cure for the coronavirus.

The FDA has warned agains the use of the drug for Covid. And there seems to be two versions of it, one for horse, one for human. The drug has proved to treat parasites in humans as well. But coronavirus is a virus, not a parasite.

And it's not a surprise that those who seek this drug are anti-vaxxers, at least in the case of Covid vaccines. Ms. Li said in a post that she canceled a get-together after learning that some attendees have been vaccinated due to social pressure.

But what you can find on twitter is only the tip of the iceberg. Like many conspiracy theory followers from other communities, those from the Chinese language circle have gone to Telegram after being purged from bigger platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

Common topics in these groups range from normal discussions of US politics, such as the recall of Gavin Newsom, to straight up conspiracy theories about the vaccines, Deep State, and whether the US President is an actor wearing the human face mask of Joe Biden.

The makeup of these groups is a mix of conservative Chinese Americans, anti-CCP-ers from many parts of the world, and QAnon believers. They are not a monolith. Some of them would embrace Xi Jinping if he, as they suspected, is fighting the Deep State alongside Trump.

I joined these groups because I wanted to know if some of the misinformation we see in the English language circle actually originated in these Chinese group chats, after seeing the the impact of Miles Guo and the Hunter Biden hard drive story.

But my observation so far is that these groups are heavily influenced by what goes on in the English world. Not much originality to be found.

Other than Guo Wengui…