Unintentional Gain

I live alone in an apartment with four rooms: two rooms can be used for sleeping, one room for study, research and writing, and one room as a dining room. On its south and north sides, there are balconies.The south side overlooks the main road, and the north side overlooks the park in the apartment complex. There is a six-story apartment there,and there is a fruit and vegetable shop on the first floor, right next to the main road. The shop owners live in an apartment on the east side of the neighborhood. They enter and exit directly from the door of the store,without having to go through the front door of the community.

Why would I mention this? Because in this shop, some fresh fish,fruits and vegetables are sold. In my opinion, selling fish means a risk of being infected by the new coronavirus. This is common in most small and medium-sized stores run by local families. They tend to put some plastic containers in front of the store to sell live fish. These fish are caught daily from lakes and rivers, or purchased from wholesale markets. This is a bit strange to me. In my country, we never buy and sell live fish. When I buy live fish, I don't know what to do when I get home! I used to wait all day for a fish to die naturally, so I dare to start cleaning it!

I continued to observe the store next to my apartment. I thought that the sale of fish was closely related to the possibility of infection, so the family living in an adjacent apartment may become a carrier of the virus.If they are wholesale from the South China Seafood Market, it means that the family is very likely to be infected, and the possibility of infecting me is also very high when leaving and entering the community. But then I ruled out this possibility. The fish market in Hankou is far from here, and there is also a wholesale market near the apartment. Even so, I must be cautious.

After the spread of information about the fish market, a Western organization concocted a photo and attached a report, slandering that a shop that illegally sold wild animal meat including bats was found in the Wuhan market. The report was blocked by relevant departments,but it was widely disseminated among foreign students. Based on this information, discussions about food began to increase, and videos were spread on Chinese and foreign social networking sites in Wuhan. There was a theory that the reason for the spread of the virus is that Chinese people, especially Wuhan people, generally like to eat controversial foods.

Since I am from the Middle East, and I am learning to observe political propaganda mechanisms, the methods of spreading rumors, and the media's fabricating fake news, as long as I pay attention to news, and investigate its sources and methods of spreading, I can distinguish which are deceptive.

China is in the eye of a storm of media and psychological warfare. I pay close attention to the follow-up development of these rumors, as well as their sources and speed of spread. There are waves of rumors, some are directed, and some spread. Similar rumor spreaders attempt to use the tools of public opinion they control to discredit China and the Chinese people.

At first, I didn't know the sources of these videos, but I was sure it was not in Wuhan. The physical characteristics of the people in the video are different from those of the Chinese. More importantly, I know all the neighborhoods of this city very well, understand its diet system and people's living habits. In the past five years I have studied and lived in this city, I have never seen a restaurant offering bats, nor have I seen any market selling bats. Afterwards, evidence showed that the videos were shot in Indonesia and Palau.

I couldn't help linking this serious media misinformation to the rumors and slanders directed at China in the weeks before the virus began to spread. Western media slandered that the Chinese government persecuted the Uighurs in Xinjiang only because they are Muslims. This has caused some Arabs and Muslims to resent, and sometimes even hate, China.

I have tried to show the real situation of Chinese Muslims, especially Uighurs. I have many Uyghur classmates. In Wuhan, there are halal restaurants all over the city, and I often eat in these restaurants. Their eating habits are very similar to ours, especially their preference for bread and lamb. Therefore, I became friends with many of them. I know very well that Muslims enjoy full rights and freedoms in Wuhan. This is a fact known to all foreigners here. I remember something happened in the first month I arrived in Wuhan. At that time, a Syrian friend and I were stopped by a policeman for speeding by driving a motorcycle.But immediately another policeman came to help us out. He told his colleagues, let them pass. He thought we were from Xinjiang. According to Chinese friends, our appearance and characteristics are very similar to those of Uyghurs, especially as I have a beard. Other minorities also enjoy the same privileges, such as preferential policies to encourage Muslim students to enter universities, and the right to have more than one child.These privileges are not available to the Han, who constitute 91% of the Chinese population. In 2015, the “One Child Policy” was terminated, and the government encouraged a couple to have two children. Only then did the Han people have the policy of having two children.

News or movies about China always arouse repercussions in the Arab world. This may be due to our poor knowledge of East Asia. Due to differences in geography, language and culture, we Arabs don't know much about this area. For example, we think that everyone with Asian characteristics can speak Chinese. However, when we saw the languages of Asian countries such as Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese, Thai, Korean, and Vietnamese, we discovered that these languages are completely different.However, it is precisely the lack of understanding that attracted me to further explore and study. Through this, as long as I simply observed the people in the video, I could easily determine from their appearances,temperamental characteristics, tones, and even the landscape of the shooting location, whether these videos or pictures were shot in China.

Therefore, from that moment on, I knew that China was facing a new campaign of slandering, distorting and blaming, which was based on religious prejudice and a continuation of the movement to distort and slander China's national and religious policies. The new virus is called the“Wuhan Virus” which is a campaign to sow hatred between the Chinese people and the people from other countries. The purpose is to prevent China from playing a more important role in international affairs, and to find ways to obstruct and suppress China's economic and techonogical development.