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The story
According to an investigative report by Reuters, the United States ran a propaganda campaign to discredit the China's Sinovac COVID-19 inoculation, including using fake social media accounts to spread disinformation that the Sinovac vaccine contained pork-derived ingredients and was therefore haram under Islamic law.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, China's growing influence by donating vaccines and aid, had prompted US military leaders to initiate a covert propaganda operation. A senior US military officer involved with the campaign had told Reuters that the US failed to effectively share vaccines with partners, leaving them without much options but to undermine China's diplomatic efforts. US military leaders took precedence over diplomats, fearing that China's COVID diplomacy might draw South-East Asian countries closer to Beijing. The US government later justified its covert disinformation campaign by framing it as retaliation for China's disinformation, which had falsely blamed the United States for the spread of COVID-19. Additionally, the campaign reportedly aimed to counter "China’s COVID diplomacy", and so to ultimately undermine closer ties between China and countries like the Philippines as a result of such diplomacy during the pandemic. The campaign primarily targeted people in the Philippines and used a social media hashtag for "China is the virus" in Tagalog. The campaign ran from the spring of 2020 to mid-2021. The primary contractor for the U.S. military on the project was General Dynamics IT, which received $493 million for its role. After some American public health experts were briefed by Reuters on the Pentagon's covert anti-vax campaign, they condemned the campaign as unjustifiable, and that it had unethically endangered innocent lives for potential geopolitical gain.
A 2025 Reuters report found that the Embassy of China in Manila hired a local marketing firm to conduct a covert "public opinion guidance" astroturfing campaign that included promoting CoronaVac in the country.
From Wikipedia’s article on Sinovac Biotech, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.9