| Hi everyone, it's Lulu Chen in Hong Kong. On Chinese social media, plenty of people have vented their frustration about the government's handling of the country's deadly coronavirus outbreak. But as the internet becomes the main outlet for millions of people forced to stay indoors, others have taken the opposite approach—defending the government, and contributing to a new outpouring of digital patriotism. The online climate, never exactly placid, has been supercharged in the wake of the coronavirus's spread. Social media sites are teeming with conspiracy theories, quack claims, rumors and bitter invective. From my vantage point in Hong Kong, I've seen friends falling out over online posts. Bloggers have been met with waves of digital hate. And journalists reporting on health constraints are being criticized for peddling fear. The incident that struck me most over the last week happened to one of my friends who used to live in Wuhan. He's now based in the U.S. and has been closely following the news, concerned about his parents who still live near the virus's epicenter. In a post on Facebook, he questioned the official infection figures, and urged people in his hometown to stock up on a few months' worth of food. Soon after, his WeChat feed exploded. One of his former classmates had taken a screenshot of his Facebook missive and posted it in a chat group on WeChat, labeling him a traitor. Hundreds of messages followed, questioning his sources, motives, integrity and even IQ. "You inhaled too much democracy and might be high on oxygen," said one commenter. "If your parents are running out of food, don't post it on Facebook. Come and talk with us first," said another. "Fear mongering to appeal to foreigners," wrote a third. My friend told me he was shell-shocked by the level of vitriol his post invoked. Even people who had never talked with him—and who complained loudly about the government earlier in the group chat—refocused their fire. This brand of grass-roots policing comes on top of regular state-level censorship on the Chinese internet. The eight people who were the first to talk about human-to-human transmission were penalized by the police, only to be exonerated later. And social media accounts of state-backed publications have rushed to control the social media conversation, with posts lauding the heroic efforts of medical workers. In my friend's case, part of the reason for the blowup may have been hostility toward the U.S., inflamed by a simmering trade war and tensions over the protests in Hong Kong. Some posters sincerely engaged him in a discussion about whether the U.S. could be behind the whole virus outbreak, suggesting it might be a military bio-weapon to disrupt China's prosperity. For Chinese media consumers, nationalistic messaging is nothing new—it's been stoked and wielded by the government for so long that it's familiar to people in all social strata. Still, it's not hard to see why Chinese people would feel like victims. Following the virus outbreak, some hotels and restaurants have banned Chinese tourists, based on their nationality alone. And racist posts have ballooned on Twitter, YouTube and beyond—reinvigorating offensive tropes about Chinese food and culture. Ultimately, no one group has a monopoly on online hate. But the coronavirus is evidence that on all sides, the more heated the discussion, the further it tends to stray from the truth. —Lulu Chen | 
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