Each saw an opportunity in the pandemic to push its agenda. For the diaspora, Dr. Yan and her unfounded claims provided a cudgel for those intent on bringing down China’s government. For American conservatives, they played to rising anti-Chinese sentiment and distracted from the Trump administration’s bungled handling of the outbreak.
Both sides took advantage of the dearth of information coming out of China, where the government has refused to share samples of the virus and has resisted a transparent, independent investigation. Its initial cover-up of the outbreak has further fueled suspicion about the origins of the virus.https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/20/business/media/steve-bannon-china.html
Prior to the first Yan report being released, Bannon said Wang’s YouTube episode featuring Yan was shown to and translated for him.9 As doubts about the origins of COVID-19 continued to proliferate across right-wing media networks, Guo and Bannon connected with Yan. This is when the pieces fell into place for what would become the Yan Report media manipulation campaign.