Followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory believe that former president Donald Trump purposefully mispronounced the word “China” for years to send a secret message about Ukraine.
This is linked to an even more bizarre theory that Covid-19 was developed in bio-labs in Ukraine under the direction of Dr Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease.
The latest QAnon theory, flagged by disinformation expert Marc Owen Jones, involves Trump’s uncommon pronunciation of the word “China” as “chy-na.”
QAnon sleuths claimed to have “discovered” a place in Ukraine called “chy-na” and when Trump said “chy-na” he was actually telling his followers about “chy-na” in Ukraine, and not China. They also believe that when Trump referred to COVID-19 as the “China virus,” he was secretly referring to the Ukrainian chy-na, and trying to tell the world that the virus was manufactured in Ukraine, according to Vice.
The outlet debunked this claim reporting that the use of “Chyna” was just a mistranslation.
“The Ukrainian ‘chy-na’ is in fact just part of the name of what appears to be a village on the outskirts of Lviv. In Ukrainian, it is called ‘Шпильчина,’ but on Google Maps, it’s referred to as ‘Shpyl’chyna.’ Unfortunately, this is a bad transliteration: The ‘y’ is meant to represent a very soft ‘i’ sound that’s hard to transliterate, because it’s rarely used in English.”
QAnon believers also use Google translate to find out that the word “chy-na” in Ukrainian means “price.” This they say is connected to Trump because he once said China would “pay a big price” for COVID-19.
This was also debunked since the term “chy-na” in Ukrainian has several meanings other than “price.” The world also means “rank” and “tire.”
Some members of QAnon believe Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is justified and Trump, Putin and China’s president Xi Jinping are working together to seize biological labs to prove their theory that the virus originated from a lab in Ukraine.
