How Europe pandered to China in wake of outbreak: EU officials 'watered down report on China's coronavirus fake news campaign after pressure from Chinese leaders' - with stacks of findings edited out
China sought to block a European Union report alleging that Beijing was spreading disinformation about the coronavirus outbreak, according to four sources and diplomatic correspondence.
The report was eventually released, albeit just before the start of the weekend Europe time and with some criticism of the Chinese government rearranged or removed, a sign of the balancing act Brussels is trying to pull off as the coronavirus outbreak scrambles international relations.
The European External Action Service (EEAS) - founded to monitor possible disinformation from rogue states like Russia - denied editing any part of its report in response to diplomatic or political pressure.
Another EU official Reuters said that the disinformation report had been published as usual and denied any of it had been watered down.
Four diplomatic sources told Reuters that the report had initially been slated for release on April 21 but was delayed after Chinese officials picked up on a Politico news report hat previewed its findings.
A senior Chinese official contacted European officials in Beijing the same day to tell them that, 'if the report is as described and it is released today it will be very bad for cooperation,' according to EU diplomatic correspondence reviewed by Reuters.
The correspondence quoted senior Chinese foreign ministry official Yang Xiaoguang as saying that publishing the report would make Beijing 'very angry' and accused European officials of trying to please 'someone else' - something the EU diplomats understood to be a reference to Washington.
The four sources said the report had been delayed as a result, and a comparison of the internal version of the report obtained by Reuters and the final version published late Friday showed several differences.
For example, on the first page of the internal report shared with EU governments on April 20, the EU's foreign policy arm said: 'China has continued to run a global disinformation campaign to deflect blame for the outbreak of the pandemic and improve its international image. Both overt and covert tactics have been observed.'
Mr Trump has claimed that the WHO (right, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus) has gone soft on China because it is sympathetic to President Xi Jinping (left)
The public summary posted Friday to the bloc's disinformation portal, euvsdisinfo.eu http://www.euvsdisinfo.eu, attributed the disinformation to 'state-backed sources from various governments, including Russia and 'to a lesser extent' China.'
The public summary did note 'significant evidence of covert Chinese operations on social media,' but the reference was left to the final six paragraphs of the document.
Disinformation about the coronavirus outbreak is emerging as a flashpoint between the United States and China, and officials on both sides have traded allegations of hiding information about the pandemic.
The disputes have sometimes caught Europeans in the middle. With more than a billion euros a day in bilateral trade, the EU is China's top trading partner, while China is second only to the United States as a market for EU goods and services.
In a webcast Friday with the Friends of Europe think tank, China's ambassador to the EU Zhang Ming said, 'Disinformation is an enemy for all of us and it should be addressed by all of us.'
The New York Times and South China Morning Post also say they have obtained the initial copies of the European report which carefully documents how rogue states are pushing 'fake news' about the coronavirus pandemic. They suggest the document was altered due to pressure from Beijing over possible 'repercussions' for its trade partners.
But the original report spoke of a Chinese bid to 'improve its international image', and included Beijing's criticisms of France's slow response to the virus.
It even noted how Beijing promoted false accusations that French politicians had used racial slurs against the head of the World Health Organisation.
However, the EU is now likely to face accusations of 'appeasement' at a time of heightened international tension as Western leaders criticise Beijing.
China is accused of concealing the origins of the pandemic. It is also accused of hiding the true number of coronavirus deaths inside its borders.
Pictured: European Union flags in front of the European Commission building in Brussels
According to The New York Times, the first report cited Beijing's efforts to curtail mentions of the origins of the virus in China - including blaming the US for spreading the disease.
The first report said: 'China has continued to run a global disinformation campaign to deflect blame for the outbreak of the pandemic and improve its international image. Both overt and covert tactics have been used.'
China was quick to move to block the publication of the report, which was on the verge of being released before revisions were ordered by EU officials.
In an email seen by The New York Times, Lutz Gullner, an EU diplomat, wrote: 'The Chinese are already threatening with reactions if the report comes out'.
Both the South China Morning Post and The New York Times report how the sentence about Chinese 'global disinformation' and the dispute with France was removed.
The original report said that EU analysts had assessed a 'continued and coordinated push by official Chinese sources to deflect any blame'.
It was softened to the rather flaccid: 'We see continued and coordinated push by some actors, including Chinese sources, to deflect any blame'.
Esther Osorio - a communications adviser to EU Minister for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell - ordered the delay of its publication, the New York Times said.
Osorio supposedly asked analysts to revise the report to focus less on China and Russia, in an effort to avoid charges of bias, and instead differentiate between pushing 'disinformation' and a different narrative of events.
Pictured: MailOnline graph showing the number of new coronavirus death per day in China
An EU report made note of efforts by China to spread false coronavirus information (pictured, staff at a checkpoint in Suifenhe, in China's Heilongjiang province, April 21, 2020)
However, at least one analyst formally objected, writing to her bosses that the EU was 'self-censoring to appease the Chinese Communist Party'.
In an email seen by The New York Times, Monika Richter complained: 'Such appeasement will set a terrible precedent and encourage similar coercion in the future'.
An EU spokesman said that neither revisions to the report had been ordered in response to pressure from China, nor had the document been delayed.
An EU spokesman told Fox News that articles made 'ungrounded, inaccurate allegations and contains factually incorrect conclusions'. He claimed: 'The publications of the EEAS are categorically independent.
'We have never bowed to any alleged external political pressure.'
The EEAS has previously been accused of softening its language in reports about alleged Russian disinformation in an effort to improve relations with Moscow.
These reports come at an inopportune time for the EU, which hopes to restore a lucrative trading relationship with China once the pandemic has subsided.
They raise questions about whether or not the EU will sacrifice its principles - including to transparency, democracy, and liberty - for economic fortune, as Europe-wide lockdowns which began in March take an increasingly dire toll on major economies, including Germany.
It puts the EU, whose detractors accuse it of 'kowtowing' to Beijing, in the middle of a fierce diplomatic row between China and the US, as President Trump alleges that Xi Jinping and Director-General of the WHO Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus are colluding to downplay the true figures of Covid-19 deaths in China.
The Chinese regime tried to suppress news of the viral outbreak back in January, actively providing false numbers of confirmed cases and Covid-associated deaths to the World Health Organisation. When brave whistleblowers sounded the alarm, China admitted a new disease - likely to have come from the 'wet markets' of Wuhan - had emerged.
China's critics allege the regime wasted precious time that could have been spent containing the outbreak and preventing its global spread by lying.
Instead, Beijing's most senior officials wanted to 'save face', the critics say.
President Trump said his administration was trying to figure out if the virus came from a Chinese lab. Beijing has accused the US of distracting the public.
The two countries have been at loggerheads since Mr Trump assumed the White House. In his second year as President, he declared a trade war with China.
Donald Trump has accused the World Health Organisation of colluding with the Chinese regime in downplaying the true extent of Covid-19 deaths in China (pictured, April 15, 2020)
A truce between the rivals saved the world economy then from crashing down.
However, an enflamed row between China and the US - the world's two biggest powers - has the potential to spill out into geopolitics and security.
Already the coronavirus fallout is redrawing new contours on the world stage, as the UK Government clings tightly to the Trump administration.
Downing Street, for instance, has removed China from the list of other countries it uses to compare the spread of Covid-19. It is understood this stems from a widespread distrust of official Chinese coronavirus victim figures.
It comes days after the regime quarantined a city of 10million people in its northwest region near Russia. Yesterday, China's northwestern province of Shaanxi reported seven new imported cases coronavirus, all in citizens returning home from Russia.
Pictured: medical personnel taking swab samples of a man for nucleic acid testing as part of Covid-19 pandemic measures, at a health services centre in Suifenhe (April 24, 2020)
A second outbreak would be a setback for President Xi who is trying to restart the nation's economy and present an image of power to the rest of the world.
Beijing claims that the total number of confirmed coronavirus cases in China, where the virus first emerged in late December, is now 82,816.
The death toll remained the same at 4,632, with no new deaths reported on April 24.
But there is widespread disbelief at those figures from Western leaders who are accusing the regime of letting coronavirus spread while its leaders 'saved face'.
The Chinese Government has shut down gyms and swimming pools in Beijing as fears that the country is vulnerable to 'second wave' mount.
The people of Wuhan believe the death toll in their city that was the epicentre of the outbreak is 42,000 - not the 3,182 claimed by China.
How Europe pandered to China in wake of outbreak: EU officials 'watered down report on China's coronavirus fake news campaign after pressure from Chinese leaders' - with stacks of findings edited out
![How Europe pandered to China in wake of outbreak: EU officials 'watered down report on China's coronavirus fake news campaign after pressure from Chinese leaders' - with stacks of findings edited out]()
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