WaPo Ed. Board: China has turned to bullying to avoid accountability. It may be working on Europe.

[Eugene]

Related: Pressured by China, E.U. Softens Report on Covid-19 Disinformation (New York Times)

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Source: Washington Post

China has turned to bullying to avoid accountability. It may be working on Europe.

By Editorial Board
April 30, 2020 at 3:24 p.m. EDT

CHINA’S EFFORT to avoid accountability for the novel coronavirus pandemic through a global propaganda campaign seems to be doing as much harm as good for Beijing. Attempts by government officials and state media to cast blame on the United States or other Western countries for the origin and spread of the virus have triggered a backlash; deliveries of humanitarian supplies have led to reports about their poor quality.

Rather than retreat, President Xi Jinping’s regime has turned to a familiar tactic: bullying. Its diplomats are demanding that governments offer praise for China’s handling of the epidemic or censor reports on its failings, and they are threatening consequences if their requirements are not met. Disturbingly, this tactic appears to be working with the European Union.

Last week, a unit inside the European External Action Service dedicated to tracking disinformation completed a report about covid-19 that described Chinese and Russian propaganda. Among other things, it said, accurately, that “China has continued to run a global disinformation campaign to deflect blame for the outbreak of the pandemic and improve its international image.”

When a leak about the report appeared in Politico’s European edition, China’s enforcers got busy. According to the Financial Times, two foreign ministry officials called the E.U. Embassy in Beijing, while a third contacted the E.U. diplomatic headquarters in Brussels. They objected to the conclusion that the Chinese government was spreading disinformation; the Financial Times reported that a senior official told the E.U.’s ambassador in Beijing that “if the E.U. were to follow the U.S. in publicly attacking China, it would be pushed back as the U.S. had been.”

Brussels’s reaction was extraordinary. According to the New York Times, an aide to the E.U.’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, told the disinformation unit to revise its report so that it focused less on Russia and China. Sure enough, when it was finally posted Friday, the account dropped the reference to China’s “global disinformation campaign” as well as a reference to an attempt by the Chinese ambassador in Paris to discredit France’s response to the pandemic.

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Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/china-has-turned-to-bullying-to-avoid-accountability-it-may-be-working-on-europe/2020/04/30/30be39c2-8977-11ea-9dfd-990f9dcc71fc_story.html

[Squinch]

1. Oh, please. Our problems with CV19 are our own damn fault. We could easily have

stopped it. Our elected leaders decided not to do that.

As a country, the worst thing we can do is follow Donnie Bodybags's lead and look for someone to blame.

We did this to ourselves.

Maybe a better use of our time would be to learn how not to do it again.