China puts pressure on EU to soften report about COVID-19 disinformation, threatening retaliation: report
April 27, 2020 / By Barnini Chakraborty | Fox News
A European Union report accusing China and Russia of running a “global disinformation campaign” was significantly scaled back after pressure from Beijing and fears that, if China was blamed, it would withhold much-needed medical supplies around the world as retaliation.
The first version of the report, seen by the South China Morning Post, described the world’s most populous country as running a large-scale public relations campaign to deflect from the missteps it made during the early days of the novel coronavirus, which included silencing doctors, shifting its timeline and reporting significantly lower rates of infection which made it almost impossible for other countries to prepare for the pandemic.
So far COVID-19, which was first reported in Wuhan, China, has infected 3 million people worldwide and killed 207,431.
But instead of holding Beijing’s feet to the fire, the most damning section of the EU report was scrubbed because diplomats were worried that such a public takedown of China would “strain” relations and “make it more difficult to get medical supplies” that are in high demand in hard-hit European countries, the SCMP reported.
