It’s now widely regarded that the coronavirus first originated in China but China has been engaging in a propaganda campaign to suggest otherwise.
We all know how Big Tech platforms are censoring content from citizens in the West, deleting their tweets, posts, and videos as “misinformation” – all while allowing Chinese officials to run full-blown propaganda campaigns on the same platforms.
The Chinese Communist Party-backed superpower still tries to subdue anyone from suggesting the virus originated in their country. And the EU is letting them.
In this particular case, the Chinese Communist Party managed to censor an entire line from an op-ed written by the EU ambassador to China. The EU allowed China to censor the part where the op-ed describes the origin of the virus as China.
“The EU delegation to China was informed that the publication could only take place with the agreement of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs,” said an EU spokesman. The op-ed was actually authored by 27 EU member states’ ambassadors and the EU’s ambassador to China, to be published in China Daily.
The original uncensored version said “the outbreak of the coronavirus in China, and its subsequent spread to the rest of the world”. While the EU wasn’t welcome to censoring such universally known facts, they were left with no other option as the Chinese ambassador had to agree for the op-ed to go through.
Furthermore, the EU gave great importance to the overall content of the op-ed, persuading them to censor the part and move ahead.
Apparently, the EU “considered it important to communicate very important messages on EU policy priorities, notably on climate change and sustainability, human rights, multilateralism and the global response to Coronavirus”.
A spokeswoman for EU diplomatic chief Josep Borrell confirmed the change was made at the request of the Chinese foreign ministry but defended the decision to go ahead with publication regardless.
“We regret that this joint op-ed was not published in full by the China Daily,” Virginie Battu-Henriksson said today.
She said EU officials raised “very serious concerns” about the request to censor the article.
“The EU delegation decided nevertheless to proceed with the publication of the op-ed with considerable reluctance as it considered it important to communicate on very key messages on EU policy priorities,” she added, citing climate change, human rights and the global response to the coronavirus.
Borrell said that foreign diplomatic missions in China have to “work under the conditions and within the limits set by the Chinese authorities”.
“It is no secret that China is now a state where there is censorship and control of the media,” Borrell told reporters.
But what about in the West?
It is worth noting that this hasn’t been the first time China has blatantly managed to censor and twist the narrative as they wished. The EU, time and again, let China deliberately shape and control the whole narrative surrounding the pandemic.
Although, which government, media entity, or tech company isn’t?
