[ad_1]
Source: Washington / Brussels / London – Reuters
4 diplomatic and correspondence sources said China has tried to avoid a European Union report that says Beijing published false information about the outbreak of the Corona virus, according to the Reuters news agency.
The report was finally published, albeit just before the start of the weekend in European time, with some criticism of the Chinese government being reorganized or eliminated, in a sign of the balancing process that Brussels is trying to achieve with the impact of the outbreak. of the Corona Virus in international relations.
The Chinese mission to the European Union could not be contacted, and the Chinese Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to faxed questions about it. A spokeswoman for the European Union said: “We never comment on the content or the alleged content of an international diplomat’s contacts and contacts with our partners in other countries.”
From China
4 diplomatic sources told Reuters the report was originally scheduled for April 21, but was postponed after Chinese officials shared a report with the Political newspaper that it had previously reviewed its results.
According to diplomatic correspondence from the European Union, quoted by Reuters, a senior Chinese official contacted European officials in Beijing the same day to inform them that “if the report is as described, it will be published today, it will be very bad for cooperation.”
Yang Xiaoguang, a senior official at the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said publishing the report would make Beijing “very angry.”
He accused European officials of trying to please “someone else”, something that EU diplomats understood as a signal to Washington.
All four sources said the report was postponed as a result and that a comparison between an internal copy of the report obtained by Reuters and the final version released on Friday night showed several differences.
For example, on the front page of the internal report shared by the governments of the European Union on April 20, the European Union’s foreign policy arm said: “China continues to launch a global disinformation campaign to evade responsibility for the outbreak and improve its international image. Public and secret methods have been adopted. “
[ad_2]
