According to a report by Reuters, the European Union gave in to pressure from Chinese officials and have altered their report regarding the coronavirus, which originally contained strong criticism of the Chinese government, bolstering the suspicion that Beijing is now engaged in a massive disinformation campaign. Reuters was able to uncover the truth about the report from four sources who spoke about the cover-up and through diplomatic correspondence.

The EU report was supposed to have been released on April 21st according to sources. But Chinese officials learned about the report and they acted quickly. A senior Chinese official contacted the European Union and gave a chilling warning, saying that if the report was released on the 21st then that would be very bad for cooperation.

Reuters was able to get hold of a diplomatic correspondence where a Chinese foreign ministry official was quoted as saying that publishing the report would anger Beijing and that the EU officials were just trying to please Washington with the report. The warning and pressure from China forced the European Union officials to delay the publishing of the report until Friday.

Reuters got hold of an internal copy of the original report which was supposed to have been published on the 21st. They compared it with the report that was released by the European Union on Friday, showing several key differences that revealed the extent of how much the EU officials gave in to pressure from Beijing officials. On the internal EU copy of the report, it was explicitly stated that China is undergoing a disinformation campaign to deflect the blame for the current pandemic away from its government. It also stated that they have observed both covert and overt tactics for spreading propaganda.

In the released report, the disinformation campaign has been attributed to various state-backed sources. It said that various governments have been backing the disinformation campaign. It named Russia as one of the culprits. While it did mention China, it mentioned that its participation was to a lesser extent. That makes it sound like Russia was the one behind most of the disinformation regarding the spread of the virus, which doesn’t make any sense.

This latest development just shows the extent of control that China has over a supposed independent organization like the European Union. It is not surprising that even Western media outlets have been publishing Chinese propaganda lately.