The Guardian is carrying the story that Brussels is accusing China of running disinformation campaigns inside the EU. They’re calling it a mass wave of fake news around coronavirus.
This is the first time EU leadership has publicly named China as a source of disinformation campaigning. They have been accused of soft-pedalling on China in the past.
But according to new statements from the EU executive, a Chinese embassy website has claimed:
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EU care workers were abandoning COVID sufferers to die
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80 French lawmakers used a racial slur against the Ethiopian president of the World Health Organisation
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There are secret US biological labs in former Soviet states
They’ve also issued an implicit rebuke against Donald Trump, noting that Belgium’s Poison Control Centre has recorded a 15% increase in people being poisoned after drinking bleach.
They’ve gone on to make recommendations around what the big data platforms can do to stem the disinformation flood — very similar to the recommendations made by the DCMS Select Committee.