An electronic screen in Beijing shows General Secretary Xi wearing a mask in March 2020. (Photo by Kevin Frayer via Getty Images)

Exposing China’s Coronavirus Disinformation Playbook

On the heels of the World Health Organization’s complicity in Beijing’s censorship efforts, the European Union has become the latest target of the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to whitewash its role in the global spread of the coronavirus.

A new report by the EU on China’s disinformation tactics gained international attention after significant omissions and revisions were made to the report following Beijing’s efforts to block its release. The EU’s handling of the report reveals the extent to which even powerful democratic unions will self-censor under diplomatic pressure from Beijing.

In his landmark speech at Hudson in 2018, Vice President Mike Pence outlined the broader pattern of disinformation that characterizes Beijing’s playbook today:

"I want to tell you today what we know about China’s actions – some of which we’ve gleaned from intelligence assessments, some of which are publicly available. Beijing is employing a whole-of-government approach to advance its influence and benefit its interests. It’s employing this power in more proactive and coercive ways. [The CCP] is spending billions of dollars on propaganda outlets in the United States, as well as other countries."

Mirroring the vice president's 2018 observations, Nadia Schadlow discussed the CCP's early actions that fanned the flame of a budding pandemic in late 2019, on CNN:

"China's cover up is costing us thousands of deaths. They have silenced and disappeared people in early December who were the first to call out the problem. They removed and destroyed evidence of the virus, bleaching wet stall markets, closing and shuttering labs, preventing experts from better understanding the sources of the virus. They denied human-to-human transmission for up to seven weeks. They stopped internal travel in China, but did not stop external travel, which tells you a little bit about how they were thinking about the rest of the world."

In the Washington Examiner, Rebeccah Heinrichs points out five major falsehoods underlying a new CCP government timeline and directive to restrict Chinese academics from researching the origins of the disease:

"The Communist Party document fails to mention that even though the Chinese government was well aware of the deadly disease at the time, it greenlighted the Lunar New Year banquet held on Jan. 18, which was attended by about 40,000 families. It omits the timing and details of the warnings of doctors, including Dr. Li Wenliang, who the Communist Party arrested and forced to withdraw his warnings. Sadly, he became infected and succumbed to the disease. Seven other people were arrested on similar charges as Li, and their fate is still not known."

On The Realignment, John Walters outlines the advantages of how free nations can respond to the pandemic and discussed Xi Jinping’s  manipulation of international organizations:

"[The Chinese Communist Party] is predatory in business, they are thieves of intellectual property, they are aggregators of parts of the supply chain, ... all of that is going to produce a pulling back [by the international community]. Nationalism to some degree is getting a big boost out of this. The current structures in many ways have to be reformed, including the World Health Organization. We had [organizations] that were supposed to be rules based that aren't working, they're not enforcing rules ... they're being captured politically. China has clearly exploited these [international] organizations systematically."

In the Wall Street Journal, Christopher DeMuth argues that by placing emphasis on local and state governments, and the private sector, the Trump administration has overturned a history of federal primacy during national emergencies:

"The coronavirus pandemic has been managed and subdued through vigorous localism, private enterprise and professional dedication, with the federal government providing essential national leadership but staying within its constitutional rails."

Quotes have been edited for length and clarity

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