DisinformationEU: China, Russia Waging Broad Pandemic Disinformation Campaign to Deepen Crisis
The European Union, in an unusually blunt language, has accused Russia and China of a running a broad, sustained, and “targeted” disinformation campaign inside the European Union, aiming to deepen and lengthen the coronavirus pandemic crisis and its negative medical, economic, and social effects. The EU has criticized Russia in the past for its sophisticated disinformation campaign aiming to weaken the West and undermine liberal democracies, but the direct criticism of China is a break from the EU recent approach, which saw it tiptoeing around China’s many transgressions.
The European Union, in an unusually blunt language, has accused Russia and China of a running a broad, sustained, and “targeted” disinformation campaign inside the European Union, aiming to deepen and lengthen the coronavirus pandemic crisis and its negative medical, economic, and social effects.
The two countries’ sophisticated disinformation and propaganda machineries have been aiming to increase confusion and anxiety by spreading conspiracy theories; promoting fake medications and treatments; and spreading lies about governments’ policies and approaches in order to increase people’s mistrust in scientists and medical experts, and in the EU governments and medical establishments.
The European commission said Russia and China were running “targeted influence operations and disinformation campaigns in the EU, its neighborhood, and globally.” The EU said it was setting out a plan to tackle a “huge wave” of false facts and hoaxes about the coronavirus pandemic spread by the two countries.
The EU has singled out Russia in the past for its aggressive disinformation campaigns across the continent –campaigns carried out by the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence branch, and the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency (IRA). These are the same outfits which, in 2016, helped Donald Trump win the U.S. presidential election, and which have continued an active social media disinformation campaign in the United States since then. The Russian disinformation specialists are currently engaged in spreading falsehoods about the Floyd protests, and using fake social media account to encourage violence.
The direct accusation of China, however, is a first for the EU, and a break from its approach to China so far.
The Washington Post notes that individual EU member states have been angrily complaining about China’s disinformation efforts for a few months now. In mid-April, the French government denounced the Chinese embassy in Paris for posting a fake story on the embassy’s website, which repeated a lie, generated by Beijing disinformation specialists, which “reported” that French health care workers had abandoned their jobs leaving residents in nursing homes to die.
The Chinese embassy also used its email distribution list to disseminate a fake story claiming falsely that 80 French lawmakers had used a racist slur against the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Vĕra Jourová, a European commission vice-president, told reporters: “I believe if we have evidence we should not shy away from naming and shaming. What we also witnessed is a surge in narratives undermining our democracies and in effect our response to the crisis, for example the claim there are secret U.S. biological laboratories on former Soviet republics has been spread by both pro-Kremlin outlets, as well as Chinese officials and state media.”
“I strongly believe that a geopolitically strong EU can only materialize if we are assertive,” Jourová said, alluding to the aim of the European commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, for the body to have more clout on the world stage.
Observers note that the EU’s blunt, assertive tone with regard to China is a marked difference from its more cautious and hesitant policies of the recent past. For example, the European Commission, in a report in March, diplomatically described Chinese media narratives, while focusing on disinformation efforts by Kremlin-backed sources. The report was harshly criticized by lawmakers in the European parliament, who accused the European Commission of watering down the report’s references to China after China pressured them to do so (see “Pressured by China, EU Softens Report on Covid-19 Disinformation,” HSNW, 29 April 2020).
Analysts note that EU member states are trying to calibrate their approach to China on several fronts – economic, security, and political. These analysts note that already in 2019, the European Commission issued a detailed report in which it described China as a “systemic rival” which would have to be confronted, sooner or later.
