E.U. faces new criticism over China’s censorship of opinion piece.

Source: New York Times
May 8 2020

The European Union faces new embarrassment and criticism over its clumsy efforts to stay on the good side of China while promoting itself as a defender of transparency and the rule of law.

Less than two weeks after the bloc’s foreign-policy department watered down language about China in a report about disinformation, its ambassador in China, Nicolas Chapuis, allowed an opinion article about E.U.-Chinese relations that he co-wrote to be censored before publication in a state-run newspaper.

The censored material in both cases referred to China as the source of the new coronavirus, an increasingly neuralgic issue for China’s leader, Xi Jinping. The Communist Party’s propaganda department has been orchestrating a fierce counterattack against the idea, claiming that the truth is still unclear and even suggesting the U.S. military was the true source.

The European Union defended the first case, asserting that there were always two versions, one for internal consumption and one for the public, but admitted that China pushed hard to alter an early, leaked version.

This latest embarrassment was the doing of Mr. Chapuis, the bloc said; he did not consult Brussels or member states before agreeing to the change in an op-ed published in the state-run China Daily designed to celebrate E.U.-China relations and supposedly signed by the ambassadors of all 27 member states.

Mr. Chapuis is widely regarded by critics as soft on China.

As a sign of displeasure, the Beijing embassies of Germany, France and Italy published the full letter.

Virginie Battu-Henriksson, a spokeswoman for the European Union, said that Mr. Chapuis had acted “with considerable reluctance” but said: “This decision, taken under great time pressure, was not the right one to take,” and “this has been made clear to the ambassador.”

Reinhard Bütikofer, chief of the European Parliament’s delegation to China, called for Mr. Chapuis to be fired. “If the ambassador has indeed decided on his own responsibility to accept the censorship, then he is the wrong man for the job and must leave,” Mr. Bütikofer said.