Coronavirus pandemic | EU blames China for 'huge wave' of disinformation on COVID-19

The European Union on June 10 blamed China and Russia of running "targeted influence operations and disinformation campaigns" globally and said that it is setting out a plan to tackle a 'huge wave" of false information about the coronavirus pandemic.

According to The Guardian, while the EU has blamed Russia of running misinformation campaigns before, this is the first time that the bloc has criticised China and named the country publicly as a source of disinformation.

"I believe if we have evidence we should not shy away from naming and shaming," Vĕra Jourová, a European commission vice-president, said, adding that they had witnessed a "surge" in narratives "undermining our democracies and in effect our response to the crisis".

"... for example the claim there are secret US biological laboratories on former Soviet republics has been spread by both pro-Kremlin outlets, as well as Chinese officials and state media," Jourová said.

At the height of Europe's coronavirus outbreak, a Chinese embassy website had also reportedly claimed that care workers in France had abounded their jobs and had left patients to die. It was also claimed, falsely, that over 80 French lawmakers had used a racist slur against World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

This stance, according to the report, is a change in tone from the one adopted by the bloc in March vis-a-vis China. At that time, it had only described Chinese media reports in its own report. The British newspaper states that EU member states are currently grappling with a number of questions on tackling China and its increasingly aggressive government.