Virus Outbreak: China showers EU with virus aid - sm Posted: Mar 20th, 2020 - 9:18 am
PROPAGANDA PUSH: Aid is much needed, but China is consciously exercising its soft power in supplying it, a Mercator Institute for China Studies analyst said.
As Europe becomes the epicenter of the coronavirus, Beijing is stepping up its outreach to individual governments there.
That is coming at the very moment that the US — and in some cases the EU — is seen to be turning away. The result is a battle for hearts and minds that China seems to be winning, at least for the moment.
“It’s great that China has this availability and that it is currently in a position to offer this kind of help,” Berlin-based Mercator Institute for China Studies analyst Lucrezia Poggetti said.
Aid is much needed, but in supplying it, China is consciously exercising its soft power, she said.
“There is a major propaganda push at play on the side of the Chinese with some willing enablers on the European side,” Poggetti said.
For China, the outreach to Europe is part of an effort to claw back an international leadership role after early cover-ups helped the virus spread well beyond its borders.
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government has sought to silence critics, including reporters and online commentators, and it has also spread conspiracy theories about where the virus originated.
Xi this week described China’s mass deployment of medical aid to Europe as an effort to further a “Health Silk Road,” stretching his Belt and Road Initiative.
Along with state help for stricken countries such as Italy, aid is being channeled across the continent by private companies in the name of Beijing, helping to burnish China’s image from France to Ukraine.
China’s ambassador in Athens on Wednesday delivered more than 50,000 protective masks to the Greek minister of health.
Read more at taipeitimes.com ...
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