The European Union ambassador to China said on Thursday it was 'regrettable' that part of an opinion piece co-authored by 27 European ambassadors and published in the official China Daily had been removed before publication.
BEIJING - The European Union ambassador to China said on Thursday it was “regrettable” that part of an opinion piece co-authored by 27 European ambassadors and published in the official China Daily had been removed before publication.
A comparison between the original op-ed uploaded onto the EU embassy website and the one published on Tuesday by the China Daily showed that in a sentence beginning, “But the outbreak of the coronavirus”, the words that followed - “in China, and its subsequent spread to the rest of the world over the past three months” - were removed.
Chapuis refused to comment on why the words may have been taken out. A senior EU diplomat told Reuters that the change arose from censorship by Chinese authorities but that individual EU ambassadors were not properly consulted about whether to go ahead with publication in The China Daily, despite censors.
“The EU delegation decided nevertheless to proceed with publication of the op-ed with considerble reluctance as it was considered important to communicate on key EU policies,” the Commission said in its daily news briefing in Brussels.
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