China has embarked on a gigantic communication operation in France and in the world to put forward its political system in the management of the coronavirus crisis. A real war of influence, which goes as well through social networks as through deliveries of equipment.

ANALYSIS

For several weeks, China has been constantly touting its management of the coronavirus crisis. The country, home of a pandemic that has become global, officially has only a few deaths a day and is gradually starting to restart its activity. The Chinese regime, exhilarated, has now embarked on a vast communication operation around the world, including in France, to highlight and praise the merits of its political system.

"The rewriting of history is to show that China has managed to control this epidemic and that it is today at the bedside of the Western powers to manage this crisis. It is a very partial vision of history", analysis for Europe 1 Marc Julienne, researcher at IFRI (French Institute for International Relations) and specialist in China. To achieve its goals, Beijing does not hesitate to spread rumors and discredit all those who criticize its action.

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Aggressive communication on social networks…

This communication operation obviously goes through social networks. In France, the Twitter account of the Chinese Embassy, ​​created in August 2019, has significantly intensified its activity since the start of the coronavirus crisis. In recent weeks, the head of the page is working to discredit each person who would expose a negative opinion towards Beijing. "Slandering China will not help chase the virus out," the embassy wrote in a post published Thursday, over a video in French assuring that "some media and politicians are looking for a scapegoat."

Slandering China will not help chase the virus https://t.co/doniP2etlb

- Chinese Embassy in France (@AmbassadeChine) April 9, 2020

"It involves maneuvers of disinformation and the fact of imposing the arguments of China as the only valid ones. There is the will to present the French media as impartial with regard to China", judge Antoine Bondaz , researcher at the Foundation for Strategic Research and teacher at Sciences Po, interviewed by Europe 1.

The Chinese Embassy also does not hesitate to adopt aggressive communication. "She attacks by name people who publish works on China. She also likes unacceptable publications, like a tweet which presented BFM and the 'French fascist media' a few weeks ago as media propagating supremacy," deplores the researcher , who had published in Le Monde a critical tribune on the Chinese regime. He himself was not directly named, but the Chinese Embassy account made several references to this publication.

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... and even in the field

The Chinese operation is not limited to the Internet. Beijing regularly highlights the aid it provides worldwide, in particular in western democracies, such as the dispatch of medical experts to Italy. "It is a communication operation which seeks to make people forget the beginning of the crisis, with this medical aid offered everywhere with great propaganda reinforcement in the Chinese media, and even sometimes Western. It is to show an image responsible for the China, at the bedside of the other powers ", denounces Marc Julienne.

Even if it means taking liberties with reality, some of the aid sent to Italy was not in the form of a donation, as Beijing claimed, but was the result of a purchase made by the government of Giuseppe Conte. Finland, for its part, discovered that two million masks bought from China were in fact ... unsuitable for use in hospitals.

And France is not spared. Three Chinese students were arrested Tuesday in Asnières-sur-Seine, in the Paris region, while they were distributing "Covid kits" to members of the Chinese community. These young women, who were released without any prosecution, were dropped off by a car from the Chinese Embassy. Two leaders of Chinese associations were also arrested last Sunday before being released.

To discredit Western democracies

The Beijing offensive has a clear goal: to defend the efficiency of its political system, while scratching that of Western democracies. "The objective of the Chinese authorities is to confuse certain arguments by highlighting the confusion between the sacrifices of the Chinese population and the system of governance. The objective of China is to say that the Chinese political system would be better able than democracies to face the epidemic, "says Antoine Bondaz.

Except that, once again, the Chinese story is incomplete. "It is forgetting that the European Union sent [there] 56 tonnes of material in February, including 17 tonnes from France," recalls Marc Julienne. A communication that has the gift of irritating more and more European countries, including France. The Secretary of State for European Affairs, Amélie de Monchalin, thus accused China of "using" its aid. Comments immediately qualified as "cynical" by Beijing.

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Suspected influence on WHO

Another objective for the Chinese government: to make people forget the failures of its crisis management at the start of the pandemic. "China has taken into account this epidemic with a month of delay. It silenced the doctors who tried to alert the authorities," recalls Marc Julienne, referring to the ophthalmologist Li Wenliang, this dead whistleblower. coronavirus, which has become a hero for many Chinese.

Because China, which is accused of having largely undervalued its balance sheet (officially a little more than 3,300 dead), actually delayed before becoming aware of the seriousness of the pandemic on its soil. She is even suspected of having used her influence, at the beginning of the crisis, on the World Health Organization. WHO had classified the coronavirus "emergency of international scope" on January 30, one month after the first case was reported by Beijing. An article in Le Figaro , published Friday, accuses the director of the WHO, the Ethiopian Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesu, "of having taken up without any distance the elements of language of the Chinese Communist Party".

And Donald Trump himself has violently charged the WHO in recent days, deeming it pro-Beijing and even threatening to suspend US funding. The war of communication between the United States and China is declared.