How China Is Losing Europe
With a clumsy and ugly disinformation campaign, China is trying to project “soft power” as the U.S. loses its cachet. That’s backfiring.
From China, with love.
Photographer: Joe Klamar/AFP via Getty Images
If 2019 was the year when Europeans began having serious doubts about Beijing’s geopolitical intentions, 2020 may go down in history as the moment they turned against China in defiance. That’s not because they blame the Chinese for originating Covid-19, as U.S. President Donald Trump and his secretary of state seem obsessed with doing. It’s because China, by trying to capitalize on the pandemic with a stunningly unsophisticated propaganda campaign, inadvertently showed Europeans its cynicism.
The motivation behind the Chinese propaganda is obvious enough: With the U.S. flailing under Trump, Beijing sees an opening to finally rise to the status of a second superpower. The biggest geopolitical prize in this contest is the European Union, formerly anchored securely in the transatlantic camp but in recent years increasingly nervous about Trump and open to Chinese trade, investment and influence.