Mike Pompeo said the US strongly believes that China failed to report the outbreak of the new coronavirus in a timely manner to the WHO

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Mike Pompeo said the US strongly believes that China failed to report the outbreak of the new coronavirus in a timely manner to the WHO

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the US strongly believes that China failed to report the outbreak of the new coronavirus in a timely manner to the WHO.

The correspondence quoted senior Chinese foreign ministry official Yang Xiaoguang as saying that publishing the report would make Beijing "very angry" and accused European officials of trying to please "someone else" - something the EU diplomats understood to be a reference to Washington.

The four sources said the report had been delayed as a result, and a comparison of the internal version of the report obtained by Reuters and the published version showed several differences.

For example, on the first page of the internal report shared with EU governments on April 20, the EU's foreign policy arm said: "China has continued to run a global disinformation campaign to deflect blame for the outbreak of the pandemic and improve its international image. Both overt and covert tactics have been observed."

The public summary posted Friday to the bloc's disinformation portal attributed the disinformation to "state-backed sources from various governments, including Russia and – to a lesser extent – China."

The public summary did note "significant evidence of covert Chinese operations on social media," but the reference was left to the final six paragraphs of the document.

Disinformation about the coronavirus outbreak is emerging as a flashpoint between the United States and China, and officials on both sides have traded allegations of hiding information about the pandemic.

The disputes have sometimes caught Europeans in the middle. With more than a billion euros a day in bilateral trade, the EU is China's top trading partner, while China is second only to the United States as a market for EU goods and services.

In a webcast, Friday with the Friends of Europe think tank, China's ambassador to the EU, Zhang Ming, said: "Disinformation is an enemy for all of us and it should be addressed by all of us."