WHAT’S THE MANDARIN FOR GLEICHSCHALTUNG? EU envoy says removal of phrase in op-ed in China newspaper ‘regrettable.’

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.

“It is regrettable that part of the sentence about the spread of the virus has been edited,” EU Ambassador to China Nicolas Chapuis told reporters at a briefing.

Predictable, too.