New Delhi, Mar 28 (IANS): The Chinese Communist Party regime headed by President Xi Jinping, which drew flak for its cover up of the coronavirus outbreak, is now being called out for sending and selling faulty medical equipment as "humanitarian aid" to several countries around the world.

Many governments in the last week have complained that China had secretly purchased massive quantities of medical equipment from Europe and is now re-selling the same to European countries as assistance.

A researcher, Filip Jirous at Sinopsis, a project implemented by AcaMedia, in collaboration with the Department of Sinology at Charles University in Prague, revealed that last week the Czech authorities confiscated a shipment of medical supplies from a warehouse because a Czech reseller had tried to sell it to the Czech government for an excessive price in the coronavirus pandemic crisis.

The boxes at the warehouse were labelled as Chinese Red Cross humanitarian aid to Italy. The contents included 680,000 face masks, 28,000 respirators and around 100,000 masks.

During the investigation, the police found that the storage unit belonged to an influential Chinese in Prague, Zhou Lingjian. Jirous said Zhou who co-owns the company CTE CARGO Sped linked to CTE International which sold 580,000 masks to the Czech "shell" company, is in charge of the Czech Qingtian Hometown Association, and runs the most prominent Chinese diaspora media Prague Chinese Times.

"His group has been at the forefront of a collection for Qingtian back in February, buying up 780,000 face masks and 30,000 respirators from Czech drug stores. This created suspicion that the material is actually from the local Chinese collection."

The researcher tweeted that this incident leaves much doubt about the "aid" that is now coming from China to Europe. Especially since much of what is labelled as "aid" is either sales or directed at the overseas Chinese.

Marion Smith, who runs a think-tank in Washington DC tweeted that the "Czech counter espionage agency had reported during January and February that Chinese embassy in Prague organised Chinese interests in the country to purchase massive quantities of Czech medical materials which were immediately sent to China."

"It is now discovered that China's humanitarian medical supplies to Czech Republic this month are faulty. 80 per cent of the coronavirus test kits provide false results, mostly false negatives. This deadly aid is a huge element of CCP statecraft right now," he said.

Not just Czech Republic, but Turkey has also said that the Chinese test kits are substandard and have a 65 to 70 per cent failure rate. Spain has also complained that 80 per cent of medical supplies from China were faulty.

According to China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it is providing "assistance" to 82 countries, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the African Union.

Among the countries it has sent supplies to are Italy, France, Greece, Serbia, Spain, Pakistan, Laos, Thailand, Iran, South Korea, Japan, Cambodia, the Philippines, Egypt, South Africa, Iraq, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Cuba and Chile.