The whole world is calling them out on their so-called stats.
Who wants to deal with this state anyway when they have cost so much misery around the globe.
Their human rights abuses are well known to all.
Time to bite the bullet and trade elsewhere.
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How do you deal toughly with your banker?' This was the not quite rhetorical question that Hillary Clinton
asked Australia’s then-prime minister Kevin Rudd at a lunch back in 2010. In the prophylactic language of the diplomat she was then, Clinton was asking how the world should deal with an ever more aggressive China, and she was prescient. Ten years on, Beijing is ascendant. It holds over a trillion dollars of US debt (banker indeed); as of writing, one of its major companies are set to control Britain’s 5G network, and it has spent years hoovering up Africa’s resources with little care for the (admittedly scant) international condemnation it receives or the human rights it violates so egregiously along the way.
As the old adage goes: if you owe the bank a million dollars, you have a problem; if you owe the bank a billion dollars, the bank has a problem. China is THE major creditor to the US. The relationship between the US and China is toxic due to co-dependency: US needs China to buy US debt, while China needs the US to remain a viable nation because the US is China's # 1 trading partner.
Now, through a mixture of quixotic dietary regulations and systematic evasion, it has helped to unleash COVID-19 on the world. We sit imprisoned indoors while the economy withers; every day thousands die from a disease that
likely originated in one of the Chinese city of Wuhan’s ‘wet’ markets, those notorious graveyards of food hygiene. On discovering they were facing an epidemic (it was then not quite yet a pandemic) the ruling Communist Party chiefs covered it up; and then
imprisoned, gagged and persecuted anyone who dared speak up about what they knew was coming to us all.
And that was just the beginning. As the weeks have rolled on and Beijing has begun to get the virus under control (after imposing the kind of total lockdowns only possible with the vertiginous autocratic powers it has at its disposal) the focus has turned to something else: spin. If you thought Russia was good at muddying its crimes with state-sponsored lies and diversionary tactics meet Beijing in the age of the coronavirus.
China is in full propagandist mode – by both word and deed. Eager to distract from its own culpability, it now sends millions of face masks to Europe alongside doctors and medical experts of varying stripes, especially the desperately needed epidemiologists. Companies like Huawei are suddenly major crisis donors. President Xi Jinping
recently told Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte that he hopes to create a 'health Silk Road' from China to Europe. Beijing has become a whir of philanthropy. But this 'mask diplomacy' is bogus. For a start, what they send often just causes problems. Spain and the Czech Republic are
throwing out thousands of testing kits sent by China that don’t work properly. Turkey
claims their Chinese-made kits are yielding inaccurate results while Holland says almost half the kits it has received are faulty.
Right - soft power to project influence and well, "power". IMO, the "health Silk Road" is a crisis-induced version of China's "Belt & Road" initiative. The sad thing is, far too many countries need China to build (or assist in building) their infrastructure because no other countries care to take the long-view in regards to the potential that could arise from making these major investments. Africa, especially, has been the recipient of China's "largesse". Of course, those nations that welcome China are probably simultaneously resentful of their dependence on China as well. But, by and large, they feel no choice but to accept the largesse because they see it as a way to modernize their economy. (Well, that, and The Powers That Be in the recipient nations also rely on graft/corruption to line their own pockets). My understanding is that not only is China laying the groundwork for a positive future relationship with these nations, but China actually takes partial (whole?) ownership of the infrastructure they helped to build. This ownership either occurs at the outset, or, if those nations can't pay back the debt to China for their assistance, China will then take "payment" in the form of ownership of the roads/airports/shipyards etc. they helped build.
I believe it was Indonesia? that a while ago, declined Chinese investment. They see it for the trap is, and would rather try to make it on their own to join the First/Second World, than potentially have China owning them.
And alongside Chinese 'aid' comes to the unfettered but clear propagandist rebuke: we have to step in because you won’t. Unsurprisingly, this makes the Europeans furious. 'France just sent a million masks to Italy. As many as China did. Time to stop EU-bashing'
said a Macron aide recently. Germany, accused by fellow EU states of ignoring their suffering, now
sends ventilators to Italy and takes in patients from overstretched hospitals in Alsace – while making sure everyone knows what it’s doing of course. In the midst of the greatest health crisis of the modern age, the #Corona wars are playing out, in our hearts and minds and on our (donated) ventilators.
Then there is the flat out lies, which come on an industrial scale and from the highest levels and daily. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian now regularly
claims that the US military engineered the coronavirus to infect Chinese citizens – a narrative several embassy Twitter accounts have picked up and peddled. This is the Kremlification of Beijing’s messaging. This is the Chinese Communist Party-state in the contemporary moment. From Confucius to confusing us: disinformation with a Chinese twist.
It's sad - but very predictable that nations will play the blame game. They have to in order to distract their own citizens from their culpability/corruption/incompetence that could have been mitigated if not for the actions/inaction of their government. And US, this means you too.
True, we must shoulder some responsibility ourselves. We were due to a plague. 'There is a very real threat of a rapidly moving, highly lethal pandemic of a respiratory pathogen killing 50 to 80 million people,'
said the first annual report of the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (an independent panel of experts convened by the World Bank and the World Health Organization) - in 2019. We were warned – repeatedly, and we failed to listen. True also, we have not acted quite as we should since things began. We most likely should have gone into isolation sooner; we should have hunkered down faster. The government’s reluctance to force us into our homes is to its credit (an act that especially sits ill with the Prime Minister’s liberal instincts) but it was probably a mistake.
Nevertheless, we are here because of China. Against this fact, there can be no retreat. The
Mail on Sunday reports that No.10 is now rethinking the Huawei 5G contract and plans a diplomatic 'deep freeze' with Beijing until it reforms. The world is angry. But will it stay that way? Will the desire for a reckoning remain six months or a year down the line once the crisis has passed and thoughts naturally turn to renewal? I think it must. I think it is both a political and a moral imperative to make sure that it does because by then I think it will be a question of national self-determination. If we really want to understand how robust our politics is, and if we really want to understand where the global balance of power truly lies, it will become clear when all this ends.
"May you live in interesting times" indeed. As with so many other events (WW2, 9/11 attacks, etc.) which had a profound effect on peoples' lives nearly the world over, I wonder how COVID-19 will shape/reshape the world.
We ignored China’s
threats over 5G. We ignored its imprisonment of over a million Uighurs. In truth, we have ignored pretty much every crime it commits. We cannot ignore its role in COVID-19. If we do, it will be an unequivocal admission that the West will not now or ever stand up to China. And if this happens, then, 25 years into the digital revolution, we will have finally come to understand the true cost of virility.
Re: ignoring so many other atrocities committed by China, well, is it really surprising that other countries might make some noises about these crimes, but not actually risk their relationship with China unless those countries are directly impacted? Leaders in other countries would have a hard sell to their people if they advocated confronting China if their people don't see the direct harm to their own lives. As you say, COVID-19 might just be the game changer that means people can no longer look away.
ETA: I'm so glad China itself doesn't touch on the Arctic. US, Canada, Russia (and I think Greenland/Denmark) will be fighting over the resources of this "final frontier" in the decades to come. Of course China will try to muscle into this as well (who knows what wealth can be extracted now that the polar ice caps are melting and receding?), but as long as there is no actual territorial claim, they would have a weaker argument. As it is, China claims that because they are "Arctic adjacent" they have some skin in the game. LOL, as the kids might say.
Written by
David Patrikarakos
David Patrikarakos is an author and journalist. His latest book is War in 140 Characters: How Social Media is Reshaping Conflict in the Twenty-First Century