LET me get the obvious out of the way from the very start. Like many others, I’ve no doubt that China has much to answer for over the coronavirus pandemic.
From its initial response and withholding of information to its more recent official endorsement of conspiracy theories blaming the US military for the outbreak, the Chinese government’s efforts at controlling the global narrative have played badly.
Even allowing for questionable data, China to date has reported less than 5000 deaths compared to almost 30,000 in the US and just over 18,000 in the UK.
Scepticism over Beijing’s account of case numbers and deaths from coronavirus as well as its lack of overall transparency is therefore fully justified.
Indeed it was just recently that the Chinese government got around to revealing that the death toll in Wuhan where the virus is believed to have originated was in fact 50% cent higher than first reported.
Add to this what has been an assertive external information campaign by Beijing aimed at shaping global discussion of its handling of the virus and it becomes hard not to see the Chinese government as bad guys in all of this.
One could even go further and say that China has subsequently tried to exploit the global crisis. The Chinese government, for example, were quick to recognise in the pandemic a dearth of global leadership and moved swiftly in part to cover up some of its own failings, while seizing any geopolitical leverage and opportunity that might come from the failings of others.
Beijing sent medical aid to European countries, even if some proved substandard or defective. Scotland itself received supplies of PPE and facemasks from China and I’ve no doubt most Scots are grateful for this, and some will argue that such acts are all that matters in times such as these.
But there are other more opaque factors at play here that cannot go ignored. In Italy, for example, the Chinese embassy there embraced the social media hashtag #ForzaCinaeItalia – “Let’s Go, China and Italy” – even if Italian researchers later found it was heavily promoted by a sophisticated and shadowy network of bots on Twitter.
In other words, China has done all it can to portray itself as both the model and partner of first resort for other countries during the pandemic, even if its motives may not always have been as altruistic as they might appear.
The net effect of this is that Beijing’s attempts to take advantage of the situation are more likely to leave China isolated and distrusted on the world stage when the crisis recedes. Certainly, there’s no shortage of those already gunning for Beijing, albeit that Chinese-Western relations weren’t exactly hunky-dory before the outbreak of Covid-19.
It was Donald Trump, back in 2016 before he became president, who set the prevailing tone when he accused China of “raping” America. Since he entered the White House, US- China relations have only gone from bad to worse and have been rapidly fraying on trade, technology and military deployments as Washington became increasingly exasperated by Beijing’s expanding global footprint.
Trump now is in full-blown Beijing-bashing mode, and you can bet his brand of xenophobic nationalism and anti-China message will only become more pronounced as the US presidential election campaign moves into top gear. As ever with Trump, there is already a tinge of racism with his references to the “Chinese virus”.
As a Wall Street Journal headline summed it up the other day, Trump’s best re-election bet is to “run against China”, and to that end he’s already unleashed a torrent of blame and criticism on Beijing over the pandemic.
It seems the White House has settled for taking a leaf out of the Communist Party of China’s Covid-19 response handbook right now, covering up it own missteps and mismanagement of the virus at home by blaming outsiders.
HERE in the UK there are signs of the same deflection with talk that senior Downing Street officials and ministers expect a “reckoning” with China over the outbreak.
That shift in position here in the UK has been very telling, with prominent Conservatives calling on the Prime Minister to be tougher on China and intelligence agencies promising to focus on the threat from Beijing.
Vigilance is well and good and few would fail to recognise that, but the dangers in any escalating blame game with China are obvious.
The problem lies mainly among those in Washington and London who have long warned that China as a one-party surveillance state could never be treated as a global stakeholder. Within the ranks of such politicians there is a sense that their moment has arrived to feel vindicated.
To that end they are more than willing to play hardball whether it be by blocking all Chinese investment into 5G infrastructure or breaking international dependence on Chinese supply chains.
Such a myopic anti-Chinese take on policy thinking quite clearly fails to recognise the risks such a stance would compound.
To begin with, in immediate terms millions of lives around the globe depend on an unprecedented level of international solidarity and specifically robust co-operation with China to fight coronavirus, including the search for a vaccine.
Then there is the question of consciously uncoupling economically from China, which will only make the post-coronavirus recovery that much harder.
Let’s bear in mind that China already accounts for nearly 20% of world GDP but, unlike after the global financial crisis in 2008, it is fast becoming the world’s leading consumer market. Its financial stimulus measures need to be closely co-ordinated with the G7 and through the G20; it’s as simple as that.
As Robin Niblett, the director of the policy institute Chatham House, warned last week, managing relations with China once the Covid-19 crisis abates will be one of the biggest challenges facing political leaders both in the United States and Europe.
As the director of a policy institute founded 100 years ago in the shadow of the First World War, Niblett believes “we must do all in our power to avoid a return of the global strategic rivalries that blighted the 20th century”.
He’s right, and picking fights with Beijing is not the way to ensure that. The realpolitik here is obvious. Hating China won’t help beat coronavirus or benefit the post-pandemic world.
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