China avisa

En los últimos días occidente está cargando las tintas sobre la responsabilidad china en el origen de la pandemia de covid-19. Hoy, dos notas de opinión del Global Times, órgano oficioso chino, comienzan a mostrar los dientes sobre el tema. Acá van:


Título: Arrows targeting China will hurt Biden: Global Times editorial

Texto: Since March, the US has shot three poison arrows at China. First, it accused China of covering up the extent of the COVID-19 epidemic and falsifying the number of infections and deaths. Second, it claimed the novel coronavirus was leaked from an institute of virology in Wuhan, demanding China should allow foreign experts to make an investigation there. Third, it has been supporting and inciting lawsuits against the Chinese government to pursue compensation on damages caused by the pandemic. 

The three poison arrows are created by both the Trump administration and the Republican Party. They are ostensibly targeted at China, which is "politically correct" in today's US. But the Trump administration knows well that their arrows cannot kill China. Washington's attacks on China's epidemic response are nationalism-driven, running counters to facts. It's hard to say how long they can last. 

Such being the case, the three poison arrows shot at China are a pretense. They cannot fatally impact China, but are likely to kick out Trump's rival Joe Biden.  

From the perspective of US political logic, the three poison arrows are too cleverly designed. Their target is China, a US "strategic competitor," and the two parties in the US have already reached a consensus on "threats from China." The Democrats have long been an accomplice of the Trump administration in slandering China. 

The US presidential election has reached a critical juncture. The Trump administration failed in its epidemic response. To downplay the pandemic, Trump made too many remarks that could pose fatal threats to his reelection. However, the three arrows have diverted the focus of the US public opinion to hold China, instead of the US government, accountable for the US' botched response to the pandemic. 

Political stances and value judgments have dominated the US while rationality and morality based on science and facts are in a rather weak position. In the face of the virus that is raging in the US, the world's most powerful country is as chaotic as a primitive society. It is paying the price.   

Hooliganism is prevailing among US politicians. Washington has formulated a general strategy to suppress China. It has fanned the US society's hostility against China with the support of US political and public opinion elites. As the Trump administration is likely to fall into political passiveness because of poor epidemic response, it is passing the buck to China. This would cripple the leverage of Democrats to blame the Trump administration in the election race and thus can help the Trump administration consolidate its initiative in the election. 

China has become a key topic in US presidential election campaign. Trump accused Democratic candidate Biden of being "weak on China," and Biden charged Trump with being soft on China. How absurd is that. Amid the absurdity, the Trump administration has confined the scope and sharpness of the Democratic Party's discourse by designing and shooting the above-mentioned three poison arrows. If the topic of US campaign keeps focusing on China like that, the likelihood of Trump winning a reelection will probably increase. 

The US state of Missouri just announced to sue the Chinese government, seeking compensation from China for damages that people in the state are suffering due to COVID-19. The lawsuit is a farce. But the process in which it creates controversy and attracts eyeballs will divert people's dissatisfaction with their government's epidemic prevention and control, becoming a power for Trump to secure a second term. US law is kowtowing to politics. Those with good sense understand it at a glance. But it can confuse quite a few ordinary people. 

US political elites jointly promoted this blind anti-China sentiment. As a result, anti-scientism and anti-rationalism are flaring in the US. It is now difficult for the Democratic Party to strip Trump administration's huge responsibility in the pandemic from the already hyped-up public opinion, which believes China should be held accountable. 

It is Americans' business to decide who to become their next president. China does not need to hold a grudge against anyone for falling into the eye of the US campaign storm. The fundamental reason is that China is getting strong. The country has to bear the weight of becoming a global power. China needs to build up its capacity to defend its reputation and it has a long way to go on the path. 


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Título: Ex-colonialists should prepare for China’s counterpunch

Texto: As of Wednesday, the total confirmed COVID-19 cases around the world have topped 2.5 million, with the US and European countries being the hardest hit, while the US alone has reported over 825,000 infection cases. What are leaders and politicians of these countries doing when their homelands are suffering from the coronavirus? Are they busy flattening the curve? Given the reports of Western media outlets, this seems to not be their focus, as they are sparing more efforts to duck the responsibilities for their inability. 

Over the past month, some Western politicians have been shouting more loudly than ever to demand compensation from China, as if they will manage to call white for black with their political hysteria. Since the pandemic became increasingly severer day by day in Europe and particularly in the US, some Western countries that dominate the world's public opinion have been engaging in a ridiculous show of 1,000 ways to slander China. 

To steal the spotlight, a batch of Western politicians dare say anything they want and pass any legislation they wish regardless of truth or facts. They have thoroughly interpreted their deep-rooted pirate-style mentality and how it works.

These politicians have accused China of so-called disinformation and delay in information sharing, while they have been neglecting what China has been trying to share with them from the very beginning and warn them out of goodwill. 

From the moves of US senators such as Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley to Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, we can see the ghosts of Western imperialists and colonialists who raided around the world, burning and looting with guns and cannons. 

What if these Western countries are treated with their very own pirate-style mentality? They shall be held accountable for what humanity is suffering in the past decades, even centuries. A great number of Westerners seem to have forgotten how they managed to quickly complete the original accumulation of capital and embark on the road of leading the world's development. In the Age of Discovery, Western civilization has spread across the world and the traditional powers seized a huge amount of resources in that process. Meanwhile, diseases such as cholera, malaria, yellow fever, and smallpox brought by the West's explorers doomed aborigines in the new continents. 

The 1918 influenza pandemic, the most severe pandemic in recent history, infected an estimated total of 500 million people or one-third of the world's population at that time. The number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide. Some suggest the virus originated from Kansas, where it was identified in military personnel in spring 1918; while some believe New York City was the origin. If we adopt the West's above-mentioned mentality here, how dare the US not compensate the rest of the world for its failure of containing the virus within its borders?

If such mentality is justified, has the US compensated the world or at least apologized after the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic that originated from the country and resulted in an estimated range of deaths from between 151,700 and 575,400 people during the very first year the virus circulated?

There is no logic and no rationale that China has to bear infamy and compensate for mistakes it has never made. Is it that in the mind of many Westerners Chinese are born inferior to white people, so they never believe the Chinese can do anything better than them?

Things have changed in the world we are living in. Long gone are the good old times of imperialists and colonialists. If some people still uphold their political hysteria, they had better be prepared for China's counterpunch.