SOURCE: INDIA TODAY
China is the master of stealth in diplomacy. It flows from ancient Chinese political wisdom. India tasted the Chinese medicine of stealth in 1962 in a war that still haunts the Indian psyche like a nightmare but which “never happened” for millions of Chinese youth. China did not teach them about its aggression on India. Stealth in diplomacy.
This is what China seems to be striving for right now in the case of the novel coronavirus pandemic. China is on prowl looking for a candidate nation to fix the blame for the Covid-19 pandemic. China’s current strategy seems to revolve around sowing seeds of doubt in the minds of the international audience and convincing its own people about the “foreign origin” of the novel coronavirus.
The game of finding a villain for the novel coronavirus had begun soon after the viral outbreak started making international headlines late last year. The first targets were those who blamed Chinese eating habits. It was rebutted by health experts. But by that time, it surfaced that China initially attempted to hide the outbreak.
Reports appeared saying that the doctor who alerted about the novel coronavirus outbreak and went public with his views was harassed by the Chinese authorities. That was the time when prompt action by China could have nipped this viral enemy in the bud.
On December 31, China formally informed the World Health Organisation about the novel coronavirus outbreak. In next three weeks, China had to enforce a lockdown not only in the epicentre of Wuhan but in all the provinces and districts affected by Covid-19.
Meanwhile, China told the WHO that the source of the novel coronavirus could be a seafood and animal meat market in Wuhan. Experts dived in to postulate that the virus came from bats and entered humans through a yet-to-be-identified intermediary animal.
By late February, China had showed clean signs of having contained the spread of novel coronavirus infection. The global outbreak, however, had by then acquired a pandemic scale. The West was feeling the pinch of the viral attack. Its robust health infrastructure was crumbling and anger against China was rising.
There was speculation that some giant global companies may shift their manufacturing units in the coming years from China to a more favourable count. It was at this time China swung into action and moved to find a sacrificial lamb. It decided to target the US, which calls itself a hawk in international diplomacy.
What many people missed was a statement made by perhaps China’s most famous epidemiologist on February 27. Celebrated for handling another coronavirus crisis — the SARS outbreak of 2002-03 — Zhong Nanshan told a press conference that the novel coronavirus “may not have originated in China”.
His statements were publicised by all Chinese news media outlets and widely circulated on Chinese social media platforms. This was in sharp contrast to the treatment meted out to the doctor who was the whistleblower and later died with authorities saying he had Covid-19.
This was the first attempt by a senior functionary in China to deflect the blame for the novel coronavirus outbreak going out of the hand and crippling the world economy and pulverising the global healthcare infrastructure.
Chinese political figures took off from here. Two of its ministry of foreign office spokespersons Zhao Lijian and Hua Chunying went berserk with their tweets and statements. Zhao emerged as a Chinese diplomacy warrior of sorts in this campaign.
Zhao blamed the US military for introducing the novel coronavirus in Wuhan. One of Zhao’s tweets read, “CDC [the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention of the USA) was caught on the spot. When did patient zero begin in US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation!”
The US responded by saying, “The Communist Party of China has chosen to promulgate false and absurd conspiracy theories about the origin of COVID-19 blaming U.S. service members. #ChinaPropaganda.”
But the Chinese were well prepared. Days before epidemiologist Zhong deflected and placed the ground zero of novel coronavirus pandemic outside China, a paper had been published by Chinese researchers.
On February 20, research sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Institute for Brain Research declared that the Wuhan seafood market might not have been the source of novel coronavirus.
On February 27, the day of epidemiologist Zhong’s presser, the Communist Party of China’s official mouthpiece, the People’s Daily backed the research, which essentially raised doubts on the assertion that China was the country of origin of the novel coronavirus.
Chinese spokespersons and Beijing’s ambassadors to different countries later took this theory to the whole world. The theory in vogue stated this: 300 athletes from the US military attended the 7th Military World Games in Wuhan in October. They were infected with novel coronavirus and spread that in Wuhan before heading back to the US.
The timing of the visit in the theory was the key in China’s strategy. Epidemiologists working on the Covid-19 pandemic have been against the Chinese assertion that the first infection happened in mid-December; according to them, case-zero occurred in mid-November. However, with the new theory, China again pinned the blame on the US, now dating it to October.
But as China took on the US, the Donald Trump administration in Washington got rattled and responded with aggression. US President Donald Trump called it “Chinese virus”. His national security advisor and other senior functionaries of the US government blamed China for the coronavirus pandemic.
Soon, China looked for another candidate. It found one in Italy. An Italian doctor, Giuseppe Remuzzi published a paper in the Lancet in which he talked about a “strange case of pneumonia” in the country in November and December.
China has used this research paper to claim that the novel coronavirus originated Italian province Lombardy (Milan is its capital). China now says that the novel coronavirus was circulating in Lombardy “before we were aware of the outbreak in China”.
The question of the origin of an outbreak or pandemic is a question of scientific exploration. It may take long before it is conclusively settled how the novel coronavirus came into humans and where. But China’s attempt to pin the blame first on the US and then on Italy signals that the Chinese government is not ready to wait for a scientific conclusion, which may or may not find Wuhan or some other place in China as the ground zero of Covid-19 outbreak.
from Indian Defence Research Wing https://ift.tt/3aGIcD4
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