Why China Is to Blame for the Pandemic and Must Answer for It

Translation of a Foreign Policy text.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly called the virus “Chinese” while discussing the current pandemic. He has been widely criticized for this, with critics insisting that the term is racist. Others, such as Senator Kelly Loeffler, say the crisis should not be politicized by assigning blame, but that efforts should focus on uniting to fight a global disease that does not divide people and that borders cannot stop.

That is nonsense. This crisis is, at its core, political, because it is partly caused by incompetent and corrupt politicians. Ignoring the political aspect of the coronavirus pandemic means allowing it to happen again. If we do not want a new global pandemic, we need to hold the guilty politicians accountable, the main one of whom is Chinese President Xi Jinping. He did not create this coronavirus, but his government’s mistakes led to its globalization and uncontrolled spread, with terrible consequences for the population and economy of the entire world.

A global pandemic is not a blind force of nature with no chance for human intervention. It is a failure of governance. 

A good analogy is famine. Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, in his excellent book Development as Freedom, explained that famine is not the absence of food but the absence of information about food, combined with a problem of transport development. Physically, there is enough food on the planet for everyone. If you know where the food is and where the hungry people are, you can deliver it to them, and people will not go hungry. That is why there is no famine in free-market democracies with a free flow of information.

Likewise, a global pandemic does not arise every time a new dangerous infectious pathogen appears. It arises when there is no accurate information about the pathogen and basic public services fail. In this case, that means the inability to keep food and markets from spreading pathogenic microorganisms, as well as the inability to stop and control movement when they spread. When authorities regulate healthcare, share information about a pathogen, and cooperate to control its movement, a pandemic is unlikely.

This is a problem of government, not of science. Governments must be responsible for healthcare. They must encourage transparency, share any information (even about their own failures), and build ties between domestic bureaucracies, international health organizations, and governments of other countries. Good management promotes the free flow of information, including bad news, and cooperation in the public interest, even when this contradicts local bureaucratic interests. Bad governments do the opposite.

It is not surprising that authoritarian regimes, such as China’s, do not want to share news about their failures and do not like cooperating with the authorities of other countries. As Danielle Pletka (American politician — TK Media note) recently argued, Xi’s main goal is not saving lives or containing the virus, but the nation’s place, its reputation in the global chain, and holding on to power. Democratic leaders, by contrast, are not afraid of information and discuss the effectiveness of their efforts, which allows them to correct course and respond to the flow of information to save lives. Pletka and others have compiled a list of lies and attempts by the Chinese authorities to conceal the emergence of the coronavirus in December and January in order to save face.

But the problem goes beyond this. Because the Chinese government is not accountable to its people, it has never bothered to effectively control the safety and cleanliness of food in markets — the US and other developed countries began doing so back in the last century in response to pressure from society and the media. China has no voters, so, for example, after the 2008 scandal, when tens of thousands of Chinese children were poisoned by contaminated milk, no significant reform was carried out.

Simply put, the Chinese authorities don’t give a damn about the Chinese people. That is precisely why they overlook markets with dirty food that carries diseases. Thousands of Chinese citizens have died because of these markets, and it is because of them that many other countries in 2020 faced threats to national security and economic collapse. China’s government has lied since late 2019 and made a huge direct contribution to the global pandemic, which is killing thousands of people and bringing on a global economic collapse. It must be blamed and held accountable for this.

The Chinese government’s actions in the recent crisis are only the tip of the iceberg. This government must be held responsible for genocide against the Uyghur people, violations of international law in the South China Sea, massive theft of intellectual property, cyber espionage against the US and its allies, one of the worst environmental pollution records in the world, inventing a new type of technological totalitarian state, and much more.

The Chinese government, not shaky economic markets, is the greatest force of decay in the world. It is the most powerful institution on the planet, daily violating human freedom, prosperity and dignity. Is it any surprise that by its nature this leads to a global crisis that will kill thousands of people, infect millions and impoverish billions?

Whatever you call this virus (it would be good to name it after the Communist Party of China—the “CPC virus”), accusing China does not politicize the COVID-19 pandemic, because the pandemic has already become political. Treating the crisis politically means demanding accountability to prevent its recurrence, and that starts with blaming the country where it came from.

The Chinese government is directly to blame for the failures that have led to suffering and economic collapse around the world. Its dishonesty and incompetence should prompt politicians and businesspeople worldwide to reconsider their willingness to cooperate and do business with China until it shows itself to be a responsible player on the world stage.

Text - Paul Miller, Foreign Policy

Translation — Yevgeny Blazhko, TK Media