The Righteous, Injured Party
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| China's top diplomat, Wang Yi |
"Regretfully, in addition to the raging coronavirus, a political virus is also spreading in the United States. This political virus is using every opportunity to attack and smear China.""Some politicians have ignored the most basic facts and concocted too many lies about China and plotted too many conspiracies.""I want to say here: Don't waste precious time any longer, and don't ignore lives.""What China and the United States need to do the most is to first learn from each other and share their experience in fighting against the epidemic, and help each country fight it."Wang Yi, State Councillor and Chinese Foreign Minister
U.S.President Donald Trump began his administration meeting his foreign counterparts and in the case of Chinese President Xi Jinping, proclaimed himself pleased with a developing friendship between the two, each other's largest trading partners. Famously, however, President Trump views all trade agreements the United States has with other nations as being horribly flawed, signed by incompetents who allowed the U.S. to be taken advantage of. Irrespective of his regard for his counterparts, he set out to cancel those trade deals and argue for a replacement that would better recognize the American need for fairness.
With the ongoing back-and-forth over forging a new trade agreement between Beijing and Washington, friendship more or less got short shrift, as each country jockeyed for more advantageous rulings in their favour, each determined that the other would not advantage themselves at their expense. Typically, China looks for raw resources to import and exports finished products. And typically, China's trade agreements with any and all countries tend to advantage China with a huge disparity.
World markets tremble when the two giants rumble. And because they were rumbling, uncertainty in global financial markets were already established, and then SARS-CoV-2 hit the world economy, leaving it in tatters. COVID-19 may not have been entirely preventable, until and unless an heirloom cultural tradition revolving around cuisine making use of wild and sometimes rare animals could have been shelved, but its global impact certainly could have been diminished with proper and responsible action on Beijing's part.
Instead, The CCP did what it always tends to do, keep a low profile on responsibility for any situation that emanates from within its borders that will impact badly on the world community. Which led to keeping a lid of silence rather than reaching out to warn the World Health Organization of the emergence of a frightening and deadly new coronavirus that attacked the respiratory tract and often led to pneumonia and death. The decision was made not to halt international traffic out of China to other parts of the world and the virus travelled with that traffic.
At a time when China had intimations it would be facing a serious epidemic it took steps to corner the market on personal protective equipment; respirators, masks and gloves, leaving short stock elsewhere. Once China had managed through strict internal lockdowns to gain control over the highly infectious disease, it magnanimously sent Chinese-produced masks and respirators to the global community, struggling to get a handle on a sinister virus that hospitals were inundated with. All that China-produced equipment was useless, blemished and unusable.
China has much to answer for, and world leaders are insistent that they will push for answers to a lot of questions of decision making and 'wasted time' and lies of human-to-human transmission that China excels in protesting innocence of intent and commission for. But it has the unmitigated gall to lecture any country that dares question its responsibility in the COVID transmission, its case and death rate; who, us? And following lectures come the threats, and the high-minded declarations of intent to save the world.
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The death toll in the United States is expected to surpass 100,000 shortly, overtaking Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Russia in their run-in with the novel coronavirus. Brazil has now taken second place as the world No.2 virus hot spot after the United States.
China expresses its condolences. China lectures the United States to stop 'wasting time', though the time 'wasted' by China's reluctance to forewarn and prepare the world has led to the staggering caseload worldwide of over six million diagnosed and edging close to one-third of a million deaths from COVID-19.
"China has always advocated that, as the world's largest developing country and the largest developed country, both of us bear a major responsibility for world peace and development. China and the United States stand to gain from cooperation, and lose from confrontation", Mr. Wang droned on sanctimoniously.
Labels: Beijing, China, COVID-19, Responsibility, United States
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, May 26, 2020
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