As with Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward,” Xi Jinping’s coronavirus legacy is built on a mountain of bodies and lies.
I note this because Xi Jinping has just taken a victory tour in Wuhan, where the coronavirus first spread. Believing China has turned the corner with this pandemic, China’s leader is looking for positive global recognition. He deserves global recognition of the exact opposite kind.
This crisis captured the Chinese Communist Party’s most basic essence: its opacity and evil. And Chinese, Americans, Iranians, and people everywhere else are suffering for it.
Xi and his party’s culpability are clear. It was their irresponsibility that allowed the coronavirus to run rampant in the first place. It was their instinct for secrecy which allowed the coronavirus to infect those who might otherwise have taken precautions. It was their insidious refusal to allow foreign scientists access to China which prohibited timely vaccine research. It is Xi’s defining arrogance which saw him hide from Wuhan and now sees him dance a victory lap as doctors rot under their tombstones. Those first responders are the only heroes here. Like their Soviet forebears at Chernobyl, the Politburo wants them forgotten.
The reality of this outbreak is not China’s mastery of the moment, but of how Xi has made things so much worse than they should have been. As CNN’s James Griffiths notes, Beijing is upping its attacks on western critics of its coronavirus chaos. State media says Xi has proven he’s a great servant of human good. Those who say otherwise? As the regime’s Global Times newspaper put it on Wednesday, these foreign critics are “ridiculous and pathetic,” their condemnations of the party exposing only their “immorality and irresponsibility.”
Embracing North Korean style rhetoric, another piece declares that Republicans have shown their “wickedness” by pointing out that this is a crisis of the Chinese Communist Party’s making.
Yes, it is manifestly good news that the coronavirus appears to be spreading less quickly now through China. But we can’t look at that progress through the prism Xi provides. For one, we must ask the question: how many aged vulnerable Chinese died in their homes, unable to access adequate medical care or support, to get Xi to this point? How many died so that Xi could draw a line under his embarrassment?
The number is almost certainly far higher than the 3,100 coronavirus deaths that the party currently admits.
This crisis was made in China and globally metastasized thanks to Xi’s willful failure. He deserves no salute, only our sense of his scandal. And our contemplation of what it says about his regime.
