Will China’s efforts to cover up the origins of the coronavirus ever stop?
I ask that question in light of the Wall Street Journal reporting Wednesday of China’s effort to shield Wuhan food markets from international scientific scrutiny.
As the article notes, China is concealing and obstructing any effective investigation of the very thing it originally said allowed the virus to take hold: wet markets. While this impulse toward control over the truth is a natural one for the Chinese Communist Party, it doesn’t make much sense in this case. After all, it makes more difficult the necessary learning that might prevent a similar outbreak in the future. And it only fosters the perception that Beijing has something to hide.
Its continued secrecy demonstrates that the communist government cares far less about documenting the coronavirus’s history and threat than it does about protecting its own reputation.
That’s what this is ultimately about. Reputation.
As China grapples with rising global anger over the calamitous economic, health, and social impact the coronavirus has produced, Beijing is increasingly desperate to deflect and divorce itself from any culpability. Whether the virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology or from a wet market that lacked anywhere near adequate health safety standards, China doesn’t want us to know about it. Instead, it wants us to stop asking questions. To that end, Chinese propagandists are continuing to spread rumors that it was the U.S. Army that introduced the virus to Wuhan or that the virus escaped from an American laboratory and was somehow transported into Wuhan. Or perhaps that Elvis did it.
At the same time, Chinese cyberspies are doubling down on their effort to steal relevant vaccine research.
The bottom line here is that China’s interest is not the world’s interest, and the two are in fundamental conflict. We want the truth as to how this virus emerged, how it got out of China, and what Chinese officials knew and did (or did not do) at each stage of the growing crisis. China wants us to ignore all that and instead bend to its feudal international agenda.
Safe to say, it’s in our interest to pursue our own agenda rather than China’s. Even if some, including the European Union, would prefer to kneel in front of Xi Jinping’s throne.
