At long last, China’s two steps forward
Firstoftwoparts
FOR a long while, I had only been keeping it to myself: China had it coming. That is, that she had become the butt of lawsuits from the United States and its allies over the worldwide spread of the coronavirus.
To begin with, there is no question that the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) could be manufactured through the laboratory as demonstrated by the Ralph Baric experiment in 2015, long before the Wuhan outbreak last year, which, certainly with a lot of US pushing, has largely been attributed to bats endemic in southern China. Neither is it questionable that back in April 2019, there had been an admission by an official of the US Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (Usamriid) that THE coronavirus had been supplied to the institute by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for “multiplication” and then supply to different agencies for a variety of purposes. There were findings during that period that leakages of the coronavirus from the Usamriid took place and eventually, army personnel from Fort Detrick, where the Usamriid is housed, participated in the Wuhan World Military Games in October 2019. A reader pointed out in a comment to my article in that regard that 14 days after the games ended, the Wuhan Covid-19 outbreak began. Fourteen days is the incubation period for the novel coronavirus. Evidently conscious of this fact, a Chinese Foreign Ministry official was vociferous in hinting that the Wuhan outbreak might have been caused by the US participants in the games.
I have been tireless in pursuing this angle of the Covid-19 pandemic. For one thing, early on in the investigation of the World Health Organization (WHO), Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared that there was no known connection between the Wuhan outbreak and those in Italy and Iran where the pathogen spread with even more intensity. This indicated that the virus was being transmitted from various sources.
Of late, I came across this exposé by a Russian general of a US bio weapons laboratory in Georgia, the Richard Lugar Center, which he claimed to be aimed at Russia and China and elsewhere. Retired former Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines chief Victor Corpus corroborated the exposé with information that a similar bio weapons facility operated by the US was in place in Ukraine. A Facebook follower of my account volunteered the information that in fact the Bill Gates Foundation had donated millions of dollars to fund a similar laboratory right in Wuhan.
Conspiracy theories
Certain apologists of the US line on the controversy would dismiss the above claims and information as conspiracy theories. This is to be expected. The Trump camp is currently in a frenzy of damming China over the pandemic, seeing the ploy as effective in recovering much lost ground for the coming US presidential elections.
“Don’t defend Trump, damn China,” has been what the Republicans have devised as an effective catchall call for victory in those polls.
And to me, for a moment, China appeared to be just reeling from the blows delivered by the US in the blame game over the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Why!” I would wring my head in exasperation.
Given all the above, which even I in my layman’s limitations could comprehend, why doesn’t China deliver that one solid counter-blow: that the Covid-19 pandemic could not have made a direct leap from the Chinese bats and spread rapidly all over the world, and that the only possible means by which the pathogen could spread with such haste and intensity as it had done all over Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa is for the killer virus to be projected from various corresponding sources: Georgia? As the Russian general would hint, Ukraine? If Vic Corpus is to be believed, indeed, Wuhan? As my Facebook informant has it, hinged on his knowledge of the Bill Gates Foundation funding the US bio-weapons lab in that area.
If China has been getting all the blame, then suits her fine. She didn’t do the right thing at the right time — which was at the very start. Right off, she could have pointed an accusing finger at the US for actually causing the pandemic.
But, as my Chinese friend would tell it to my face, who am I to talk
to China this way?
Oh, well, if I’m a nobody, indeed, at least I’m somebody who thinks the Chinese way.
Grandstand act
Then came May 18, 2020. The 73rd World Health Assembly (WHA) convened in Geneva. Among the world dignitaries who came to speak was Chinese President Xi Jinping who, speaking from Beijing through a video link, announced thus:
“China will provide $2 billion over two years to help with Covid-19 response and with economic and social development in affected countries, especially developing countries.”
The contribution, for spending over two years, to be sure amounts to more than twice what the US had been giving the global health agency before President Trump cut off Us funding last month. According to the NewYorkTimes, the contribution could catapult China to the forefront of international efforts to contain a disease that has claimed at least 315,000 lives.
“In China, after making painstaking efforts and sacrifice, we have turned the tide on the virus and protected lives,” Xi said. “We have done everything in our power to support and assist countries in need.”
For all intents and purposes, it was a grandstand act — an act evidently unexpected on the side of US President Donald Trump, whom a report in the NewYorkTimes pictures as being thrown in virtual panic.