Just who is Beijing trying to fool?

REGIME SO FEARFUL OF HONESTY HAS A FATAL FLAW AT ITS CORE. — MCPARLAND

China's government appears set to launch itself into the postCOVID future committed to a diplomatic approach based on some simple notions: if insults don't work, try threats. If that fails, go back to insults.

Geng Shuang, Beijing's deputy ambassador to the United Nations, got in an early bit of abuse when he responded to a German envoy's plea to release Canada's two Michaels, Spavor and Kovrig, as a Christmas gesture. Noting that the German diplomat's tenure on the Security Council was about to end, Geng sneered: “Out of the bottom of my heart: good riddance.”

China also used the festive season to start the trial of 12 people arrested in Hong Kong for the crime of trying to flee to Taiwan. The accused hoped to escape draconian new security laws imposed by Beijing to stop locals from claiming the right to say what they think. That's pretty much forbidden now, if it happens to offend Beijing's official view on acceptable thought.

As if to emphasize how little it thinks of things like rights, the trial was held in secret and adjourned without a word about the outcome. When a U.S. official criticized the situation, China issued the usual demand to “immediately stop interfering in China's internal affairs.”

Given that this is supposed to be a time of year of contemplation and assessment, you have to wonder what President Xi Jinping and his coterie of heavies think they are accomplishing. It's generally known that Xi is set on elevating China's international stature, but doing so by attacking, insulting, threatening or persecuting people, either at home or abroad, seems an odd way of doing it.

The reasoning seems faulty. For instance, recent reports have it that Beijing's vast propaganda machine has mounted a determined effort to reject responsibility for the COVID-19 outbreak, blaming it on somebody else.

Maybe it started in India, suggests the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Maybe it emerged from Italy. Maybe it snuck into the country via imported frozen food. In the opening months of the pandemic, designated apologists promulgated theories of a U.S. plot to unleash the virus. If that's the case, the scheme certainly backfired. COVID is now the leading cause of death in the U.S., with 330,000 fatalities, while China claims to have pretty much returned to business as usual.

What's curious about the effort is this question: just who is Beijing trying to convince, its captive domestic audience or the rest of the world? Chinese people are used to being told what to believe, with state censorship ensuring they have little access to alternative facts. Any suggestion China might have been responsible for a crisis that has robbed much of the world of a full year of normality would have been dead on arrival, scrubbed clean from the pages of state publications and party-controlled websites. Anyone inclined to disbelieve the official account would be welcome to occupy a cell in one of the danker corners of the nearest re-education centre.

So why bother? They may be able to dupe the locals, but do Communist bosses expect anyone beyond the reach of state censors — i.e., the rest of the world — to swallow such bunk?

Maybe they're getting nervous. Britain's Financial Times recently reported that Xi's signature economic plan, the “belt-androad” scheme to increase Chinese influence in developing countries, is struggling. Loans have fallen off dramatically as strapped governments in low-income countries threaten default over ill-conceived megaprojects. “It's undeniable that the program has run into deep trouble, along with many of the associated loans,” according to Bloomberg News.

Coal shortages are forcing factory cutbacks, shorter working hours and restrictions on power consumption at the same time Beijing is refusing coal shipments from Australia in a spat over who caused COVID. China normally imports US$14 billion ($18 billion) in Australian coal, but shipments have sat for months in ports without being unloaded, and without explanation why. This month shipments from Australia's busiest terminal stopped altogether rather than add to the lineup of vessels already waiting. While Beijing characteristically insists the spat has nothing to do with the shortage, a state-owned newspaper reported that power plants were being granted imports without the usual restrictions “except for Australia.”

All China's neighbours know what it is doing and are increasingly prepared to say so. Official denials haven't stopped criticism of Uyghur Muslims being forced into internment camps or deployed as forced labour, or lessened concerns over efforts to squelch Mongolian-language education and culture. Taiwan is justifiably alarmed over increasingly flagrant threats of invasion. India and Vietnam recently staged joint naval exercises in the South China Sea as a response to Chinese expansionism; Washington sent the USS John S. McCain through disputed waters near the Spratly islands just before Christmas as a signal that Chinese aggression won't go unchallenged.

On Monday a Chinese court sentenced a 37-yearold woman to four years in jail for posting video reports from Wuhan on the impact of the virus in the weeks after the outbreak. Any regime so fearful of honesty has a fatal flaw at its core. The Soviet empire lasted just 70 years before collapsing under the weight of its own failings. There's nothing that grants China's Communists immunity from a similar fate.