This pandemic is a creature of capitalist globalisation, not any single country. ‘Chinese culture’ is a convenient scapegoat...

For politicians in the US and western Europe seeking to distract from their own disastrous mismanagement of the Covid-19 pandemic, the idea of “China” has become a convenient scapegoat. Are critics merely condemning the way the Communist party concealed information during those crucial January weeks? Or, is the clear subtext that the real culprits are the “Chinese people” and their exotic culture and habits? Leave it to Nigel Farage to clumsily play both sides, claiming both that he held “no ill-will against the Chinese people” but that the problem lay with “appalling hygiene conditions in Chinese wildlife markets” and the customary diet of bats and pangolins.

Let’s take the claim that the novel coronavirus was caused by a culturally peculiar fondness for eating pangolins. The great irony of blaming some vague notion of Chinese culture is that the best responses to the pandemic have come from the ethnic Chinese majority governments of Taiwan (five deaths, 380 cases), Singapore (six/1,910), and Hong Kong (four/974). Yes, their responsible policies were due largely to the trauma of the 2003 Sars epidemic but also have to do with the history of robust welfare states in East Asia, which, unlike Europe and the US, have increasingly invested in healthcare infrastructure to deal with precisely such crises. To push back on the anti-China line is not to apologise or defend the state’s actions. It is clear that local officials were wrong to silence Dr Li Wenliang, who alerted friends about the virus as early as possible.

Most observers agree that China covered up the crisis in Wuhan for three weeks in January, and this lost time probably decided the difference between a local versus a global epidemic. Nevertheless, it is still sobering to read reports that even from mid-January other governments took even longer to respond: the UK dragged its feet for an interminable eight weeks and the US ignored clear warning signs for 70 days. This inactivity was partly the product of a western exceptionalism that believed viruses and epidemics only happen “over there”, in poor and non-white countries. This is a crucial point for challenging anti-Asian racism.

During Italy’s worst weeks, officials admitted they initially viewed the Wuhan crisis as a “science-fiction movie that had nothing to do with us(Italians)”.
In Philadelphia, in a more tragic offshoot of racial thinking, rumours circulated that the virus could not infect black Americans because it was a Chinese disease, misinformation that officials now fear exacerbated inequalities.

Ultimately, both the pandemic and the accompanying anti-Asian backlash are dynamics that go beyond questions of culture and xenophobia, carrying serious life-and-death consequences. In the US, such fears were already manifest in populist claims that China alone(and not the domestic political and business class) was to blame for the loss of manufacturing jobs. In the wake of a referendum result seen as a vote against globalisation, anxieties in the UK have recently been manifest in panic over Huawei providing the country’s 5G network. Fears over China were not created by coronavirus, but find in it a most apt metaphor, as a global and invisible force of destruction.

It follows that these dangerous sentiments will not automatically disappear when a vaccine is created, unless we demand more than liberal appeals for tolerance.

Written by: Andrew Liu who is an assistant professor of history at Villanova University and the author of Tea War: A History of Capitalism in China and India

Source: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/10/blaming-china-coronavirus-pandemic-capitalist-globalisation-scapegoat

#copied

@Lalastica
@mynd44
@dominique
@seun

In a forum I won't tell you, I have seen many things, read many comments and documents too but I can't show them here so I don't get doxed. There is more to corona than meets the eye. I'm not a 5g bullshit monger OK?

I have spoken.

bigt2:
In a forum I won't tell you, I have seen many things, read many comments and documents too but I can't show them here so I don't get doxed. There is more to corona than meets the eye. I'm not a 5g bullshit monger OK?

I have spoken.

Even the mods have refused pushing it to Frontpage... But if it were some video that involved a Chinese man beating a Nigerian, that would have made Frontpage... Funny enough most of the people who call the virus a Chinese virus can even prove why with facts... They just copy whatever the majority says l..

I will blame china, the world will never forgive china.
When we were affected with Ebola, I doubt if it reaches western countries.
See as them cripple our growing economy, Hunger and crime rate increasing in the land.

Felixamos:

Even the mods have refused pushing it to Frontpage... But if it were some video that involved a Chinese man beating a Nigerian, that would have made Frontpage... Funny enough most of the people who call the virus a Chinese virus can even prove why with facts... They just copy whatever the majority says l..

Lol even Most times your post gets locked because of duplication while the earlier is moved to the front page while it would be on the reverse if you should be the one to post first. These and many more....
Seun be careful o!

I have spoken

bigt2:

Lol even Most times your post gets locked because of duplication while the earlier is moved to the front page while it would be on the reverse if you should be the one to post first. These and many more....
Seun be careful o!

I have spoken

As in ehn... Very true...

Very apt write up. People should take responsibility for their actions. Heaping blames will not make the virus go away. If the virus started in the USA, it may have been worse because Trump will doubt for as long as. Many countries slipped. People in Nigeria are still doubting. Someone told me last night that Obiano manufactured corona virus to collect money from FG. Last week it was 5G. Can the world please face the reality and solve this virus. I can't wait for this to end.

Amhappy:
Very apt write up. People should take responsibility for their actions. Heaping blames will not make the virus go away. If the virus started in the USA, it may have been worse because Trump will doubt for as long as. Many countries slipped. People in Nigeria are still doubting. Someone told me last night that Obiano manufactured corona virus to collect money from FG. Last week it was 5G. Can the world please face the reality and solve this virus. I can't wait for this to end.

Bless you..