Rightways: China needs to play tough with US on virus origins tracing

Monday, 26 July 2021

China needs to play tough with US on virus origins tracing

Origin-tracing. Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

By forcing the World Health Organization to put the focus of the COVID-19 origins tracing on China again, the US intends to kill two birds with one stone: help the US shift the blame of poor pandemic handling, and build a long-term strategic public opinion and political containment against China by tracing the COVID-19 origins. China's only choice is to fight back with more intensity.

The Biden administration's overall response to the pandemic has been no better than the Trump administration's. Breakthrough of the COVID-19 vaccine research was achieved during Trump's administration. The Biden administration's efforts to mobilize American population to fully get vaccinated have failed to fulfill its promise. And the epidemic is back on the rise. The Biden administration, which faces a growing risk of being punished in the midterm elections for its poor response to the pandemic, now has as much political need to blame China as the Trump administration.

The Biden administration is fully copying the Trump administration's line of political hooliganism: using every means to frame China. As the epidemic continues to rage in the US, Washington is finding it hard to directly shift its responsibility to China. Therefore they are playing the "COVID-19 origins card" fiercely, and comprehensively politicized a task that should have been scientifically advanced as nothing mobilizes Americans more than politics. Making Americans mad can make them stupid. Then they will feel that the ridiculous notion that China is responsible for US' failure to fight the pandemic "makes sense."

The vast majority of scientists and US media outlets last year publicly disapproved the allegation of a "lab leak" from Wuhan Institute of Virology. Recently, a large number of them changed their stance, and did not believe the conclusion that the link between the Wuhan Virology Institute and the epidemic had been basically ruled out after the WHO expert team visited the lab last year. A large part of the American scientific and public opinion community was apparently "fooled" by the Biden administration and became "political animals" to follow the politicians.

Trump's strategy was to teach Americans to hate China until they felt that the US government was lovable no matter how stupid it was. New cases in the US now reach 40,000 or 50,000 in a single day under the Biden administration, and it's going up. This is not a small number, even compared to daily cases during Trump's administration. The pandemic-response is still poor even with the vaccines. If American voters don't hate China very much, how can they not find out that they elected people to lead the country who are even more stupid than the last one?

The Democratic Party has only a one seat advantage in the Senate and a limited edge in the House of Representatives, the Biden administration's rapid descent into a lame-duck administration would be a joke if the Democrats lose both Senate and the House next year. As a result, the Democratic administration quickly acted recklessly. They inherited almost all the previous administration's China-bashing policies and went even further.

Tracing the origins of the virus is a good topic for Washington, because it's one that makes scientists frown. This is an area where political maneuvering is best done in a way that confuses the public: Since it's hard to reach a definitive conclusion quickly, the US can claim what it says it "right."

The aggressive and arrogant Western ideological bloc assembled by the US is now making the world lose basic moral rule and less open to debate. The coordinates of justice have been destroyed, the standards of good and evil have been tampered with. The US often talks about dealing with China "from a position of strength," but Washington itself in fact is in its relatively weakest position of strength, and they have even abused the definition of "position of strength."

The US leads the world in the epidemic death toll, but it still bosses around the world in the global fight against the pandemic. Washington is invincible because it is impudent. In dealing with the US on controversial issues, China must understand that there is no reasoning with the US at all. We only reason with the world, and we have no choice but to play hardball with the US.

We should demonstrate our determination and ability to confront the US and resolutely fight the arrogance of the US. The Biden administration's ability to deal with difficult issues between China and the US is much weaker than the Trump administration's. They already have far fewer resources than they had four years ago, and Biden himself has less decision-making power than Trump. On issues such as tracing the origins of the virus, we need to be tough with Washington. We need to make sure that whatever Washington says is in vain, and let the world see its rhetoric as a joke. The world will ultimately see Washington paying the price for its wrong China policy.