China And The Coronavirus

CHINA

Advance, Parry, Thrust

How did the coronavirus pandemic start in China? It’s hard to answer that question.

The Chinese government recently increased the total number of infections to more than 80,000 and the number of deaths from the virus to more than 4,600, according to a University of Maryland press release.

Those numbers would suggest that Chinese efforts to contain the virus in the populous, authoritarian country worked extremely well.

But Hong Kong researchers writing in the respected British medical journal, The Lancet, recently found that the number of infections could be almost four times higher because Chinese officials changed the definition of the virus as their epidemic progressed.

Additionally, an increasing number of asymptomatic people who contracted the virus in Wuhan, where the pandemic originated, appear to be testing positive again, Reuters reported. Doctors can’t or won’t explain whether these folks were incorrectly tested in the first place, if they re-contracted the virus or whether something else is happening.

Knowing what exactly happened, and when, helps researchers everywhere learn more about the virus, and how to combat it.

Complicating the free flow of information, China has launched an extraordinary propaganda campaign to counteract the negative attention it has received since the pandemic began.

While seeking to suppress journalists who describe “despair, misery and everyday life” in Wuhan and elsewhere, Chinese state-supported news outlets have played up stories about supply shortages among American and British medical workers and described overwhelmed hospitals in Italy and Spain with terms like “purgatory” and “apocalypse,” the New York Times reported. Similar experiences in Chinese hospitals have been labeled as rumors.

Russia and Iran have joined China in the campaign. In March, the New York Post wrote, the three countries were behind fake news reports that the US government was planning to deploy troops in the streets to maintain public order as the coronavirus crisis escalated.

The propaganda isn’t necessarily working. Instead, the backlash is growing.

The state of Missouri has sued China for spreading the coronavirus, a complaint China claims is absurd. Developing countries have been leery of Chinese outreach, Foreign Policy magazine wrote. Europe is looking into diversifying away from Chinese supply chains, noted Bloomberg.

What’s more, the environment has given rise to theories about what else Chinese leaders might be hiding, like whether the coronavirus was created in the government’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, the local equivalent to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Axios detailed how one of those theories was highly unlikely – that the coronavirus was a biological weapon under development – while another – that researchers were studying it when an employee accidentally took it out of the facility – was plausible.

Regardless, anger at China has been growing worldwide over the past two months, mostly due to its numbers game and its lack of transparency regarding information on the virus. What’s adding fuel to that blaze is its quickness to capitalize financially on others’ misfortune – with exports of sometimes faulty medical equipment and its circling of foreign companies for takeovers – when it’s the source of it, say analysts. Then throw its propaganda gamesmanship into the mix.

All powers traditionally move quick to press their advantages. The problem, some note, is China’s clumsiness in its zeal to get ahead.

In fencing, an “Esquive” is a deflective maneuver to evade an attack before going on the offensive. But for it to be effective, it must be artfully executed.