Advertisement
Coronavirus pandemic
This Week in AsiaOpinion
Chow Chung-yan
Chow Chung-yan

Asian Angle | Blaming China for the coronavirus will come back to haunt the West

  • Beijing’s mistakes do not give Western politicians a Get Out Of Jail Free card
  • Hypocrisy on steroids may take the heat off the backs of Johnson, Trump and co., but their relief will be short lived

Reading Time:5 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
Dark times: a pedestrian passes the Bank of England during the coronavirus lockdown. Photo: AFP
Chow Chung-yan

The game of politics, according to the philosopher Bertrand Russell, is the process by which people choose the man who will get the blame. And we have been seeing some masterful play lately.

Advertisement
Downing Street is “furious”. Senior members of Boris Johnson’s cabinet – the virus-stricken prime minister is probably too short of breath to raise his own voice – told British media that China would face a “reckoning” for its mishandling of the coronavirus outbreak.

Beijing lied, covered up and shanghaied us into believing that this nature’s scourge is nothing but a common flu, some kind of snowflake that will melt away once spring is upon us. Because of their treachery, tens of thousands of Brits are now lying in hospitals and fighting for their lives. Who should pay for this?

China, of course.

In this day and age where originality is less sacred but more scarce than toilet paper, the Eton boys are hardly the first ones coming to this startling realisation. For weeks, their senior cousins in the White House have already decided who should be held responsible for the biggest cock-up of our times.

Advertisement
Certainly not Donald Trump, who “felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic”. The only reason why under such Delphian leadership, the United States has faltered in its response to the outbreak (including a testing fiasco in the early stages) can be explained only by the depth of deception across the Pacific.
Advertisement