Has China Exploited The Pandemic, Or It It Media Scare Tactics?
If you are a regular reader of British tabloids you may be surprised to learn that the 2019 strain of coronavirus (COVID-19) was not in fact developed in a government lab (you may also be shocked to learn that Megan Markle is not in fact the devil incarnate). Tabloid headlines in the last six months have painted a broad picture of malicious intent by China to spread a deadly disease globally. Examples include a headline by The Sun: “DEADLY SECRET: China ‘found coronavirus strain SEVEN YEARS ago and sent it to Wuhan lab to study but said nothing after pandemic’” or one by the Daily Mail: “Scientists to examine the possibility Covid-19 leaked from a Chinese lab as part of investigation into the virus’s origins.”
Covid-19 is the 2019 strain of coronavirus. Other strains include SARS (Cov-2) which also originated in China and MERS (MERS-CoV) which was discovered in Saudi Arabia. These are all upper-respiratory diseases which vary in contagiousness and lethality. Just to briefly humour the tabloids, both SARS and MERS came from bats through an intermediate host, so chances are Covid-19 did as well. Signs of inverted gene sequences would be spotted if the virus genome had been altered and the points which are different from bat viruses are scattered pretty randomly, indicating a natural evolution. There were no evil scientists in labs splicing genes. When looking for movies predicting 2020, watch Contagion not Jurassic Park.
Now that the conspiracy theories of China are debunked (I’m not touching the 5G one, I respect the readership more than that) I feel it is important to examine why the tabloids pedal these farcical theories.
The short answer: racism.
Generalisations have always been profitable for the media and they are easy to fall back on in a national emergency (especially when the alternative is to be introspective). But of course, generalizations about countries inevitably reintroduce old racist stereotypes with a new lick of tabloid paint. The government of The People’s Republic of China is authoritarian and responsible for a regime which does not allow for criticism and gets away with terrible things. However, memes about bats and wet-food markets reinforce stereotypes that ‘other’ the Chinese people both in China and the UK. Trump’s moniker of the ‘Chinese virus’ equates a disease with a people, which considering how much xenophobic narratives have correlated immigrant populations with infections, seems pretty on the nose.
Tabloids reinforce these stereotypes because the Chinese state fits the profile of big bad that is coveted by those who desire for politics to be black and white. International politics has often fit this broad narrative as the systems which are in place today were born in the Cold War with the US and the USSR fighting over spheres of influence. China’s economic growth in the last few decades has made the state an international powerhouse, which threatens the status quo of the West (especially the US) being always on top.
But also, and I cannot stress this enough, the British tabloid press is racist.
So even though it has been proven that COVID-19 was not a bioweapon created in a lab in Wuhan, this does not disprove the idea that China has benefitted from the virus. Which they have, but not to the detriment of the UK (or even the West). I am of the belief that China has used Covid-19 regulations to quash any protests in Hong Kong over the National Security law and National Anthem bill that was pushed through. The current Covid regulations prevent groups of more than eight gathering outside. The laws give sweeping powers to arrest those deemed a threat to national security using deliberately vague criteria. A similar law attempted to pass in 2003 but was stopped by wide protests, similar to those that stopped the extradition bill in 2019. While I have no doubts that these laws would have been eventually pushed through, I feel the Hong Kong government took advantage of the ‘legitimate’ excuse to quash protesters.
China has also benefitted from an effective pandemic response which has allowed for the economy (which stuttered for the first time in two decades) to recover more effectively than most other countries widely affected by the pandemic. But this is not the Chinese government taking advantage of the virus, they were simply able to enact an efficient lockdown and an effective track and trace system.
However, I do think it is counterproductive to focus on criticising the Chinese government about the virus when there are many other things to focus on. The National Security Law has put the citizens of Hong Kong is a perilous position and has been used to arrest of chase out the pro-democracy leaders.
On top of this, the cultural genocide of Uighur Muslims is still ongoing with hundreds of thousands kept in prison camps in Xinjiang for re-education. Over a million are thought to have been detained without trial. The camps promote strict discipline and punishment and are specifically designed to remove Muslim Uighurs as a distinct cultural group. The reports of forced sterilizations as well as other human rights abuses paints a horrific tale. The only reason that countries have not accused the Chinese government of genocide despite the fact the crisis of Muslim Uighurs meets the legal distinction is that international law requires countries making the accusation to act to stop it. With the strength of the Chinese state and the vulnerability of other countries due to Covid, they are reluctant to put themselves in that position.
So, rather than spew hate at your local Chinese restaurant or fall into a QAnon rabbit hole, instead do some research to see what you can do to help those who are actually being targeted by the Chinese government. My recommended place to start: do some googling of which clothing brands use cotton picked in Xianjiang…
Written by Zoe Williams
Zoe is 22 and originally from Bath but currently residing in Manchester. She just graduated in Politics and therefore loves a good rant about Brexit and Boris Johnson. She is currently working for a Coffee chain that shall remain nameless, but they pay far too little tax and keep their staff’s tips. Unsurprisingly she is on the market for a new job. She is also a textile artist when she finds the time.