President Xi’s legitimacy is built on narrative control.
The US President famously said in February 2021 that his Chinese counterpart did not have a democratic bone in his body. Nor, may I add, a truthful vein?
In chapter 18 of the Gospel of John, Pontius Pilate asks: Quid est veritas (What is truth?). The truth can hurt. When a person or institution or nation has something to hide, he or it tends to be very touchy and aggressive if demands are made to come clean.
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks” says Queen Gertrude in response to the insincere overacting of a character in Hamlet. Throughout history, regimes have sought to control the narrative, to shape the “truth”. During the Cold War, the Soviet information blockade was the Iron Curtain, the Chinese version the Bamboo Curtain. Glasnost and Perestroika came, and the Soviet Union went.
Liberal democracies use leaks and preferential briefings to win over media outlets, autocracies use coercion and repression.
On the eve of President Xi’s visit to Wuhan, on 7 March 2020, Wuhan’s top leader announced that he planned to offer “gratitude education” for residents of the city, who should thank the General Secretary, and thank the Chinese Communist Party.
In his 31 December 2019 speech to his people, even as the Chinese were dying, PingPong boasted that China had friends everywhere and swore to create “a beautiful future for mankind” (as long as it was a future with Chinese characteristics including repression, exploitation, abuse, humiliation and genocide).
Shameful Xi now leads China’s unending long march of lies beginning with untruths about Communist China’s casualties during the disastrous Great Leap Forward, the terrible Cultural Revolution, the wars with Korea, India, USSR, Vietnam, Tiananmen Square etc. The truth does not disappear by being denied.
Sadly, Chinese-looking looking people in Europe and North America are being attacked.
China blames everyone else except itself, because the Communist God (presently Shri PingPong) can do no wrong, least of all the original sin of creating the deadly virus.
China has been chastised by various countries for suppressing information that could have helped in controlling the disease in the earlier stages.
According to a study conducted last year by the University of Southampton, if China had acted three weeks earlier, infectious cases could have been reduced by 95%.
China may have dealt quickly with the virus, it will be aeons before it recovers its international reputation.
Chinese officials wait with trepidation for the forthcoming book “What Really Happened in Wuhan”.
The lying stakes are very high for China, afraid that the virus may draw attention to its awful domestic conditions, environmental degradation, intrusive and malfunctioning government, and poor public healthcare system.
President Xi’s legitimacy is built on narrative control. China has grave concerns about regime stability and survival.
Manufacturing and trade are already shifting away from China, and affecting its economy and aspirations for superpower status. China is concerned that it might be blamed for the ensuing global recession. While the rest of the world flounders, Beijing boasts of its success in virtually eradicating the disease and returning life within its borders to something like normal.
Chinese officials are not savvy. They are stupid, unaware that the Middle Kingdom concept has expired. Confucianism stresses loyalty and obedience to hierarchy, Chinese officials must do as they are told or else…
The Chinese Ambassador threatened Bangladesh with fire and brimstone if it played footsie with the Quad, and was rapped on his knuckles. Instead of permitting research into the origins of the virus (as demanded by so many), vital to prevent the next pandemic, China is more focused on who should be blamed.
There is no doubt in the minds of senior Chinese leadership about the origin of the virus, so obfuscation is imperative. China first denied that it was a Chinese virus, then declared victory over it, then offered to help the world, and now whines like a cornered animal.
China officially informed the WHO about the new virus on 31 December 2019 but kept its citizens in the dark. Although the first symptom of infection was evident in Wuhan on 1 December 2019, it was only on 23 January 2020 that China acted.
The Chinese government’s tactic of shifting blame during a crisis is not new. There are numerous instances in which China has used nationalism not only to shift the blame but also to galvanize the Chinese public in times of crisis. However, as much as the Chinese government blames the world for hounding China, it has never informed its citizens regarding its own violation of World Trade Organization rules, such as subsidies and tax rebates to export-oriented enterprises, or dumping, or manipulating its currency.
By the last week of January 2020, five million people had left Wuhan and China did not ban international flights even though a travel ban would have prevented the global spread of the disease.
Instead, Beijing severely criticized countries that imposed a travel ban on people coming from China and its egregious son-in-law, the clown who heads the World Health Organization, rushed to Beijing in January 2020 and appealed to everyone to keep travelling to China (why did he not contract Covid?). His lavish public praise of China’s leadership in combatting the disease came even as evidence mounted that Chinese officials had silenced whistleblowers and suppressed information.
The February 2020 death of young Chinese Doctor Li Wenliang who first sounded the alarm about the virus became the top trending topic on Chinese social media with calls for more freedom of speech, for the Wuhan government to apologise, and for a law to protect whistle-blowers (Li had been warned against spreading “rumours”). The hashtags were erased, and professional and citizen journalists punished for daring to write about the virus.
President Xi’s speech on 3 February 2020 (featured on state media) asked his minions to win international support and understanding through diplomacy and propaganda.
On cue, China’s propaganda apparatus went into overdrive to change the virus narrative, Government social media launched a campaign questioning the origins of the virus, blaming the United States and India and Italy and Australia and everybody else. An email sent by the Chinese Embassy in Australia warned journalists not to suggest that it originated in China, and Chinese missions in several countries tried to buy media friendship. Chinese diplomats engaged in an outright campaign of denial and misinformation, through vituperative aggression, proclaiming piously that the virus may have been first discovered in Wuhan, but did not originate there.
Though the virus first appeared in late 2019, Chinese health officials were told to shut up till 31 December 2019, when Xi PingPong (Emperor of the world in this life and the next and the next) would make his New Year address.
Just after the Emperor spoke, China officially informed its son-in-law that patients in Wuhan had contracted a mysterious pneumonia unresponsive to conventional treatment. Senior Chinese epidemiologists, with sworn loyalty to PingPong, rushed to Wuhan, and immediately shut down the wet market that sold strange stuff like bats and pangolins, sanitizing it several times to destroy any trace of the illness or its causes. Within a week, Chinese scientists claimed (after instructions from PingPong) that it was a novel coronavirus, and instead of calling it a “Chinese virus”, ordered the WHO to deem it “Covid-19”. The son-in-law promptly complied, without consulting his colleagues. There is no evidence of people-to-people transmission, said Beijing. There is none, echoed its parrot in Geneva. The first casualty in Wuhan was on 11 January 2020. Two days later, Thailand reported the first case outside China. A week later, China’s senior scientist leading the battle against his own virus said: “It is certain that it is a human-to-human transmission phenomenon.” With egg all over his face, the Director General of WHO promptly confirmed this. And on 23 January 2020, Wuhan and the entire province with 50 million people of which it is the capital, was quarantined. No movement was permitted within major cities (including Beijing and Shanghai), even though it was the time of the Chinese New Year, Traffic within China fell 90%. And it ordered its diaspora to return to their countries of residence.
While banning domestic flights in China, PingPong’s minions ordered international airlines to maintain their schedules. The WHO promptly issued an advisory against banning flights to China. Its disgraceful Director General claimed that “there is no reason for measures that unnecessarily interfere with international transit and trade”. I believe his prepared statement had come from Beijing. For several weeks China continued to protest international travel bans, even as it locked down several cities and banned domestic flights. On 31 January 2020, fearing a major epidemic from thousands of Chinese tourists and residents, Italy banned flights to and from China. “How dare you!” the Chinese Foreign Ministry scolded the Italian Ambassador, “how can you take a decision without asking us?”
China, and its Sancho Panza, hid the severity of the virus till mid-March 2020 when the WHO belatedly declared it a global pandemic. By then well over 100,000 cases had been reported from 114 countries with over 4,000 deaths. When America’s maverick former President phoned him in end March 2020 to shut down Chinese airlines flying to foreign destinations, a frightened PingPong complied, as deaths were rising by the day in totally unprepared places like USA, Europe and Iran. By then, China had diabolically allowed the virus to proliferate internationally through human contact. The rest of the world remained oblivious to the unprecedented severity of the disease, and only imposed domestic lockdowns two months after China did.
China and its flunkey lied. People died.
As global anger mounted, PingPong’s terrified servants in WHO and the moribund World Trade Organization issued an unparalleled joint appeal in April 2020 (clearly drafted in Beijing): “Governments need to avoid measures that can disrupt supply chains and negatively impact the poorest and most vulnerable… typically reliant on imports of medicines and medical equipment.”
After lying through his teeth, the WHO fellow now reads the Bible!
Xi PingPong said let us first find out the best way to treat the virus, then in a few hundred years we shall look for the origin. Australia persisted in demanding an inquiry. Furious, China sharply curtailed its imports from Australia and its sorry diplomats competed with each other to hurl abuse. One called Australia the white trash of Asia, another called it chewing gum stuck to the boot of China.
Since its reputation was cratering, China tried to be the Good Samaritan and offered masks and personal protective equipment to several nations in March 2020. In July 2020, China offered a $1billion loan for Latin American (worst affected by the pandemic) and Caribbean countries to buy its vaccines. Not many have accepted the offer.
Many European governments rejected Chinese-made equipment with thousands of testing kits and medical masks being below standard or defective. Chinese embassies responded that the faulty equipment was supplied by an unlicensed manufacturer. Pakistan, understandably composed hosannas to PingPong who donated his personal underwear to make masks.
20,000 Indian medical students from China (stranded in India) were told that they could go back if they got vaccinated by the Chinese poison (not available in India!).
While it was knowingly unleashing the worst ever bioterrorist weapon on humankind, in June 2020 China’s State Council released a White Paper saying the Chinese government had always published information about the epidemic in a “timely, open and transparent fashion”.
Ha!
Xi thought the new American administration would kiss and make up. It did not happen.
Rather than regret the deaths of several million people and tens of millions infected (and counting) by its virus, the CPC forced Wuhan, ground zero, whose11 million residents endured a 76-day lockdown, to fake a massive pool party to celebrate the end of the virus and reopening of schools with 1.4 mn students in September 2020.
Even though repeated lies become fantasy and fantasy masquerades as truth, truth has a nasty habit of coming out (satyameva jayate).
On 4 October 2020, the head of emergencies at WHO said that one in ten people in the world might have been infected with the Chinese virus, more than 20 times the earlier estimate. Even as his government was delaying the WHO fact-finding mission’s visit, in his New Year address on 3 December 2020, PingPong brazenly proclaimed that “people across the world should make joint efforts to…build the planet Earth into a better home for all humanity”—of course with Chinese characteristics.
When all the win-win nonsense flopped, China played its last card, bluster, and began flexing its atrophying muscles. The Quad came charging in.
As soon as Taiwan’s Delta Electronics announced that it was halving its footprint in China, PingPong promptly ordered the largest invasion of Taiwanese airspace. Tensions soared. China tried to divert attention from its virus through military action in Galwan. It failed miserably.
And now comes the smoking gun. The Australian newspaper reported that there was credible evidence (based on a leaked 2015 Chinese military document) that Beijing was developing a virus-based bio-weapon. Medical data analysts believe that the virus was created by China. A little dicky bird tells me that the pathogen was tested on dozens of Chinese prisoners. The ethos of a nation reflects in the ethics of its companies.
Ericsson in 2015, and Philips in 2020 sued Xiaomi in Delhi for patent infringement. In 2021, a US company complained to the Delhi High Court of technology theft by Xiaomi. The latter went bawling to the Wuhan People’s Court that ordered the US company to withdraw its case in India. The Delhi High Court has asked the Wuhan chaps to get lost, saying that “the right of the citizen in India to legal redressal…is hallowed, sacred and fundamental”.
Some months ago, an Indian news portal published an unflattering report on PingPong. An apoplectic Chinese embassy ordered them to retract. We believe in press freedom, riposted the portal. What is that asked the Chinese embassy?
One of the suspected aftereffects of the Chinese virus is brain fog or dementia. It has now been proved. When the Communist Party celebrates its centenary in July 2021, there might be no military parade (the Party controls the military) but a litany of time-shattering achievements by Lord PingPong.
China’s reputational damage will keep increasing. The Emperor is a made-in-China fake. He has no clothes.
Ambassador Dr Deepak Vohra is Special Advisor to Prime Minister, Lesotho, South Sudan and Guinea-Bissau; and Special Advisor to Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Councils, Leh and Kargil.