World
Time to put China on lockdown for its dishonesty amid
coronavirus crisis
Glenn Harlan Reynolds, Opinion columnist
USA TODAY OpinionApril 6, 2020, 9:01 PM PDT
https://www.yahoo.com/news/time-put-china-lockdown-dishonesty-040108582.html
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There are many lessons to be learned from the Wuhan
coronavirus pandemic. But one is already clear: China needs to be isolated
from the civilized world until its behavior improves. We are in the
current situation, with deaths and economic devastation worldwide, because
China handled this outbreak with its trademark mixture of dishonesty, incompetence and
thuggery. Were China a more civilized nation, this outbreak would have
been stopped early, and with far less harm, inside and outside of China.
As Marion Smith wrote in these pages on Sunday, China’s first response was
to clamp down on reports of the then-new disease that had appeared in
Wuhan. The brave doctor, Li Wenliang, who first reported the disease to fellow
physicians was silenced by police. Chinese media reports of the disease were censored by the government. So were ordinary citizens
reporting on social media.
Coronavirus coverup
According to U.S. intelligence agencies, China systematically deceived the world about the
extent of the outbreak, lulling other nations into a false sense of security
that delayed a response by weeks or even months.
As Smith writes: “Beijing denied until Jan. 20 that human to human transmission was
occurring. Yet at the same time, Chinese officials and state-owned companies
were urgently acquiring bulk medical supplies — especially personal protective
equipment like masks and gloves — from Australia, Europe, and around the world. Put simply, Beijing hoarded
the world’s life-saving resources while falsely claiming that people’s lives
weren’t at risk.”
And this is the most charitable account, based on China
failing to deal with what was, at root, a naturally occurring disease
outbreak. And it may have been naturally occurring. But people are
increasingly entertaining the possibility that the COVID-19 virus was
accidentally released by a Chinese virology lab in Wuhan.
That notion was once dismissed as a conspiracy theory, but
it has since been discussed in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and by
uber-establishment Washington Post columnist David Ignatius. The talk is of an accidental release,
not the deliberate deployment of a biological weapon — which makes sense, since
few nations would release a bioweapon in their own heartland — but if it’s true
it only makes the Chinese government look worse, though it perhaps explains
their unwillingness to be forthcoming.
Chinese President Xi Jinping visits Hangzhou, in eastern
China's Zhejiang Province, on March 31, 2020.
But wherever the virus came from, China’s response was
inept, dishonest and utterly inconsiderate of the rest of the
world. A competent, honest response would have placed the world on notice
much earlier. A China that cared about the rest of the world would have halted
flights abroad while this disease was spreading, instead of allowing its
citizens to spread willy-nilly around the globe. (As Brian Kennedy writes: “China seems to have taken the position that
if they were to suffer the coronavirus, so too was the United States and the
rest of the world. What else is to explain the continuation of flights from
China to the United States at the rate of some 20,000 passengers a day, until
President Trump wisely shut them down?”)
China needs to show good global citizenship
This calls for a response.
The response needs to be harsh enough to teach the
Chinese government a lesson, which means pretty harsh, as they appear to
still think they can brazen this out. Among other things, the United
States — and ideally the world community at large — need to sharply reduce
economic relations with China. In particular, no one should be relying on them
for medicines, medical equipment and other vital goods. (China’s
state news service threatened to plunge America into a “mighty sea” of coronavirus by withholding critical
medications.) Chinese scientists should no longer have easy access to
Western laboratories or universities. Chinese political leaders should no
longer find it easy to travel the world.
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Congress should pass legislation stripping the Chinese
government of sovereign immunity to lawsuits for COVID-19 damage in the United
States. China should be stripped of its leadership roles in international
organizations. And finally, Taiwan — a nation that has handled the outbreak
better than almost any other nation, but has been excluded from
the World Health Organization because its membership would offend the Chinese
government — deserves membership in WHO, and full diplomatic recognition
from the United States, and the rest of the world.
Hotline: Share your coronavirus story
These are harsh penalties and the Chinese government won’t
like them. They will involve much loss of face for the Chinese Communist
Party leadership. But they deserve it, and an example needs to be made. The
world is a small and interconnected place now. Those who would profit from
globalization, as the Chinese ruling class has, need to show good global
citizenship. Now is the time to make that lesson stick.
Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law
professor and the author of "The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American
Education from Itself," is a member of USA TODAY's Board of
Contributors.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Time to put China on lockdown for its dishonesty amid
coronavirus crisis
