By Michael Auslin
Tuesday, March 31, 2020
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is waging a ferocious,
global propaganda campaign designed to deflect blame for the origin and spread
of the COVID-19 outbreak from Wuhan, China. Moreover, Beijing is trying to take
advantage of the pandemic to increase its global standing and influence. There
are three main reasons why the world must hold the CCP accountable for the
first global pandemic in a century.
Morality
The first reason the CCP must be held accountable for the
pandemic is that morality demands it. General Secretary Xi Jinping’s regime has
refused to accept responsibility for allowing the epidemic to spread
uncontrolled, first in Wuhan, then throughout China, and finally beyond its
borders to the rest of the world. Chinese officials knew of the seriousness of
the pandemic as early as December, yet waited weeks to begin restricting
travel, allowing scores of Wuhan residents to visit relatives elsewhere in the
country and abroad, spreading the virus as they went. British scientists have
argued that if Beijing had acted just three weeks earlier, it could have
reduced the spread of the virus by 95 percent.
We also know that in the time before the outbreak’s
seriousness became apparent outside China, the CCP destroyed laboratory samples
and punished the brave doctors and citizens who tried to warn their countrymen
and the world about the pathogen, while refusing foreign offers of help. We are
almost certain that Beijing dramatically underreported the number of deaths in
Wuhan, and is no longer reporting new infections in China. Leaked photos
have shown huge lines of Chinese waiting for the cremated remains of their
loved ones in Wuhan, and widely shared calculations on social media of
crematoria activity estimate up to 46,000 deaths in Wuhan alone, far above the
country’s official death toll of just 3,300. Riots
are breaking out as people desperate to leave Wuhan’s Hubei province are
stopped at internal checkpoints.
In short, the CCP, which for years has claimed to be a
responsible member of the global community, showed its true colors when this
crisis hit. It can no longer be denied that Xi’s regime is a danger to the
world. Justice demands it be held morally culpable for its dangerous and
callous behavior.
Global Governance
The second reason that Beijing must be held accountable
is a political one: The CCP’s actions have gravely undermined global political
governance. As legal expert James Kraska has noted, China was morally and
legally bound, as a party to the 2005 International Health Regulations, to
“provide expedited, timely, accurate, and sufficiently detailed information to
[the World Health Organization] about . . . potential public health emergencies”
such as the coronavirus. Instead of doing so in this case, Beijing actively
misled the WHO about the crucial fact that the pathogen was transmitted between
humans. The result is that Xi can no longer credibly claim the CCP adheres to
international law, and that the corruptibility of long-standing
intergovernmental organizations such as the WHO is more apparent than ever.
Moreover, despite being portrayed as a selfless provider
of medical aid to other affected countries, Beijing is actually reaping hundreds
of millions in profits by selling equipment to panic-stricken governments
abroad. Much of that is useless
and is being returned
by Spain, the Czech Republic, and Malaysia, among other countries. This sort of
thing is typical of the least altruistic regime on earth, and worse may be on
the way: Xi’s government will likely expect political favors from the countries
it has “aided” during the crisis, the same way that aid recipient Greece was
pressured to block an EU statement on Chinese human rights in 2017.
Those who believe that good global governance, however
flawed, is an important tool for maintaining international peace and for
contributing to development and growth should be appalled at how the CCP is
undermining the liberal international architecture and suborning global
institutions to its will. The normalization of such misbehavior cannot be
allowed to stand.
Protecting against the
Next Deadly Pathogen
The third reason Beijing must be held responsible is to
prevent another pandemic from ravaging the world in the future. As we saw in
the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Dallas, Texas, and are seeing again now, the era of
globalization has allowed once-isolated pathogens to leap across national
boundaries. Dr. Anthony Fauci of the CDC is among many who have pointed out
that Italy has been devastated by the Wuhan coronavirus partly because it hosts
a huge number of Chinese tourists as well as workers in the northern
manufacturing regions where the virus emerged. In all, 310,000 Chinese live in
Italy, and many returned there after visiting China for the Lunar New Year,
spreading the virus to their adopted home country. This was, again, the fault
of CCP officials, who failed to implement the proper travel restrictions
despite knowing of the outbreak’s seriousness.
If Beijing escapes blame for its failure to curb the
coronavirus pandemic, its lies, and its attempts to cover up the pathogen’s
seriousness — or, worse yet, if it actually earns global plaudits for its
actions — then no country will feel the need to be honest with the world when
another epidemic breaks out, and the same deadly fiasco will repeat itself.
Meanwhile, an emboldened CCP will grow only more aggressive and repressive,
having learned that it can fool and bully the world into submission. Quite simply,
if nation states do not understand that there will be repercussions for such
malfeasance, then our globalized world will suffer more coronavirus-style
pandemics in the future.
Beijing freely chose to deny the truth of COVID-19, and
its governing malpractice and incompetence helped unleashed a pandemic on the
world. For the sake of morality, political governance, and the future, the
world must speak truth to power, remember the facts, and condemn the CCP’s
actions.
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