Blaming China for the coronavirus will come back to haunt the West

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.

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.

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.

The world is neck-deep in this mess because the “incompetent, malicious and corrupt” mandarins in Beijing have mismanaged this, so goes the argument. They are directly responsible for the global transmission of the virus and its uncontrollable spread. They do not care enough about hygiene to clean up the wet markets. They have silenced the few whistle-blowers, causing the world to miss its golden chance to nip the virus in its bud. This is a Chinese virus. They must account for it.

Arguments like these turn my stomach. I feel repulsed not because I am Chinese, but because I am trained to respect facts and am naturally allergic to hypocrisy. This, my dear, is hypocrisy on steroids.

Could China have done better to flag the threat? Definitely. Is Beijing telling us the full truth of the outbreak? Most likely not. Has China done enough to keep the virus from spreading? You be the judge. But does this mean the UK and US governments have no role at all in their botched attempts to contain the outbreaks in their respective countries?

For all the missteps and misinformation Beijing has been accused of, London and Washington are just as guilty. I am not here to defend the Chinese government. I am here to decry the self-righteousness and hubris of the free world leaders who should have set the bars higher. Yet, they have failed pathetically.

Allow me to jog your memory.

By all accounts, Chinese doctors first began noticing the appearance of a series of strange pneumonia cases no earlier than mid-November. Bureaucracy and the local authorities’ unwillingness to let an inconvenient truth get in the way of economic growth might have slowed the process of lab-testing. But even the most suspicious minds, including the whistle-blowing doctor Li Wenliang, came to realise we could be dealing with a new virus only by late December, when daily infections reached double digits for the first time.

By January 7, Xi Jinping was alarmed enough to tell the top echelon of the Communist Party to focus on containing the outbreak in Wuhan. The fact-finding officials he dispatched to the city were misinformed by the local authorities and they hesitated to declare, against the better judgement of the experts, that there was evidence of human-to-human transmission.

But by January 23, Beijing had fully realised the consequences of further delays. It took the unprecedented step of shutting down Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, population around 12 million. Similar draconian measures – decried by many in the West as an infringement of human rights – were quickly extended to many other cities in Hubei and beyond. A few weeks later, the party bosses of Hubei and Wuhan were sacked for their cover-up and mishandling of the outbreak.

On January 11, Chinese scientists led by Professor Zhang Yongzhen published the complete genome sequence of the virus on open platforms. On January 24, Chinese doctors and scientists reported the first description of the new disease in The Lancet.

They urged world governments to carefully monitor this new threat because of its “pandemic potential”. They strongly recommended the provision of personal protective gear for health workers and testing for the virus to be done immediately on suspected cases. The mortality rate, they warned, would be high.

“Under immense pressure, as the epidemic exploded around them, they took time to write up their findings in a foreign language and seek publication in a medical journal thousands of miles away. Their rapid and rigorous work was an urgent warning to the world. We owe those scientists enormous thanks,” wrote Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet.

“Why did it take the UK government eight weeks to recognise the seriousness of what we now call Covid-19?” Horton asked two weeks ago. The question remains unanswered today.

In the weeks after the Wuhan lockdown, even with infection numbers in China skyrocketing daily, there was a sea of calm in the West. Some smart commentators were quick to point out that the virus had wrecked authoritarian China but could not crack democratic Taiwan. This, they argued at the time, was living proof of the superiority of democracy and the importance of the free flow of information.

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But the free flow of information did little to remove the scales from the eyes of some Western politicians.

On February 26, Trump told the American public at a press conference that “we’re very, very ready for this, for anything” and that “the risk to the American people remains very low”.

Over the next hour, he repeatedly referred to just “15” confirmed cases in the US. He blamed the virus-induced stock market declines on Democrats, endorsed the conspiracy theory that the media was weaponising the virus to take him down, and appointed Vice-President Mike Pence, who believes that evolution is just a theory and smoking does not kill, to lead the country’s coronavirus response.

I do not have to brief you on what they have, or more importantly haven’t, done in the valuable weeks since. I certainly need not remind anyone of the infamous “herd immunity” theory from the wise men of London. And unlike Beijing, they were armed with the benefit of hindsight.

China’s one-party dictatorship, particularly its lack of free speech and transparency, does make it an easy target in a blame game. There is no doubt that Beijing owes, first of all to its people, a full account of what has happened. There are plenty of lessons it needs to learn from this disaster.

But Beijing’s failure does not give Western politicians a Get Out Of Jail Free card. Such blatant blame-shifting may temporarily take some heat off their backs and distract the public’s attention, but in the long run it will only come back to haunt.

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Such a narrative also does nothing to induce positive changes in China. If anything, it strengthens the hands of the hardliners. Some Western commentators have lamented rampant nationalist jingoism and the proliferation of conspiracy theories in the Chinese state media. Yeah right, but you are feeding the fire.

I also have a confession to make. I changed Russell’s quote at the beginning. He did not say “the game of politics”. His original wording is “democracy” and he uses it ironically.

Democracy, in its best form, brings out a sense of responsibility from every individual. This sense of ownership of your own fate is what enabled the Greek army to triumph over a much larger force of Persian invaders.

But when democracy becomes little more than a blame game, the system has broken down.

We are facing the greatest threat to humanity since the end of World War II. The last thing we need is a race to the bottom by politicians playing self-serving games.

Chow Chung-yan is executive editor of the South China Morning Post