At the end of World War II, Germany was obliged to pay reparations to Allied nations to compensate for the economic and human tragedy inflicted by the Nazi party’s fateful decision to wage war, first in Europe, and then throughout the globe.
The COVID-19 pandemic is causing global economic carnage which many economists believe will be on a scale similar to a world war. As such, there are growing calls for China to pay reparations to affected nations.
The calls stem from the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) covering up the virus for a period of at least six weeks, and — crucially — co-opted the services of the WHO to deny the existence of human-to-human transmission, robbing nations of vital time to prepare their defenses against the virus.
There is also growing evidence that during the six-week information blackout, the CCP used Chinese companies to systematically buy up global stocks of personal protective equipment, leaving many countries with critical shortages when the virus hit.
To make matters worse, China is now either flogging personal protective equipment to nations affected by the virus, or donating it as a cynical diplomatic ploy.
The CCP is also using the chaos inflicted by the virus as cover to gain economic and military advantage over other nations.
Judging by the growing chorus of voices around the world demanding reparations, Beijing’s ongoing propaganda onslaught to limit the fallout from its cover-up of the virus is failing to cut the mustard.
On Wednesday last week Bild, Germany’s largest-circulation newspaper, published an editorial addressed directly to Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), in which it set out an itemized “invoice” of losses caused by the virus, and demanded China provide US$165 billion in reparations.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has also weighed in, publicly calling on China to be transparent about the source of the virus.
On Tuesday, Missouri became the first US state to sue the Chinese government over its handling of COVID-19. The civil lawsuit alleges negligence and accuses China’s government of making the pandemic worse by “hoarding” masks and other personal protective equipment.
A Florida-based law firm, Berman Law Group, has filed a class-action lawsuit against the CCP, seeking US$4 trillion in reparations.
Philippine Senator Risa Hontivores has called on China to “foot the bill” for Manila’s COVID-19 response.
Whether there exists solid legal grounds for the payment of reparations, it is highly unlikely that Beijing would be willing to pay up. After all, it ignored the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague’s 2016 ruling in favor of the Philippines over disputes in the South China Sea.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has attacked the calls for reparations, branded the Missouri lawsuit “nothing short of absurdity” and accusing Bild of fueling “nationalism, prejudice and xenophobia.”
However, even if the calls for reparations are pie in the sky, they are still significant. The CCP’s mendacious handling of the virus, appears to have hastened a hardening of the international community’s attitude toward Beijing, a trend that was already gathering momentum before the pandemic struck.
Future historians might look back on the pandemic as the moment when a new cold war between the free world and China began in earnest.
The international women’s soccer match between Taiwan and New Zealand at the Kaohsiung Nanzih Football Stadium, scheduled for Tuesday last week, was canceled at the last minute amid safety concerns over poor field conditions raised by the visiting team. The Football Ferns, as New Zealand’s women’s soccer team are known, had arrived in Taiwan one week earlier to prepare and soon raised their concerns. Efforts were made to improve the field, but the replacement patches of grass could not grow fast enough. The Football Ferns canceled the closed-door training match and then days later, the main event against Team Taiwan. The safety
There are moments in history when America has turned its back on its principles and withdrawn from past commitments in service of higher goals. For example, US-Soviet Cold War competition compelled America to make a range of deals with unsavory and undemocratic figures across Latin America and Africa in service of geostrategic aims. The United States overlooked mass atrocities against the Bengali population in modern-day Bangladesh in the early 1970s in service of its tilt toward Pakistan, a relationship the Nixon administration deemed critical to its larger aims in developing relations with China. Then, of course, America switched diplomatic recognition
The National Immigration Agency on Tuesday said it had notified some naturalized citizens from China that they still had to renounce their People’s Republic of China (PRC) citizenship. They must provide proof that they have canceled their household registration in China within three months of the receipt of the notice. If they do not, the agency said it would cancel their household registration in Taiwan. Chinese are required to give up their PRC citizenship and household registration to become Republic of China (ROC) nationals, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said. He was referring to Article 9-1 of the Act
Strategic thinker Carl von Clausewitz has said that “war is politics by other means,” while investment guru Warren Buffett has said that “tariffs are an act of war.” Both aphorisms apply to China, which has long been engaged in a multifront political, economic and informational war against the US and the rest of the West. Kinetically also, China has launched the early stages of actual global conflict with its threats and aggressive moves against Taiwan, the Philippines and Japan, and its support for North Korea’s reckless actions against South Korea that could reignite the Korean War. Former US presidents Barack Obama
RSS