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.
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