China Blames ‘Xenophobia’ and ‘White Supremacist Racism’ for Coronavirus Fears

The Global Times was especially contemptuous of prominent China critics like White House adviser Peter Navarro and Republican Senators Tom Cotton and Marco Rubio, all of whom the Chinese paper comically branded as “neoconservatives”:

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro once described China as a “disease incubator,” a claim regarded by many as racist and beyond the moral baseline of human civilization.

Republican Senator Tom Cotton has repeatedly slammed the Communist Party of China over the coronavirus outbreak and claimed the virus is “a man-made bioweapon that leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

Chinese Ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai dismissed to the biological weapons theory as “absolutely crazy,” and warned such allegations could stir up suspicion, rumors, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and could “harm our joint efforts to combat the virus.”

Cotton’s allegation has been largely debunked by biological experts quoted in the media including the Washington Post and the Guardian.

A Huffington Post story titled “Don’t listen to Sen. Tom Cotton about Coronavirus,” writes that  “spreading misinformation and panic in a weeks-long meltdown over the disease” by quoting multiple experts saying his assertion is “ridiculous.”

“Tom Cotton is far more dangerous than the Coronavirus,” a Twitter user commented on Cotton’s anti-China tweet.

The latter slam on Cotton is amusing not just because the Global Times thinks one random Twitter user can humble a senator, but because Chinese readers of the Global Times cannot access Twitter legally since their government bans the platform.

As for Senator Rubio, he annoyed the Chinese Communists by accusing the World Health Organization of being unduly concerned with Beijing’s feelings instead of pulling out all the stops to combat the coronavirus, and he wants WHO to extend membership status to Taiwan, a move bitterly opposed by China because it would confer national legitimacy on what the Chinese see as a rogue province.

“Rubio has an emotional affinity with, in additional to financial support of, Taiwan, because they both have a tendency to betray their homeland,” sneered a Chinese academic quoted by the Global Times. By “Rubio’s homeland,” he meant Cuba, the Communist nation from which Rubio’s family fled.

The Global Times castigated U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross for supposedly welcoming the coronavirus epidemic as an opportunity to reclaim American jobs lost to China, and American businessman Kyle Bass expressing a wish to “let the Chinese virus rampage through the ranks of the Global Times and the rest of the Communist Party.”

As usual, the Chinese state paper left out some important context: Ross began by expressing condolences for the coronavirus and saying he did not want to “talk about a victory lap over a very unfortunate, very malignant disease,” but he thought business leaders would take note of the pattern of disease epidemics disrupting Chinese supply chains.

Bass later deleted his tweet because he “felt that it was too harsh for the rank-and-file” employees of the Global Times, but he said the paper itself was still a “simple belligerent tabloid designed to stir controversy with western media and commentators,” and he insisted he would never apologize to a Chinese regime that proved itself a “disgrace to humanity” by arresting and  punishing early whistleblowers on the Wuhan virus such as the late Dr. Li Wenliang.

China’s remorseless efforts to spin the coronavirus epidemic to its advantage, frequently using bits of rhetoric it gleans from American politicians and media – like the constant attacks on the U.S. healthcare system launched by Democrats seeking to take control of it – are unlikely to convince people around the world who can see with their own eyes that Beijing concealed the damaging truth about the epidemic for as long as it could, at a cost to the rest of the world that would be much greater without the travel restrictions China despises.

Story cited here.

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