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.
On April 19, former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) gave a public speech, his first in about 17 years. During the address at the Ketagalan Institute in Taipei, Chen’s words were vague and his tone was sour. He said that democracy should not be used as an echo chamber for a single politician, that people must be tolerant of other views, that the president should not act as a dictator and that the judiciary should not get involved in politics. He then went on to say that others with different opinions should not be criticized as “XX fellow travelers,” in reference to
The term “assassin’s mace” originates from Chinese folklore, describing a concealed weapon used by a weaker hero to defeat a stronger adversary with an unexpected strike. In more general military parlance, the concept refers to an asymmetric capability that targets a critical vulnerability of an adversary. China has found its modern equivalent of the assassin’s mace with its high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) weapons, which are nuclear warheads detonated at a high altitude, emitting intense electromagnetic radiation capable of disabling and destroying electronics. An assassin’s mace weapon possesses two essential characteristics: strategic surprise and the ability to neutralize a core dependency.
Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) said in a politburo speech late last month that his party must protect the “bottom line” to prevent systemic threats. The tone of his address was grave, revealing deep anxieties about China’s current state of affairs. Essentially, what he worries most about is systemic threats to China’s normal development as a country. The US-China trade war has turned white hot: China’s export orders have plummeted, Chinese firms and enterprises are shutting up shop, and local debt risks are mounting daily, causing China’s economy to flag externally and hemorrhage internally. China’s
During the “426 rally” organized by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party under the slogan “fight green communism, resist dictatorship,” leaders from the two opposition parties framed it as a battle against an allegedly authoritarian administration led by President William Lai (賴清德). While criticism of the government can be a healthy expression of a vibrant, pluralistic society, and protests are quite common in Taiwan, the discourse of the 426 rally nonetheless betrayed troubling signs of collective amnesia. Specifically, the KMT, which imposed 38 years of martial law in Taiwan from 1949 to 1987, has never fully faced its
RSS