My son-in-law is an actor who is taking part in London’s West End in one of Shakespeare’s best-known plays, The Tempest. Watching a performance the other day, I was reminded of a line that occurs in that play and in another by the Master. It comes from what was apparently a common English saying in the Middle Ages and later: It advises listeners that when dining with someone they cannot really trust, they should eat with a long spoon.
The World Health Organization (WHO) might have been tempted to use this quote at the beginning of a report that they produced on the last day of last year. They urged China to finally be transparent about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic that broke out five years ago in the city of Wuhan. The organization stated pretty bluntly that they regarded this as “a moral and scientific imperative.”
“Without transparency, sharing and cooperation among countries, the world cannot adequately prevent and prepare for future epidemics and pandemics,” they added. COVID-19, as we know, was responsible for at least 7 million deaths and the global recession.
There is no doubt at all that the epidemic started in Wuhan. The argument is whether it was simply transmitted through animals sold in the local market for food or whether it escaped from the research being done in the laboratories of the local Wuhan Disease Center.
We have been through that argument before. After the disease was first identified, the WHO and many of its member countries pressed hard for an enquiry. That should not have been difficult for China since it was a member of the WHO and had signed up to the International Health Regulations, which commit countries to quickly report any outbreaks of new diseases.
What happened in Wuhan was that brave whistle-blowers of the rapidly spreading disease were silenced by security services. What can we deduce from this? Australia was particularly vocal in making the case for transparency, since it had a recent experience of Chinese officials, including Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅), giving assurances that there was no unmanageable problem in Wuhan while the Chinese government was buying personal protective equipment hand over fist in Australia and elsewhere.
The Chinese government responded by launching a boycott of Australian exports. This turned out to be more bluster than real economic damage — by 2023, Australian exports to China were at an all-time high. Despite the political ranting, the Chinese buy what they need (in Australia’s case, products such as lithium, barley and iron ore).
The most important point is not China’s habit of breaking their international agreements on trade and economics when it suits them, but that they were not prepared to work with others to minimize the effects of COVID-19 or to prevent the future outbreak of a similar pandemic. After five years, they still refuse to play a part in a civilized global partnership.
Many people say, particularly in the business communities, that we have to engage and cooperate with China in order to ensure that it plays its part in dealing with global problems, from economics to climate change to health risks. To get China to accept its obligations as a great country, we apparently must accept its own views of the global order. That involves respecting China’s alleged inheritance of a sort of modern mandate of heaven. Under no circumstances are we allowed to criticize China — from Xinjiang and Tibet to Taiwan and Hong Kong — because to do so would result in China refusing to cooperate with the rest of the civilized world. The flaw in that argument is, of course, the one we can see from the COVID-19 story.
Naturally, it is right to try to engage and cooperate. Yet we should not do so in the naive belief that China would keep its word. There is too much evidence, from commercial dealings and industrial espionage to the trashing of the rule of law and freedom in Hong Kong.
When the UK, under the obligations of international law, handed Hong Kong back to Chinese sovereignty, it did so on the basis of a treaty lodged at the UN called the Joint Declaration. Curiously, the basis of that treaty was a proposition originally designed to persuade Taiwan to give up its freedoms, and accept China’s sovereignty and jurisdiction. The proposition was one country, two systems. If Hong Kong or Taiwan was prepared to accept Chinese sovereignty they could retain their own way of doing things, including the development of democracy and the protection of the rule of law.
We see what has happened in Hong Kong. Its promised high degree of autonomy, rule of law, protection of human rights and the beginning of democracy have all been thrown overboard.
If that is what is happening in Hong Kong, why should anyone in Taiwan think that things would turn out differently for their free and democratic society?
Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, is chancellor of the University of Oxford and the author of The Hong Kong Diaries.
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