Hot Spots
04/27/2020
The View From China
I always believed one must know what the enemy is thinking, and with U.S.-China tensions growing by the week, the following editorial is from a Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece, the Global Times. I present it in its entirety and I’ll reserve any comment of my own for my “Week in Review” column.
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April 27, 2020
China's achievement in the fight against COVID-19 is way better than that of the US. But China is confronting waves of accusations, which have been launched by Washington, and supported and followed by other Western countries and forces.
It is the urgent political need of the Republican-led government to pass the buck to China for its own failure to contain the outbreak, so as to win the upcoming election. This is a life-and-death matter, so it would spare no effort to smear China and mobilize all possible public opinion forces to do so to cover its selfishness.
Moreover, the US regards China as its strategic competitor. This is a bipartisan consensus in the US. China's ability to handle the crisis and its industrial production capacity have further increased the sense of crisis among American elites. The idea of stopping China from becoming stronger during its fight against the epidemic, creating more trouble for China, and promoting more hate against China from across the world can easily resonate among elites in the US and the Western world.
If China had been in the same boat as Western countries in suffering from the pandemic, the West might have felt better. However, unlike the West, China has done an outstanding job in fighting the coronavirus. As China takes a turn for the better after its temporary economic shutdown, the West continues to struggle. In this context, stigmatizing China has become popular in the West as they need some psychological comfort.
Some people are fond of kicking up a fuss. China has done well, but the US is leading a blame game against China, offering a fantasy where China would provide compensation to lure more countries into the game as if they could benefit from it.
The Chinese people have noticed that the West won't stop rocking the boat. China has to withstand the US-driven public opinion not in its favor. This is the price China has to pay for growing stronger.
We placed too much importance on attitude from the US and the Western world in the past. But now we have to get used to their attacks, and be able to pinpoint the logic of their accusations against our achievements and exaggerations of our problems. We don't have to be nervous or quickly respond to all their comments, but instead be vigilant and realize that their attacks prove we are doing the right thing.
We see familiar faces in the "bashing China" chorus - the US and its core allies in the Five Eyes alliance, Western media that wins hits by attacking China, and some "temporary political actors" coming to hype things up.
It is our century-old dream to see China become a power that makes the US feel uncomfortable. It's of no use for the Chinese people to miss the good old days in the 1980s when the Western world wooed China against the Soviet Union.
It is time for China to withstand challenges. Washington from now on would say nothing positive about China, but constantly condemn us. It has a few followers like Australia. But these countries can barely influence us. China only needs to manage its own business well and fix its own shortcomings. This has nothing to do with US recriminations, but continuing to progress is our goal.
The West is more capable in terms of shaping public opinion and the situation can't be changed immediately. But China's continuous development will eventually work to reshape the pattern of world public opinion. Time is on our side.
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Hot Spots will return down the road.
Brian Trumbore
