The Coronacrisis will change how the world perceives China’s shameful Communist government, and rightly so. Published by on

BY CHRIS ROSE

For some time now, world leaders have remained reticent towards the actions of the Chinese Communist Party, which sends its Muslim citizens to concentration camps, maintains a highly oppressive surveillance apparatus, and promotes overt racism towards black people. You might remember the adapted Chinese poster for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which significantly shrank the black actor John Boyega, for example.

This time, public anger towards the CCP from around the globe is hitting home. With each revelation of Communist Party deceit, it feels more like we’re living in an episode of Black Mirror – but one which has lasted 3 months rather than 60 minutes.

It came as no surprise that the CCP had tried to cover up the virus outbreak for weeks: jailing journalists, making others disappear, silencing doctors with threats, and shutting down the Shanghai lab that publicly released the first Coronavirus genome sequence. The world’s economy wouldn’t be on the brink of a recession if the appropriate initial steps for virus containment had been taken.

The effects of this have shocked the world, with increasing death rates, growing infection cases, job losses, employment uncertainty, and unprecedented global lockdowns. It’s time world leaders made the Chinese government pay a hefty penalty for their atrocious failings.

Like him or loathe him, so far the only leader that has taken the right tone with China is US President Donald Trump. When Chinese officials deliberately spread lies that the virus may have originated in the United States to deflect blame from their own early failings, Trump was absolutely correct in his response to this by reminding everyone that it is indeed the Chinese virus.

I’m not the biggest fan of the man, but I agreed with Trump when he said “China has to pay for this” – hopefully more world leaders will agree. Imagine a future in which a much larger crowd came out to protest General Secretary Xi Jinping visiting the UK than we had for President Trump. Ideally this should have been the case long before the coronavirus crisis came about.

In light of this crisis, we may see a change in how countries trade and communicate with China in the future. The citizens of China can only read & view disinformation that the CCP allows them to see – for all we know they believe that coronavirus originated in the United States. These same Chinese citizens are also most likely completely unaware of the Chinese researchers, journalists, and doctors who risked their lives fighting the virus and warning the rest of the world. The CCP’s overbearing obsession with maintaining control has caused untold death and suffering in China, and sadly the Chinese citizens have little power to fight back.

Trump has halted funding to the World Health Organisation after accusing them of mismanaging and covering up the spread of the virus, and said it must be held accountable. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has declared, “There is no doubt we can’t have business as usual after this crisis” – adding that there are “hard questions” to ask about the emergence of COVID-19 and the reasons why it wasn’t stopped earlier. It is reassuring to know that China’s actions won’t be forgotten.

Will China learn from this situation? Well, given that Chinese officials routinely dismiss criticism of their own horrendously racist policies, but are conveniently a lot more straight forward in accusing the United States of racism, I wouldn’t get your hopes up.

Human rights and civil liberties have no value to the CCP. Neither do human lives. The state may be able to erect a temporary hospital within a few days, but it should not be easily forgiven for its lies and failings.

Chris Rose is an architect and Conservative influencer. Follow him on twitter: @ArchRose90