Beijing’s regime reverts to type

Chinese President Xi Jinping. Picture: AFP

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s claim there is “enormous evidence” COVID-19 originated in a Wuhan research lab underlines the need for global pressure on obdurate Chinese Communist Party rulers for a credible scientific probe into the pandemic. “Who on earth wouldn’t want to know where and how all this started?” Mr Pompeo asked with good reason as the total number of cases by Monday had passed 3.6 million, with 250,000 deaths, and even the smallest and most remote countries were faced with devastation due to the global economic shutdown. Who indeed? Certainly similar crises in the West that did much less damage to the world than COVID-19 would have resulted in an immediate, transparent investigation and search for answers to prevent a recurrence.

But it is a dismal reflection of the authoritarian and opaque society led by Xi Jinping and the CCP that, as Mr Pompeo said, Beijing, in resisting an investigation, is instead “attempting to conceal and hide and confuse”. China employed the World Health Organisation as a tool to do the same, he noted. “The Australians agree with that,” Mr Pompeo said, adding “the whole world is united in understanding that China brought this virus to the world”. Evidence of the oppressive state’s malign handling of what emerged in Wuhan is mounting. It adds further to the weight of evidence pointing to the CCP’s culpability for what occurred. A new US intelligence report coinciding with Mr Pompeo’s disclosure about the Wuhan lab details a cynical strategy by the CCP to cover up and dissemble the extent of the outbreak and the contagious nature of COVID-19. This was aimed at gaining time for the CCP’s lackeys to scour the world to buy up bulk medical supplies and send them back to China.

According to the report, China held off informing the WHO coronavirus was “a contagion” for much of January to allow for more time to buy up face masks, surgical gowns and gloves, including piles from Australia. The result of the delay, according to the US intelligence report, was many tens of thousands more deaths, greater economic devastation and grave personal protective equipment shortages when the world’s hospitals were flooded with COVID-19 victims. Mr Pompeo’s claim of evidence pinpointing the Wuhan lab as the virus’s source is at variance with what has been the conclusion of most experts that it emerged from the city’s wildlife wet markets. That does not change the need for CCP leaders to stop behaving like the rulers of a rogue state and to co-operate in allowing a full investigation into the pandemic’s origins.

China has been massively damaged. The CCP claims barely credible low case numbers and deaths resulting from what started in Wuhan. But what Mr Xi and his fellow rulers need to realise is China’s standing has been tarnished across the world. Their much-vaunted “face mask diplomacy” in brazenly boasting of their success in fighting COVID-19 and supplying desperately needed PPE (much of it found to be defective) to countries battling the virus doesn’t change the need for urgent answers. Like the rest of the world, the Chinese themselves surely want more than the CCP’s high-handed refusal to help in facilitating an independent scientific investigation. The Chinese leadership would be wise not to misconstrue the depth of feeling across the world towards the CCP’s malign handling of a crisis that began in Wuhan. If it does not respond to the legitimate global concerns seeking answers to the pandemic’s origins, it could find itself being regarded as a pariah state by much of the world.