We can’t go back to business as usual with shameless Beijing

WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom shakes hands with Xi Jinping before a meeting in Beijing in January. Picture: AFP

In recent years, China’s political ambitions and its influence on world affairs have grown expon­entially.

It has shamelessly pursued poorer countries with debt-trap diplomacy, turning many of them into de facto colonies. State enterprises abroad have been allowed to snap up strategic assets without reciprocity. Their espionage and theft of intellectual property is legendary.

China’s backroom diplomacy successfully oversaw crippling emission abatement targets applied­ to Western economies while it negotiated freedom to open more coalmines and build coal-fired generators, at will.

On human rights, Beijing continue­s to crush minorities and free speech. Ethnic and religious differences are actively discouraged and in some cases ruthlessly persecuted but, apart from the odd tut tut, who cares?

China is reluctant to resettle refugees, yet no UN rapporteurs like those who harassed an ­already obliging Canberra have been seen complaining in the ­Forbidden City.

As testament to its influence and the UN’s blind eyes, China has landed an appointment on a Human Rights Council panel where, incredibly, it will vet candid­ates for important posts.

Beijing’s contempt for the world was evident in its under­reporting (later admitted) of the SARS outbreak in 2003. According to the journal Science, it practised­ the same deception in Wuhan, where 86 per cent of corona­virus cases were undocumented before the lockdown.

As late as January, Beijing claimed there were no human-to-human infections and ordered the destruction of research samples to prevent evidence of an epidemic becoming public. All the while, it knowingly watched Chinese visit­ors and travellers spread the disease around the world.

China ally and World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adha­nom Ghebreyesus conspicuously played down COVID-19.

On March 1, he told global markets to “calm down and try to see the ­reality”. Ten days later, he declared a pandemic.

Earlier, Tedros applauded China’s work and transparency. No mention of the eight Wuhan doctors who, in early January, were arrested for spreading false rumours. No reference either to President Xi Jinping’s dispatch of censors in early February to “strengthen the guidance of public opinions”.

Rather, he praised Beijing for “setting a new standard for out­break­ control”, claiming “China has bought the world time”.

No. Chinese deceit and WHO perfidy bought China time, allowing­ it to prepare and include a pandemic “out” clause to a US trade deal, days before reporting its first coronavirus cases.

An angry US President Donald Trump has announced that America will halt its 20 per cent contribution to the “Chinacentric” WHO for having “failed in its basic duty”.

An investigation, ­supported by Australia, is under way. Beijing’s bellicose represent­ative in Aust­ralia warns that the push for an ­independent inquest into the orig­ins of the outbreak is “dangerous” and threatens a trade boycott.

It is clear China has turned this pandemic into a propaganda war. The Chinese Peoples’ Daily proclaims­ “the source of the novel coronavirus has yet to be confirmed”. Two leading university websites seem to have published then deleted academic research about the origins of COVID-19.

Outright lying, deliberate mis­diagnoses and cause-of-death reclassification­ seem as rampant as the virus.

The American Enterprise Institut­e’s Derek Scissors dismisses China’s 84,000 cases, claiming about 2.9 million was realistic. With infections in the West climbing and its own credibility collapsing, Beijing recently lifted Wuhan deaths by half.

Capitalising on blatant dis­information and fabricated ­containment numbers, Chinese companies abroad were commissioned to urgently ship home hundred­s of tonnes of medical supplies. Exports of “Made in China” test kits and related medical needs were frozen unless the manufacturers, including America’s 3M Company, were licensed to sell domestically.

Having achieved a global supply shortage, China’s soft-power offensive went into full swing. Hua­wei, known for its closeness to Beijing, offered The Netherlands 800,000 free masks. The timing coincides with the Dutch June auction of 5G mobile licenses which, for security reasons, may exclude Huawei. China also sent doctors and donat­ed ventilators to Italy, ­Europe’s most enthusiastic supporters of Xi’s Belt and Road ­Initiative.

Patently, this pandemic has put the spotlight on Beijing’s pervasive influence in international affairs and the world’s dependence on its supply chains. It has also exposed the Chinese Communist Party’s ruthlessness and unbridled global ambitions.

Yet despite its bold propaganda, China’s reputation has suffered­ a serious blow. While outside the country there is still deep affection for the Chinese people and their culture, that goodwill is rapidly dissipating. The pandemic invites choices and excites the xenophobic. Across the world, there is an urgent re-evaluation of trade and defence postures. South Korean companies are pulling out of China and looking to India as a manufacturing base

Inside China, there is also anger. The people have been misled and are suffering the cost of that deception. Their over-leveraged economy is struggling. Even before the pandemic, authorities were calling on local governments to “go to all lengths to prevent massive job losses this year”.

Since COVID-19, China’s economy has suffered its worst contraction since at least the 1970s, stoking fears that led by Xi, China is returning to the old Mao Zedong days.

Under Xi’s cult of personality, the ultimate weakness of socialist dictatorships has again been exposed. Will the world, which has listened to what China says and turned blind eyes to what it does, learn from this? Time will tell, but national interest means we should not return to business as usual.