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Part five: China’s great wall of silence: ‘They couldn’t put out the fire’

Although the Trump administration is now furious with China, it did not become openly hostile towards Beijing until late February.

US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at the G20 summit in Osaka last year. Picture: AFP
US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at the G20 summit in Osaka last year. Picture: AFP

This is the final part of our investigation by Cameron Stewart and Will Glasgow on China and the coronavirus

Although the Trump administration is now furious with China for its behaviour in relation to the ­coronavirus, it did not become openly hostile towards Beijing until late February.

As recently as February 7, Trump tweeted that Xi was “strong, sharp and focused on leading the counter-attack” and that “discipline is taking place in China as President Xi strongly leads”. Yet by late February, when it became clear that the US would be hit hard, the White House turned on China, asking what it knew about the virus, and when.

Pompeo accused China of mishandling the pandemic by employing “censorship” of medical professionals and the media. The White House’s anger about China underplaying the extent of infections and deaths in Wuhan was only heightened by China’s abrupt upward revision in April of the official coronavirus death toll. Beijing lifted the toll by more than one-third, or 1290 deaths, to 3869 — a number Washington believes is still far lower than the reality. By early March, as infections and deaths began to soar across the US, China began to hit back at growing criticism from the Trump administration and elsewhere.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijina sent Trump into a rage by suggesting the virus might have originated in the US. “When did patient zero begin in the US?” Zhao tweeted. “How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data. US owe us an ­explanation.”

A week later, around mid-March, US intelligence agencies noticed Chinese intelligence agencies pushing disinformation across social media. The messages, purporting to come from the Department of Homeland Security, claimed Trump was going to lock down the country the next day with “troops in place to help prevent looters and rioters”. The White House’s national security council was forced to respond by sending its own tweet to say that the ­Beijing-backed messages were “FAKE”.

In the face of growing criticism, China stepped up its efforts to avoid media scrutiny. It revoked press credentials for almost all American citizens working in mainland China at the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Washington Post — its biggest expulsion of international press since Mao Zedong established the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

A week later, on March 23, the state-run Xinhua news agency claimed the “world should thank China” for its early response to the virus.

But far from thanking China, many are questioning its behaviour in this pandemic.

John Lee, former senior adviser to former foreign minister Julie Bishop and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC, says that when taken together, China’s actions on the coronavirus amount to “recklessness and even malice”.

“The criticism does not stem from COVID-19 emanating out of China but from the Communist Party’s initial emphasis on prioritising the controlling of messaging and suppression of its own doctors over preventing a national health crisis, playing down the severity and transmissibility of the virus to WHO and the world when it knew otherwise, and allowing its citizens to travel internationally when it was taking measures to protect its own country,” Lee tells The Weekend Australian.

“The CCP’s actions should also lead the world to consider the extent to which we should trust the CCP and place faith in Chinese ­authoritarian institutions as the country’s power grows and the CCP demands a greater leadership role in global institutions.”

A Pew Research Centre survey released last month found more than two-thirds of Americans now have a negative view of China — the highest level since the centre’s surveys began in 2005.

Trump has sharply stepped up his criticism of Beijing in recent weeks as the US death toll continues to climb, and he is expected to make China a major target during his upcoming election campaign.

This week, Trump and Pompeo have taken their criticism to a new level, with both embracing the idea that the virus emerged from a Chinese laboratory in Wuhan. “My opinion is they made a mistake,” Trump says. “They tried to cover it, they tried to put it out. It’s like a fire. You know, it’s really like trying to put out a fire. They couldn’t put out the fire.” Pompeo says a “significant amount of evidence” points to a lab being the source, although he has not revealed what this evidence might be.

Scott Morrison has distanced himself from those claims, believing a wild animals market is the most likely source.

‘There is no question of Chinese malfeasance. The damning facts are indisputable’

US intelligence agencies are looking into the lab theory but have not come to any conclusions. However a Department of Homeland Security Intelligence report written on May 1 concludes ­Chinese leaders “intentionally concealed the severity” of the ­pandemic in early January. The ­report argues Beijing hid details to hoard medical supplies to deal with the outbreak.

Morrison is making a global push for an inquiry into the origins of the virus and has written to G20 leaders seeking their support. So far the US, New Zealand and the EU have supported an inquiry, but discussions continue as to when it would begin and how it would be organised. Australia’s Foreign Minister Marise Payne welcomed the growing discussion about an independent COVID-19 review that “Australia helped start nearly three weeks ago”.

Meanwhile, the WHO said this week it had asked China to approve a ­fact-finding origins review. After escalating rhetoric about the lab theory, China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying on Thursday said Beijing would support the WHO’s origins review “at an appropriate time”.

Pompeo and Trump are pushing for an even broader reckoning, threatening unspecified punishments for Beijing. Says Pompeo: “China behaved like authoritarian regimes do — it attempted to conceal and hide and confuse.”

James Jay Carafano, a vice-president at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, says China’s behaviour on coronavirus has been catastrophic and unconscionable. “China significantly delayed, by weeks and perhaps even months, reporting the virus … that catastrophically slowed the world’s response effort and sped the spread,” he says. “Compounding this fatal lack of co-operation is the unconscionable fact that the regime let many tens of thousands leave the country, even though ­officials knew these travellers could be carrying the virus.

“There is no question of Chinese malfeasance. The damning facts are indisputable.”

Cameron Stewart is The Australian’s Washington correspondent. Will Glasgow is the paper’s China correspondent.

Read related topics:China TiesCoronavirus

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Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/part-five-chinas-great-wall-of-silence-they-couldnt-put-out-the-fire/news-story/7957b0b8f37e1b7030c2177095dc3230