President Xi Jinping has promised $2 billion to fight Covid 19 worldwide, but has refused to accept the numerous requests for an international investigation on the early stages of the epidemic. Trump – with the tacit approval of the Congress – has temporarily reduced US funding to the WHO, accusing the organization of having hidden important information in league with the Chinese. For Beijing, an investigation on the outbreak of the pandemic will only be possible after the situation is under control worldwide.
However, the real crux of the matter is the role of the second global superpower which the Dragon claims to be able to play in front of the world. The Asian country, which intends to redesign world geopolitics under its aegis, cannot prove capable of preventing a serious infectious disease from spilling over its borders; causing hundreds of thousands of deaths, undermining health systems in all over the world and determining an economic crisis from which nobody knows how to get out. How can all of this be accepted?
Everywhere it is observed that Beijing, rather than spending billions of dollars lent to developing countries – then later blackmailing them – could have used its resources to improve its health system, modernize its campaigns and eradicate dangerous habits. Like the live animal market in Wuhan, where Covid 19 originated today and who knows what tomorrow. And it is not just about that, of course. Nobody forgets that silence was imposed on Chinese doctors who wanted to warn people about of the danger, that some of them were imprisoned or otherwise punished for their disobedience by a country that does not allow the free flow of news.
In some chancelleries there is talk of compensation that Beijing should pay for the damage caused to the international community, such as war debts after an armed conflict. Exactly a century ago the same request was made to Germany for the destruction of the Great War, but the long-term consequence was another world war much more devastating than the previous one. It is to be hoped that current-day politicians will learn the lesson from historical experience.
