China: time to start asking questions - COVID-19 coverup | Dominique Samuels

We need to talk about China. It’s a country growing exponentially in size, wealth and influence. It flouts its disregard for individual rights and for just about anyone who criticises the Chinese Communist Party with ease and no retribution.

It is also the nation responsible for the origins of the rapidly spreading COVID-19 to seemingly every corner of the world. This infectious disease, caused by a newly found strain of coronavirus, has (at the time of writing) resulted in 32, 139 deaths globally. There are currently 683,504 confirmed cases in 199 countries and territories.  

As the ‘Wuhan China Virus’ continues to ravage the globe, in particular the United States, Italy and France, contentious debate continues regarding who exactly is at fault for this pandemic. Why is it only the Trump administration that seems to be becoming more vocal about the origins of this virus and who is at fault? China’s growing stake and influence on the world stage has meant that it has averted any kind of responsibility for its actions, mainly due to its wealth and newfound popularity. All nations, first world or otherwise, seemingly want a piece of President Xi and his dynamic economy nowadays. Forget the major human rights abuses and vicious, authoritarian government - it’s all about GDP. 

Nevertheless, we cannot let this crisis continue to mercilessly cripple the Western world and not hold China to account. Why is that, some may ask? You hear the usual social justice warriors screaming about racism, with the Metropolitan Police urging people to report ‘hate crimes’ relating to COVID-19 - it just had to be Britain, didn’t it? 

It’s easy to blame this newfound scrutiny of China as a country on racism, as many people have. Yet, it is a defence mechanism, and a powerful one at that. Do its Western proponents realise it is a line that has been pushed especially within the Chinese media, which is essentially a propaganda arm of the CCP? This has nothing to do with racism and everything to do with holding a brutal Communist regime to account. 

It is vital they be held to account. Now more than ever. Not least because the Chinese government knew about the coronavirus far longer than they let on to the World Health Organisation and the rest of the globe. The sinister control-freakery that plagues the Chinese Communist Party has cost thousands of lives and crippled our economies. So I will say it again. Something must be done about China. 

It was December 31st, 2019 that the World Health Organisation China Country Office was formally informed of ‘cases of pneumonia’, of an unknown cause in Wuhan City in the Hubei Province of China. A total of 44 case-patients were reported to the WHO by national Chinese authorities from this period through January 3rd, 2020. The outbreak was associated with a seafood market of various obscure produce in Wuhan City, and this exposure was identified as a new type of coronavirus. During this same period, Chinese health officials reported that there had not yet been any human-to-human transmissions of the virus, which the WHO enthusiastically parroted on their Twitter account on January 14th. 

However, evidence suggests that human transmission was identified much earlier. In early December, according to a study in the Lancet, the wife of the first patient (who was identified December 1st), shortly began displaying symptoms of pneumonia despite having had no contact with the seafood market said to have caused the outbreak. Interestingly, according to reports by the South China Post, government data seen by them suggest a ‘55 year-old could have been the first person to have contracted Covid-19 on November 17th’. By December 17th to December 20th, the total number of confirmed cases had reached 60. 

Needless to say, this is not all that has emerged, arousing suspicion of the Chinese state’s transparency, honesty and intentions. There is substantially more that brings the veracity of the Chinese authorities into question.

In the midst of Chinese medical staff in Wuhan becoming suspected of contracting viral pneumonia which resulted in them being immediately quarantined, Wuhan hospitals also began to notice that a rising number of cases could not be linked to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale market. Only 27/41 patients identified had been exposed to the market according to the Lancet, evidencing the likelihood of human-to-human transmission. Three weeks after this became apparent to doctors, China contacted the World Health Organisation on December 31st.  

The censorship of the late Dr Li Wenliang is only one of many instances of the Chinese government’s silencing of whistle-blowers. He was forced to write a statement acknowledging his ‘spreading of rumours’ after warning other doctors about the infectious nature of the illness in late December. Sadly he died from the virus not long after. 

Wuhan police themselves stated “eight people had been punished for ‘publishing or forwarding false information on the internet without verification”, further evidencing China’s strict and questionable censorship regarding the outbreak of the virus. Nobody really knows what has happened to these rumour-spreaders, but Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief at state-owned media outlet Global Times claimed that sources told him: ‘None of the eight “misinformers” from Wuhan were kept in custody nor punished.’

While all this is happening, flights are still going to and from China. Essentially allowing the virus to spread freely around the globe, with the CCP knowingly letting this happen as they scramble to suppress all information about the virus. 

By January 20th, China was reported to have 278 cases; the vast majority of them coming from Hubei province, according to WHO figures. However, government records apparently seen by the South China Post suggest that ‘on the first day of 2020’ the number of confirmed cases were 381. Speculation as to the accuracy of China’s figures of reported cases and deaths has also arisen. According to records of Chinese mobile users, numbers had consistently grown month-on-month until December 2019. Then, figures coincidentally dropped by 862 thousand in January, and 7.25 million in February.

And fast forward to March, the virus has scourged Western communities, economies and daily life. Our societies are virtually at a standstill with healthcare systems increasingly overwhelmed. Our industries are in freefall, with the UK treasury announcing billions in spending to keep the economy afloat in light of this crisis. Nobody is safe. Even the prime minister has contracted the virus. 

Conveniently, COVID-19 has become a foreign problem to the nation in which it originated, and the Chinese government wants to keep it that way. From selling faulty ventilators and urgently needed medical equipment en-masse to countries in need, to influencing World Health Organisation officials to eradicate any criticism of their actions or place on the world stage, China’s behaviour is unequivocally unbefitting of a friend or ally of the United Kingdom. 

With our lives plunged into ever more preventable chaos – significantly in thanks due to the totalitarianism and dishonesty of the Chinese regime – we must ask ourselves this: are friendly relations with China really worth it when its government treats the rest of the world with such suspicion and contempt?