Opinion – When will the Chinese government be held accountable for the spread of coronavirus?

Marcus Kolga: Canada will have to work with our allies to assess the Chinese government’s responsibility when it comes to the spread of coronavirus and to ensure that they are held to account where appropriate

Marcus Kolga, March 17, 2020

On Sunday night, the two remaining Democratic Presidential candidates, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, entered a sparse CNN studio for a one-on-one debate, in which the venue, context, and substances were all unsurprisingly hijacked by the coronavirus pandemic. Among the top issues were how millions of Americans would endure economic stresses caused by the outbreak and what the United States government should do to overcome it, especially with the projected costs running into the trillions of dollars.

One of the debate’s most interesting moments came when CNN reporter Dana Bash asked the two candidates: “What consequences should China face for its role in this global crisis?”

Responsibility is exactly what the Chinese Communist Party government has been avoiding since the initial outbreak in Wuhan. Most notably, Dr. Li Wenliang raised concerns about the virus in December and was in turn detained by Chinese authorities and forced to sign a confession of making “false comments” and disturbing “the social order.” The virus would eventually take his life in February.

While Bernie Sanders might be forgiven for naively blurting out that “now is the time to be working with China,” the Chinese government has offered little evidence to suggest that closer cooperation would lead to a solution. Conversely, Beijing’s mishandling and negligence has directly enabled the spread of this pandemic.

China’s primary motivation throughout has been to avoid any responsibility or accountability by deflecting blame and suppressing criticism since day one. So effective has the Chinese campaign been that even foreign governments (including here in Canada) have remained largely silent about China’s role. The instinct of any totalitarian state like China is to cover up anything that might require them to take responsibility.

During the initial coronavirus outbreak, authorities in Wuhan stated that there was “no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission.” Yet, as first noted in a January study in The Lancet, more than a third of patients had no connections to the Wuhan food market, and people started to become ill weeks before the government would admit.

But the obfuscation goes deeper. Instead of informing its own people and the world about the threat early on, the Chinese government contributed directly to the global pandemic we face today through politically motivated manipulation and active disinformation. By lying about the virus’s initial spread, including by not acknowledging human-to-human transmission when it was quite clearly happening, and by prioritizing political stability over human health, China’s actions directly led to the massive spread of the virus.

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