As the old saying goes, “A rule of government is never look into anything you don’t have to, never start an enquiry unless you know what its findings will be”. China has fiercely resisted holding an enquiry into the origins of the Xi Plague, threatening and bullying the Australian government for its backing of such an inquiry. Now, Beijing has suddenly changed its tune and thinks an enquiry is a wonderful idea.
In which case, you can be certain that the Chinese Communist Party has got its new set of lies all sorted and ready to roll out.
China is also desperately trying to win the propaganda war.
China’s President Xi Jinping has pledged $US2bn ($3.1bn) to support the world’s COVID-19 response, committed to making a vaccine a “global public good” and — after weeks of opposition and threats of economic retaliation — embraced the independent inquiry into the virus that Australia had been championing.
Speaking over videolink at the beginning of the World Health Assembly meeting on Monday night, Mr Xi said China supported a “comprehensive evaluation” of the global response to the coronavirus pandemic after it had been brought under control, insisting that China had “always had an open, transparent and responsible attitude”.
I suppose you have to admire Xi’s barefaced cheek: having unleashed this plague on the world, Xi is trying to promote his supposed magnanimity.
Xi’s promise of making a vaccine a “global public good” is the same bullshit “generosity” China pulled in the early months of the pandemic, when, while it was still lying and covering up the scale of the outbreak in Wuhan, it secretly plundered the rest of the world of medical supplies. Supplies that would soon be desperately needed, as the virus that China exported hit hard. To pile insult onto that injury, Beijing subsequently flooded the world with sub-standard Chinese-made supplies, while boasting about its supposed benevolence.
Any “enquiry” welcomed by Xi is likewise going to be just more bullshit.
Earlier on Monday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said “all parties have reached consensus on the text” of the coronavirus inquiry after criticising Australia over the past month for proposing it.
Mr Zhao also revealed China’s support for an inquiry by a team of experts from the WHO into the origins of the virus.
“The purpose is to reduce the risk of similar incidents in the future,” he said.
It was important to “find out the animal source of the virus”, Mr Zhao added.
Spot the narrative already being built? The animal source of the virus is fairly well suspected. But China is also obviously trying to steer the enquiry towards the “wet market” theory of its origin – despite strong circumstantial evidence that the virus probably escaped from the Wuhan virology lab.
Note, also, that China is endeavouring to put any enquiry under the control of the WHO, whose own complicity in the pandemic is already well known. The WHO has also shown itself to be a Chinese lickspittle in the past.
[Health Minister Greg] Hunt was firm on the need for the WHO to be accountable for the slow response to the outbreak in Wuhan.
“We are pleased to have support for an impartial, independent and comprehensive evaluation of the global response. We need to learn the lessons from this pandemic and ensure we have the strongest possible global health architecture, with an enhanced ability to prevent and respond to future outbreaks,” Mr Hunt said.
“This could include an examination of whether the WHO’s mandate and powers, including around inspection, need to be strengthened to ensure WHO members have timely access to critical data.”
Frankly, a better question would be whether the WHO is even fit for purpose any more.
In a move that’s also certain to infuriate China, the Australian government is also pushing to include Taiwan – in defiance of the WHO’s grovelling deference to China’s insistence that the island nation is just another Chinese province.
Neither the WHO nor China must be allowed to investigate themselves and cook up whatever bullshit exoneration of their own complicity they’ve no doubt already got planned.
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