Beijing bought time for the world with its draconian lockdown of the city of Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak, but many countries, notably Britain and the United States, squandered it
Alex Lo Published: 8 Apr, 2020
SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
In early February, The Wall Street Journal published the by-now infamous opinion piece titled “The real sick man of Asia”, by Walter Russell Mead, an international politics professor.
If you read it now, its scientific ignorance is far more illuminating than its “analysis”. But it was a myopia shared by many people around the world: they thought
the epidemic was mainly China’s problem. Medical authorities, though, knew by then that it would be a global problem.
Mead knew as much about epidemiology as the next taxi driver. That may be why he thought, like many pundits at the time, that the global impact of the outbreak in China would be on the supply chains of international companies.
“The likeliest economic consequence of the coronavirus epidemic, forecasters expect, will be a short and sharp fall in Chinese economic growth rates during the first quarter, recovering as the disease fades,” he wrote.
“The most important longer-term outcome would appear to be a strengthening of a trend for global companies to “de-Sinicise” their supply chains.”
By December 31, Beijing had informed the World Health Organisation about the outbreak. By January 23, an unprecedented lockdown was imposed in Wuhan. Whatever cover-ups and concealment of cases China was guilty of, by January, the entire world knew about the severity of the Chinese epidemic.
What The New York Times wrote about Spain is equally true of many countries, notably Britain and the United States: “Spain’s crisis has demonstrated that one symptom of the virus … has been the tendency of one government after another to ignore the experiences of countries where the virus has struck before it.”
In early February, The Wall Street Journal published the by-now infamous opinion piece titled “The real sick man of Asia”, by Walter Russell Mead, an international politics professor.
If you read it now, its scientific ignorance is far more illuminating than its “analysis”. But it was a myopia shared by many people around the world: they thought
the epidemic was mainly China’s problem. Medical authorities, though, knew by then that it would be a global problem.
Mead knew as much about epidemiology as the next taxi driver. That may be why he thought, like many pundits at the time, that the global impact of the outbreak in China would be on the supply chains of international companies.
“The likeliest economic consequence of the coronavirus epidemic, forecasters expect, will be a short and sharp fall in Chinese economic growth rates during the first quarter, recovering as the disease fades,” he wrote.
“The most important longer-term outcome would appear to be a strengthening of a trend for global companies to “de-Sinicise” their supply chains.”
By December 31, Beijing had informed the World Health Organisation about the outbreak. By January 23, an unprecedented lockdown was imposed in Wuhan. Whatever cover-ups and concealment of cases China was guilty of, by January, the entire world knew about the severity of the Chinese epidemic.
What The New York Times wrote about Spain is equally true of many countries, notably Britain and the United States: “Spain’s crisis has demonstrated that one symptom of the virus … has been the tendency of one government after another to ignore the experiences of countries where the virus has struck before it.”
Yet, in trying to evade responsibility, British and American political leaders such as British cabinet minister Michael Gove, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and President Donald Trump are now claiming: if only China had told us earlier, if only they hadn’t lied about their cases, we would have responded in time.
No, they would not have, and in fact, did not. They had time to prepare but chose not to.
Whatever malfeasance Beijing had committed, locking down Wuhan cut the number of coronavirus cases exported to the outside world by 77 per cent, according to an international study that was led by Matteo Chinazzi of the Laboratory for the Modelling of Biological and Socio-technical Systems at Northeastern University in Boston and published in Science.
China bought time for the world; many governments squandered it.
This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Why China is not responsible for pandemic
Alex Lo has been a Post columnist since 2012, covering major issues affecting Hong Kong and the rest of China. A journalist for 25 years, he has worked for various publications in Hong Kong and Toronto as a news reporter and editor. He has also lectured in journalism at the University of Hong Kong.
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