GOOD MORNING FROM LONDON
The West loves bad news about China. It does not come from anywhere + its goal is to damage + discredit China. But why? Why is China so often the focus of bad news?
There are reasons (and I will come to today’s bad news shortly). China, seen through the West’s prism, is a continuation of the threat that shook the foundations of the early 19th C world when the Bolsheviks seized control from the Kerensky government in 1917. In time the USSR failed and the Soviet state was dismantled. The West heaved a sigh of relief – the Marxist experiment had failed.
Well, not quite. Things were happening in the caves of Yanan. A revolution was afoot. It was led by Mao Tsetung. It suffered setbacks + was then distracted by the Japanese invasion of 1937. But the Communist Party was resilient + in 1949 Chiang Kaishek fled to Taiwan and a second Communist experiment was underway.
Revolutions are never plain sailing but China weathered the storm – the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Deaths notwithstanding – and proved durable + successful. 1bn people were removed from poverty + 140m Chinese citizens travelled the world in 2019. Soon the US woke up. Not only was something stirring in China but, more importantly, China threatened to depose the US as the #1 Economic Power. The US went on the offensive. Now China was a threat to the world + needed to be stopped at any cost. Hence the focus is on bad news, not good news.
‘China is expansionist. China is genocidal. China spreads Covid. China threatens Taiwan, Hong Kong, India, the S China Sea + the Belt + Road is merely Deby Diplomacy.’ And so on.
This week an elderly Shanghai patient was nearly taken away by morgue workers believing the patient to be dead. The patient survived – thankfully. It is headline news in the West’s reporting of China. A mistake occurred. It should be reported but no mention of China’s remarkable success in restricting Covid deaths to 4,500 citizens.
