A Chinese Virus?

I don’t like racism. Whatever you think of people from other countries, even those whose skin colour is not the same as yours, you still do not have to be rude and unkind to them, even if they do eat some weird or disgusting things. (I often wonder what my Chinese friends would think of haggis, that highlight of  Scottish cuisine, or my special favourite, black pudding.) Yes, it is true that the Chinese have some pretty racist attitudes, especially towards black people, as I made clear in my blog. (See my posts Blackface, Red faces and Hell’s Holidaymakers).

On the other hand, I have I have been absolutely disgusted by some of the appalling and racist comments I have read about China recently. Irena and I were very happy during our five years in China because so many Chinese people were kind and friendly to us. I particularly enjoyed teaching my students at Green Oasis.

Blaming China (or individual Chinese people) for the Coronavirus pandemic is outrageous, especially when you read something like this: "This unprecedented speed is thanks in large part to early Chinese efforts to sequence the genetic material of Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. China shared that sequence in early January, allowing research groups around the world to grow the live virus and study how it invades human cells and makes people sick."

As well as giving the international community invaluable help with the groundwork for an anti-Corona vaccine, the Chinese have also sent medical teams to help in the worst-affected area of Italy. In addition, the fact that Wuhan (and other areas of China) are now gradually coming out of lockdown is something that is giving a glimmer of hope to the rest of the world.

Yes, but some people might say, “Well, if the wet markets in China had been supervised properly and if there had been better government regulations governing how live animals are kept, then maybe there would never have been a Coronavirus outbreak in the first place.”

The Chinese authorities have already changed the rules for wet markets and probably there will be a better focus on hygiene and animal welfare. The truth is, of course, that we really do not know exactly how this virus started. Was it already common in some species of animals and then it somehow was transferred to humans? Did the unsanitary conditions in some wet markets contribute to the outbreak or not? I am not sure that we will ever know the answer to these questions.

Of course there has been (and still is) a fog of misinformation and exaggeration. In France and Spain, for example, many deaths in care homes have not been included in the overall mortality figures for the virus. There is also a big question mark hanging over the statistics that have come out of China. What is clear, however, is that speedy and draconian measures are needed when there is a pandemic, not something half-hearted, voluntary and "too little, too late". I think that part of the reason that there have been so many anti-China comments is because the response of western democracies to the Coronavirus has been a lot less effective than that of the Chinese. So far there have been only about 3,000 deaths from the Coronavirus in China, according to the official figures, but in the USA there are now more than 2,000 a day and some experts are predicting that there could be as many as 100,000 or even 200,000. Perhaps those who live in glass houses (or in a White House) should not throw stones.

Hen hao che!

The old joke says that if it has four legs and it is not a table, then the Chinese will eat it. (Ditto if it swims and it is not a submarine.) On the other hand, does it really make sense for anyone to eat certain types of animals? Like iron filings to a magnet, bats do seem to attract all kinds of weird diseases and there is not much meat on them anyway, so maybe it would not be such a terrible loss to haute cuisine Chinoise if the Chinese stopped eating bats.