What are your thoughts on China ?

[Wetfloortiles]

Very interested in this.

I don't believe their numbers for a start, and I do feel they should take responsibility for this global pandemic.

[PicsInRed]

War rhetoric building up nicely I see.

Marvellous.

[ChazsBrilliantAttitude]

The Chinese Government has a lot to answer for and I think that many people, including many Chinese people, have died and will die because the Party was more concerned about control and “face” than people.

That doesn’t excuse some of the failings of PHE who were expecting the next pandemic to be flu so didn’t recognise the need for increased testing capacity in the U.K. Nor does it excuse any individual who thinks lockdown doesn’t apply to them!

[Puzzledandpissedoff]

I think the Chinese government needs to take responsibility

No doubt, but in a communist totalitarian state with such an emphasis on "saving face" it's very unlikely to happen, so all the rest can do is protect ourselves against the worst effects

There's no reason to stop China moving goods, but I fully expect Trump at least to crack down on the movement of people - and yes, I'm fully aware that biological protection wouldn't necessarily be his only motivation for doing that

[BilboBercow]

Swine flu came from Mexico. They don't have a fantastic animal welfare record either but I don't remember calls for them to take responsibility for the half a million people who died in 2009

[BovaryX]

But pretending that the way this has spread across the globe was inevitable

I don't think a single thing about its spread was 'inevitable.' I think the relentless attempts to shut down any criticism of when and how it started spreading are very peculiar.

[BovaryX]

Swine flu came from Mexico

Can you remind us again of when swine flu resulted in the cessation of global economic activity? Yes. 2009. Flights grounded. Tourism halted. Borders closed. The world confined to house arrest. Seriously. The false equivalence is blatant. And laughable.

[Puzzledandpissedoff]

BilboBercow I can only think that either you weren't in the US at the time or that you didn't follow their news very closely
Granted American attitudes towards Mexico aren't always very sympathetic, but the level of blame and hatred was quite something to see

[HermioneWeasley]

Avian flu also started in Chinese wet markets, it’s just not as infectious so didn’t bring the entire world to its knees.

Of course the Chinese government should be held accountable for stopping the practices that allows animal to human virus transmission. They allowed these practices to continue, then covered up evidence of a new virus, sacked whistleblowers, allowed people to travel internationally in and out of the region and have killed tens of thousands of people and brought the global economy to its knees.

There MUST be changes after this, we cannot risk it happening again.

[Puzzledandpissedoff]

Surprised, too, that nobody's mentioned China chose to start its lockdown on 23 January, immediately after most had travelled for New Year
Admittedly it stopped mass celebrations over the actual event making things even worse, but how many lives might have been saved had they stopped travel before such a huge movement of people?

[BilboBercow]

Puzzled you're right I'm not American. As I understand lots of people in America don't need a reason to be racist towards Mexicans.

To the pp who sneered about false equivalence: we were only fortunate that H1N1 ended up not being as deadly as Covid-19. It was total luck.

The world has been gearing up for another global pandemic of this severity for decades. In fact we don't even know for certain that this came from conditions in wet markets which I agree are horrendous. There's always a risk of animal to human transmission in circumstances where humans and animals are in close contact. Getting rid of wet markets won't destroy the risk of animal to human transmission. In fact, I'd be interested to hear if it made much impact on the risk at all.

When it comes to "taking responsibility", I'm wondering what that looks like to people? Do we just need a boogie man to blame?

[strawberry2017]

I don't believe that numbers and reporting coming from the country but I think to say they are to blame isn't right. This is something that needs much more looking in to for us to fully understand what's happened, how it's happened and how we prevent it happening again.

[agentstarling]

The people are okay but the government is a disgrace. They have concentration camps where they imprison Muslims. They lied about it for three months to protect their own economy and lied about the death toll. I think we should rip up the Huawei deal ASAP.

[UYScuti]

China chose to start it's lockdown on 23rd of January immediately after most had traveled for New year
Almost as if they wanted to send this new virus out before the world had chance to introduce countermeasures

[SmileEachDay]

taking responsibility could mean not trying to claim it really started from the US or Italy. And taking steps to ensure it won’t happen again

How? How are you expecting “China” (who do you mean? The govt? The head honcho? The scientists? The military? The people? Heads of provinces?) to do this in a meaningful way.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t try, but just saying “take responsibility” is pointless. How?

It’s the kind of rhetoric that leads to individual Chinese people (or actually, anyone who just looks “a bit Chinese”) becoming the targets of racist abuse. There’s already been an increase of that here.

I don’t think it helps.

[OnlyFoolsnMothers]

China’s lies have caused this!!!!
America’s arrogance will kill us all!

[Puzzledandpissedoff]

I understand lots of people in America don't need a reason to be racist towards Mexicans

Sadly you're right; there are very many problems with Mexico and some of the criticism's fully justified, but it doesn't excuse the more unthinking hatred

On the "taking responsibility" thing, though, I'm not sure it matters how anyone in the west thinks it might look since that'll have no effect at all on a behemoth like China. Quite apart from the other issues the need to save face really does matter that much, which is why I suggested the only thing we can do is look to our own protection

[SeriouslyRetro]

Did anyone else see some mobile phone video recordings on the bbc news at 6 about 3/4 weeks ago showing Chinese people being dragged from their homes and bundled into the back of vans? I’ve tried to find it again but searching the bbc website for ‘coronavirus China’ is very much a needle in a haystack.

I think the numbers have been massaged. I think Chinese people were ‘disposed’ of and not just contained to stop the spread. I think their standards of human rights and monitoring freedoms makes it a lot easier for them to contain their population, so maybe the numbers aren’t ever going to be on the scales that we will see.

[Bool]

I find it sad we cannot have an adult conversation about this without being called racist. Then nothing will change indeed. Personally I find how the Chinese government has dealt with this was appalling.

[Porseb]

I'm of Chinese ethnicity and have lived here for over 30 years.

In the last 2 weeks, I've had more incidences of racial abuse than I have ever had.

I have had supermarket cashiers put gloves on and sanitise their hands before and after putting my items through but not doing the same for the customers before and after me.

China warned the world in Jan, it went into a massive lockdown

The Italians went into massive lockdown funnily enough after the U.K. half term where we had thousands heading over to ski in the weeks before that.

As for figures, the U.K. figures are wildly inaccurate as only those who are ill enough to be in hospital are currently tested. So we have many more thousands people among us untested with symptoms or a symptomatic.

Blaming a foreign government for this just plays into Trump's and Johnson's hands.

We acted too slow, we went the herd immunity theory and did a sharp pivot.

So yes, OP - from my perspective - this thread is racist - and will mean people like me will continue to be treated like pariahs when going about our every day business.

And I work in the health service.

[BovaryX]

I find it sad we cannot have an adult conversation about this without being called racist. Then nothing will change indeed. Personally I find how the Chinese government has dealt with this was appalling

I question the motives of those who wish to silence any discussion of the origins of this virus with baseless accusations of racism...

[UYScuti]

When you look at the worldometer and you compare China's deaths per million with everyone else's death per million well ....there's a huge discrepancy!

[Puzzledandpissedoff]

I'm afraid it's a standard tactic on MN, Bool, though that said nobody's ever flung it at me personally

I never quite know whether to feel pleased or excluded ...

[Bool]

@porseb indeed what you are describing is racism. An online discussion about what went wrong in China to cause and then spread this virus is not racist. There is a difference and frankly to try and stop the latter is dangerous. Because this can happen all over again.

[MarshaBradyo]

A lot of deflection on R4 re China atm. It’s strange. With it change to the cause and origin we will be looking at 3rd pandemic in similar fashion. And it could be worse.

Re Trump I think his ‘Chinese virus’ was an attempt to deflect from his own issues but it hasn’t worked. People will still see his failings after this. Hopefully his position will be weakened anyway.

[Porseb]

It's not just an online discussion though - it's in the newspapers I read.

Suddenly after the sharp pivot strategy, we have Bojo saying this is all China's fault and Trymp calling it a Chinese virus.

Why didn't either of them take the time from Jan to do something?

They waited till late Feb after people started coming from home Italy with the virus before getting into action