By Zhong Sheng
As the country confronted with the severest situation of COVID-19, the U.S. should make greater efforts than any country in the world to cope with the pandemic. Surprisingly, it seems that such normal logic doesn’t exist in the minds of certain U.S. politicians, asthey only focus on maintaining hegemony, and repeatedly resort to the same old trick of buck-passing.
For months, instead of doing what they should to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and save lives, Americanpoliticians, includingU.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, U.S. State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, and Peter Navarro, director of the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, have been pretty busy with updating their China-bashing“playbooks”, trying every means to relate the novel coronavirus to Chinaso as to channel American people’s flames of fury over incompetent leadership of their country in coping with the COVID-19 to China.
In an interview a few days ago, Navarro even brazenly claimed that America will be able to rebound quicker from the pandemic if all of the negative sentiments directed inwardly were instead sent toward the Chinese government.
How ridiculous is that!
Certain politicians in the U.S. have maliciously spread discriminatory wording regarding COVID-19 since the beginning of the outbreak, attempting to make China a target of public criticism by repeatedly calling the novel coronavirus the “Wuhan virus” and “China virus”.
In fact, such bald-faced false accusation and frame-up have been denounced by more and more far-sighted personages around the world, who have stood up courageously to reveal with facts and data the real purposes of these political farces put on by the U.S. politicians.
Since the outbreak of COVID-19, conspiracy theories about the COVID-19 has always been a card played by the U.S. government only to cover up its own mistakes, pointed out Stephen Roach, a senior fellow at Yale University.
To blame China for this pandemic is to rewrite the history of Covid-19 and to marginalise the failings of western nations, saidDr. Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of medical journal The Lancet, in a signed article published on The Guardian on August 3.
The bigotry of Pompeo and the like is obviously beyond remedy. Their self-deception and despicable tricks are bringing endless troubles upon their own country as well as the world.
At present, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the U.S. has topped 5 million, while the country’s death toll from the disease surpassed 160,000.
However, such severe epidemic situation still failed to attract the attention of certain politicians in the U.S. Instead of performing their duties in the fight against COVID-19 by trying to bring the pandemic under control and save people’s lives, they have devoted themselves to various political shows.
Politicians viewed the pandemic as an opportunity to seize power and partisan interests, and this came at the cost of the lives of countless American people, pointed out U.S.political scientist Francis Fukuyama in his article published on the website of U.S. magazine The National Interest in May.
American politicians risk making a “dreadful mistake” by escalating tensions with China, said U.S. economist Jeffrey Sachs, noting that a “geopolitical Cold War” with China would threaten global security in an already tumultuous period marked by the COVID-19 pandemic.
It’s beyond doubt that efforts to cope with COVID-19 would end up getting nowhere if they were based on selfish political calculation, racial discrimination, and national origin discrimination.
What these U.S. politicians have done has served the world as an example of what not to do and helped the international community see more clearly about who is right and who is wrong.
As the Chinese often say, “True gold does not fear the test of fire.”With deep-rooted integrity and a broad mind, China has always upheld the idea of building a community with a shared future for mankind and lived up to the responsibility of a major country in fighting the pandemic together with other countries and jointly tiding over the tough time.
Since the onset of the outbreak, China has reported information about COVID-19 to the international community and shared with various parties its experience in the prevention, control and treatment of the disease in an open, transparent, and responsible manner and in accordance with the law.
China has always been supportive of and welcomed the efforts of scientists from various countries to carry out scientific research on the origin and transmission routes of the virus around the globe.
China was the first country to invite the World Health Organization (WHO) to dispatch experts for the discussion on tracing the origin of the virus. Two experts of the WHO have come to China between July 11 and August 2 and had discussions with Chinese experts on scientific research cooperation regarding the origin of COVID-19.
As an old saying in China goes, “God helps those that follow the right path, and people help those who are trustworthy.”
Certain politicians in the U.S. had better quit their political trick of distracting American people from the problems of their own government and really shoulder their responsibility for protecting their people and make their country live up to the responsibility of a major country by promoting global cooperation in fighting the pandemic with the international community.
(Zhong Sheng is a pen name often used by People’s Daily to express its views on foreign policy.)
