The Trump administration blames China for the coronavirus pandemic. Administration sources say that if Xi Jinping had acted a week sooner than he did, some 95 percent of the infections in China could have been avoided.
Some go on to suggest that the Chinese government may lying about the pandemic. They say it may have originated in a bio-lab and not in unsanitary live-animal meat markets as is generally believed. And they say that Xi Jinping is lying about China’s success in bringing the pandemic under control.
Xi Jinping
I think there’s something to the first claim, but it’s a case of a pot calling a kettle black. The world would have been better off if Donald Trump had acted six weeks sooner than he did. People who live in a glass house throwing stones.
And while it’s possible that the Chinese government is lying, the U.S. government does’t have a good record for truth-telling. Recall the claims that the Iraqi government had weapons of mass destruction, that the Syrian government used sarin gas against its people and that Iran was developing nuclear weapons.
I’m reminded of a comment made by the late Richard Feynman when somebody asked him whether it was possible that UFOs are piloted by extraterrestrials. He replied that he wasn’t interested in what was possible, but in what was so.
Lots of things are possible, but claims require evidence—or at least the considered opinion of some qualified expert who doesn’t have a conflict of interest.
The states of Missouri and Mississippi are suing China in U.S. courts. Presumably the lawsuit won’t get anywhere because of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which bars lawsuits against foreign countries.
There’s a good reason for such a law. If the Americans could sue foreign countries in U.S. courts and get damages, presumably by seizing foreign assets in the United States, then foreigners could sue the USA in their own courts and seize American assets.
My first thought in writing this post was that ramping up the cold war with China was a terrible idea because the U.S. depends on China for 80 percent of essential drugs.
However, a Google search turned up an article in Reason magazine that show this dependence is greatly exaggerated. Nobody knows for sure, but the likely figure is closer ti 13 percent from China.
It is true that we Americans are overly dependent on foreign countries overall for medical supplies and much else. We should do what we can to reduce that dependence, but that will be a project that will take years—assuming we can do it at all. Meanwhile we can’t afford any break in these fragile global supply chains.
The other problem with scapegoating China is that it is a distraction from American failure. For example, many countries screen travelers arriving at their airports from foreign countries. If the traveler has a temperature, he or she is placed in quarantine for 14 days. But travelers arriving at the New York City airports are allowed to go their way without checking.
It’s not a good sign when governments put excuses for failure in place while the crisis is still ongoing. It means nothing will be learned from experience.
I’m not a good predictor of the future, but I’ll risk some predictions about the Trump administration.
