World

My first personal encounter with victims of a modern authoritarian government came last October, when I sat down with Zumret Dawut and Mirighul Tursun, two Uighur women who survived China’s so-called 're-education' camps in Xinjiang. I was particularly struck by one story from Ms Tursun:'She endured several days of beatings and electrocution. Her torturers mocked her when she called to Allah.'Then they ask me, "Where is your God? You say God, where is your God? Tell him, if he is stronger than me, to help you,”’ said Tursun.'Your god is Xi Jinping,' the guards told her.It is not enough for Chinese authorities to repress faith; they must also replace it with a secular, party-approved deity.

You might think a global pandemic and the worst crisis since World War Two would lead to a welcome, if temporary tamping down of military activity in already tense and contested environments. Yet even as the novel coronavirus ravages the world, old fashioned geopolitical jousting continues in Asia, reminding us that the passing phase of COVID-19 will simply return much of the world to the status quo ante of great power competition. In a strange way, the ongoing military activities and geopolitical jockeying of China and the United States in Asia’s vital waterways is almost comforting.

China has tried to restore its image after lying to the world about the seriousness of its coronavirus outbreak, but its attempts at humanitarianism have turned out to be as slippery as its wet markets. After COVID-19 made its way to Italy, decimating the country's significant elderly population, China told the world it would donate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to help Italy stop its spread. Reports later indicated that China had actually sold, not donated, the PPE to Italy. A senior Trump administration official tells The Spectator that it is much worse than that: China forced Italy to buy back the PPE supply that it gave to China during the initial coronavirus outbreak.

A troubling pattern has emerged at the World Health Organization. In the wake of this global pandemic, it appears China has been misdirecting and misleading the rest of us about confirmed cases in their own country, with the help of their close financial partner, the WHO.As the WHO and parts of the American media laud China’s response to the pandemic, with NBC News even hailing them as a global leader as the US falls behind, several countries reported massive problems with faulty equipment and supplies.Shortly after China expelled American journalists from its borders, they stopped reporting new cases of COVID-19 altogether, despite Wuhan once again closing down its movie theaters.

Facing harsh criticism for allowing the novel coronavirus to spread, Beijing has settled on an international communications strategy: smearing the United States by claiming the virus originated with American soldiers visiting China. This strategy, based on obvious lies, will not work out well.Nobody outside China’s state broadcasters and some information-starved viewers could possibly believe it. For good reason: it’s bunk, and vile bunk at that. An infected unicorn is more likely to have started the virus in Wuhan than the US military. Yet that is the story the Chinese Communist party (CCP) is trying to peddle.

There’s a recurring flashback from my childhood that never fails to induce a blood-curdling shiver down my spine. My mother’s request for company on her monthly shopping trips to the wet market was always a Hobson’s choice, one I deeply resented because the experience was awful. Deep in the bowels of Singapore’s Chinatown complex was a large open-air market that stood in stark contrast to the surrounding glitzy skyscrapers and immaculate streets. The place was a veritable not-so-little shop of horrors and till today, those horrors remain firmly etched in my memory.A distinctly fetid stench greets you long before entering the market; soon it becomes apparent why they’re referred to as ‘wet’.

I didn’t know this was what they meant by ‘cancel culture’. Sports events, theatre shows, plane flights, weddings, funerals: everyone is in a mad rush to cancel everything. Governments are ordering citizens to remain indoors, with Spanish police even deploying drones to catch miscreants. I don’t know whether it is the best way of tackling coronavirus — the UK government, which has gone to greater lengths than others to explain the scientific modeling behind its decision-making, has come to the conclusion that banning things and forcing the entire population into lockdown will have minimal effect and may even be counter-productive, at least at this stage. But it is going to cause a global recession, if not depression.

Monday night’s House of Commons rebellion over Huawei was on a surprisingly serious scale for a new government with a big mandate. The problem for the UK government is not just the actual danger of our security being breached by Huawei, real though that is. It is also strategic. The government is not treating the subject this way, but sees it as merely a matter for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. This is a bad mistake. We have achieved Brexit. We are making our own way in the world. Our closest allies in terms of trust, language, cultural links, democratic values and shared interests are our four partner nations in the ‘Five Eyes’ deep intelligence partnership — the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

If anything, stock markets have been slow to respond to the spreading coronavirus outbreak. Stories of Chinese supply interruptions, from JCB digger components to plastic toys, have been circulating since mid-February, while hedge funds have been hard at work short-selling cruise-operator shares: Royal Caribbean and Carnival are both down 30 percent. Now airlines have taken a pasting too, with easyJet and Ryanair among the big fallers in Monday’s sell-off of European stocks, following news of a cluster of virus cases in northern Italy. Meanwhile, a turning point may or may not have been reached in the rate of reported cases in Wuhan, where the outbreak began.

This article is in The Spectator’s March 2020 US edition. Subscribe here. I’ve been quarantined, like millions of others in China. It was bound to happen sooner or later. I traveled all the way from Beijing to the third-tier city of Jining in Shandong province, where anyone arriving from another region must be detained for 14 days. There’s no kind way to deliver the news, so a Chinese colleague broke it to me over WeChat in a gentle but firm tone. It felt like being fired or dumped. It could be worse. I’m free to leave my building, but not the walled housing compound surrounding it.