Beijing should pay the world ‘reparations’ for the economic damage caused by Covid-19 and, if necessary, it can be forced militarily to do so, said conservative British political commentator Douglas Murray without a hint of irony.
Murray, an author best known for his critiques of Islam and woke culture, has outlined his case for making China pay for the pandemic in a Thursday piece in the Spectator, the influential weekly with strong ties to the Conservative Party. The rallying call was unleashed in response to news that the Chinese economy is expected to grow in 2020 despite the global slowdown caused by the coronavirus.
“I resent the prospect of China walking away from 2020 spinning headlines about the positive economic message its economic boom sends to the rest of the world,” Murray explained.
Beijing’s culpability hinges on the fact that SARS-CoV-2 was first identified in the Hubei Province of China and that it was hurt less by it than many other nations. Murray says the coronavirus plausibly either emerged naturally or was accidentally released from a lab in the city of Wuhan, but entertained the possibility that the disease was unleashed on purpose.
Is it a conspiracy theory to believe this could have been deliberate?
“I wouldn’t have said so, and nor do many people in the intelligence world,” he said, without offering any names of intelligence professionals subscribing to this theory. In a follow-up interview on Talkradio, he mentioned agencies of the Anglophone Five Eyes group, who allegedly think “it is worth looking into.”
“What is clear is that the CCP will do anything in order to ensure we do not linger on the WMD it released this year,” he wrote, referring to China’s ruling Communist Party and apparently describing the coronavirus as a weapon of mass destruction.
The result of this “release”, according to Murray, is that China is now in a position to buy property cheaply all over the world while “bullying” anyone opposing it, like Australia. And as a bonus, US President Donald Trump, “who appeared to be the only person in the world willing to take on the CCP, was taken out in the election.”
Also on rt.com Covid contradiction? Pompeo believes coronavirus was 'man-made,' also agrees with intelligence that it was notSo, now is the time for countries of the world to “unite” and enforce “reparations,” the article concludes. “I am open to suggestions on how we do this: sanctions, gunboats – nothing should be off the table. China gave us 2020. We need to make them pay for it,” Murray said.
The idea that China should be footing the bill for the failed policies of Western governments has its proponents – including in the Trump administration. Murray’s take on it, however, seems fine-tuned to spark outrage in China, considering the country’s past humiliation from British colonialism, critics pointed out.
Britain’s past sins, according to Murray, need not to be compensated for. Reparations are not about demands by “certain communities to be given vast cash payouts for things that happened before they were born, to people they never knew, by people they never met.” So, it seems grievances come with an expiration date.
The demand to pay up, interestingly, paints the Covid-19 pandemic in a purely economic framework and fails to mention its human cost, some commenters said.
This metric varies dramatically among Western nations. The US and the UK have some of the worst death tolls, which is measured in hundreds of thousands and tens of thousands respectively. Australia and New Zealand, who happen to be part of Five Eyes, came through relatively unscathed, having just over 900 and only 25 Covid-19 fatalities on their respective records.
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