COVID-19 & China: A View from Asia
As everyone is stuck at home, and politicians go around pointing fingers at each other trying to shift blame, while some slog on to defeat this virus, I thought I would share an article by George Yeo, who used to be Singapore's foreign minister.
Could China have done better in its initial response? Definitely. Were there mistakes with China's figures? Of course. But we know all these because hindsight is 6/6 (or 20/20 for those in the U.S.).
The fact of the matter, though, is that China did worked hard to contain the virus. It shut down a major city, followed by an entire province, with the rest of the country close to lockdown. Any credible scientist will tell you that if China did not do this, we would be looking at a very very different situation now.
The question we need to ask is: why did different countries react differently to China's notification to the WHO about the novel coronavirus?
Taiwan and Singapore are great examples. These two took early action; Taiwan's reaction started on December 31, 2019, while Singapore took action starting from January 2, 2020. Taiwan's initial response was firm probably because of geopolitics and a long history of dealing with China. In contrast, Singapore's responses looked weaker, but we must remember that Singapore is a small country heavily dependent on trade, and China is a major trading partner. I would dare say Singapore did the most it could given the economic and geopolitical circumstances.
Meanwhile, Abe was trying to downplay things in Japan so as not to affect his beloved Olympic Games. Trump was probably too distracted by his impeachment to seriously think about how the U.S. should respond. Most other countries were slow to act too. Remember, China is a major trading partner for almost every country, and I believe economics played a significant role in the decisions of leaders all over the world. Couple that with the WHO's reluctance to raise the alarm (again, likely due to political and economic considerations), and leaders around the world had even less political backing to be able to take strong and quick responses.
So where do we go now, after most of the world has squandered away the two months that China bought us?
We can continue to try and blame China and the WHO. We can continue to foster conspiracy theories. But those actions will not contain the spread of the virus, and does nothing to save lives.
Alternatively, we can stop the blame game, shut down conspiracy theories, and focus on doing what we can to contain the virus and eventually defeat it. And that is part one. Once we have the virus under control, we need to focus on rebuilding our economies.
There is a lot to be done. Pointing fingers and writing farfetched tales won't help us finish those tasks.
As everyone is stuck at home, and politicians go around pointing fingers at each other trying to shift blame, while some slog on to defeat this virus, I thought I would share an article by George Yeo, who used to be Singapore's foreign minister.
Could China have done better in its initial response? Definitely. Were there mistakes with China's figures? Of course. But we know all these because hindsight is 6/6 (or 20/20 for those in the U.S.).
The fact of the matter, though, is that China did worked hard to contain the virus. It shut down a major city, followed by an entire province, with the rest of the country close to lockdown. Any credible scientist will tell you that if China did not do this, we would be looking at a very very different situation now.
The question we need to ask is: why did different countries react differently to China's notification to the WHO about the novel coronavirus?
Taiwan and Singapore are great examples. These two took early action; Taiwan's reaction started on December 31, 2019, while Singapore took action starting from January 2, 2020. Taiwan's initial response was firm probably because of geopolitics and a long history of dealing with China. In contrast, Singapore's responses looked weaker, but we must remember that Singapore is a small country heavily dependent on trade, and China is a major trading partner. I would dare say Singapore did the most it could given the economic and geopolitical circumstances.
Meanwhile, Abe was trying to downplay things in Japan so as not to affect his beloved Olympic Games. Trump was probably too distracted by his impeachment to seriously think about how the U.S. should respond. Most other countries were slow to act too. Remember, China is a major trading partner for almost every country, and I believe economics played a significant role in the decisions of leaders all over the world. Couple that with the WHO's reluctance to raise the alarm (again, likely due to political and economic considerations), and leaders around the world had even less political backing to be able to take strong and quick responses.
So where do we go now, after most of the world has squandered away the two months that China bought us?
We can continue to try and blame China and the WHO. We can continue to foster conspiracy theories. But those actions will not contain the spread of the virus, and does nothing to save lives.
Alternatively, we can stop the blame game, shut down conspiracy theories, and focus on doing what we can to contain the virus and eventually defeat it. And that is part one. Once we have the virus under control, we need to focus on rebuilding our economies.
There is a lot to be done. Pointing fingers and writing farfetched tales won't help us finish those tasks.
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