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This pandemic is a creature of capitalist globalisation, not any single country. ‘Chinese culture’ is a convenient scapegoat
For politicians in the US and western Europe seeking to distract from their own disastrous mismanagement of the Covid-19 pandemic, the idea of “China” has become a convenient scapegoat. The beauty of blaming “China” lies in its ambiguity. Are critics merely condemning the way the Communist party concealed information during those crucial January weeks? Both liberals and conservatives in the US, including Donald Trump, have used this defence.
Or, is the clear subtext that the real culprits are the “Chinese people” and their exotic culture and habits? Leave it to Nigel Farage to clumsily play both sides, claiming both that he held “no ill-will against the Chinese people” but that the problem lay with “appalling hygiene conditions in Chinese wildlife markets” and the customary diet of bats and pangolins. Whatever the intentions, we now see how criticisms of “China” have translated into an upsurge of racist violence aimed at the Chinese and Asian diaspora living in the US, western Europe and Oceania.
Continue reading...from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3e7ZDP7
