‘Coronavirus is Chinese virus,’ Trump asserts the obvious and sets fire to the liberal camp

China is spending millions of dollars to get favourable coverage over the Wuhan virus pandemic that has infected 108 countries across the world. It is no surprise that when Donald Trump dared to call spade a spade and addressed it as ‘Chinese virus’, the WHO and UNESCO quickly came to the rescue of China. While the Chinese government is desperately trying to pin the blame on the USA, the Trump administration has shot back as it repetitively addressed it as the ‘Wuhan’ and the ‘Chinese’ virus much to the disdain of the liberals.

The Trump administration has decided to push back against the Chinese propaganda which is evident from Trump’s twitter.

No sooner did Trump tweet about the Chinese virus, did the liberals and the WHO and UNESCO came to the Chinese Communist Party’s rescue.

While the WHO and UNESCO might be claiming moral high ground as they claim to stand against ‘stigmatizing’ attitudes by refusing to name the virus after its place of origin. On the contrary, it is a norm to name the virus after the place of origin.

As was the case with Ebola and Nipah, the viruses were named after the places of origin. Diseases such as the West Nile virus, Guinea worm and the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), Japanese Encephalitis and the Spanish Flu are all named after its place of origin or the areas most affected by the disease. The WHO broke this practice when it came to the Wuhan virus. 

The liberal media is now claiming that the move to call it the Wuhan virus or the Chinese virus is nothing but racist and xenophobic. Funnily, before Trump addressed it as the Wuhan coronavirus, the media abundantly used the term ‘Wuhan virus’ to address the outbreak but now since Trump has used it, the term is now ‘racist and xenophobic’.

https://twitter.com/doradopescado/status/1238188936427474944?s=20

It is no coincidence that the American media collectively came to the rescue of China as Trump upped the ante against China. ThePrint reports that China is buying good press across the world as it attempts to wash its hands off the spread of the virus.

This comes at a time when in 2016, Xi Jinping had publicly claimed to “tell China’s story better” to the world. Chinese government mouthpieces are on war footing running biased reports which portray Jinping as a ‘hero’ who saved China.

ThePrint reports that since 2016, China’s foreign ministry has hosted around 100 foreign journalists from leading media houses in Asia and Africa for 10 months. The visiting journalists are meted out the red-carpet treatment. They have been ‘gifted’ apartments in plush residences of Beijing and the Jianguomen Diplomatic Compound, where the cost of a two-BHK apartment is around Rs 2.4 lakh.

In addition to this ‘gifts’, the journalists also receive a 5,000 Yuan monthly stipend along with bi-monthly tours to different Chinese provinces. At the end of the trip, the journalists are given degrees in international relations from a Chinese university.

During the peak of the Hong Kong’s struggle for independence from China, the country’s propaganda machinery spent $1 million to buy influence on foreign social media.

It now becomes much more clear why US-based media house ‘The Atlantic’ is acting as the spokesperson of Xi Jinping as it blames Trump for attempting to ‘rebrand’ the coronavirus.

Atlantic Staff Writer David Frum put out a distasteful tweet.

Frum’s colleague Anne Applebaum resorted to spreading fake news that China is sending medical aid to Iran and Italy out of the goodness of their hearts despite the fact that the shipments were not donations, but exports purchased by those countries.

After successfully exporting the Wuhan virus to the world, the Chinese government has shamelessly decided to shift the goalposts. While all the evidence points to the epicentre of the outbreak, Wuhan, which where the virus is widely believed to have originated, the Chinese government has come out and denied that the origin of the virus is in China in a bid to shed responsibility. The Chinese government instead has decided to pin the blame on the USA.

The Chinese authorities instead of taking up responsibility are trying to pin the blame on the USA and wash their hands off the virus. From initially blaming the USA for overreacting on the virus to now claiming that the virus originated in the USA, the Chinese propaganda machinery has come a full circle.

The Chinese propaganda machinery is currently claiming that it was the US Military that brought the virus to Wuhan during the Wuhan Military games — a claim which is devoid of any proof.

https://twitter.com/esaagar/status/1238958721465757702?s=20

The shielding of China by liberal media is all part of China’s robust PR machinery spread worldwide. It has previously sprung into action amid the trade war and whenever BRI faced challenges abroad or the revelation of China’s debt diplomacy or its aggression in the South China Sea.