United Kingdom, the country which ruled the world in 19th century, is suffering from the worst public health crisis in its modern history. Coronavirus has taken a huge toll in the country with more than 50 thousand infected people and 5,300 deaths so far, with the worst phase yet to come.
The most important figures from United Kingdom, including Prime Minister Boris Johnson and heir apparent to the throne, Prince Charles, have contracted Coronavirus. In fact, the situation has worsened for Boris Johnson who is under intensive care and foreign secretary Dominic Raab is leading the country in his absence.
Boris Johnson, an extremely popular politician not just in the United Kingdom but other countries too, is most prominent head of the state suffering from disease. He was elected with the highest ever majority since 1934 general election in 2020. Any casualty to Johnson would cost hugely to China.
Raab, the UK foreign secretary currently leading the country is no friend of China. Under his watch, the UK issued advisory to British Nationals to leave China as early as February first week.
On March 30, he hit out at China and said ‘lesson will be learned’ from current episode. Almost two months ago, UK government gave controversial Chinese firm Huawei green signal to supply equipment for British telecom network, and now after Coronavirus, under the leadership of Raab who is more hawkish, the country might go other way.
The relations between both countries have worsened so much that The Wall Street Journal, a highly influential American newspaper, published an editorial on April, 3, titled “Britain Falls out with China” with byline of Editorial Board.
On April 6, a group of highly influential MPs of ruling Conservative Party accused China of “obfuscation of data” and “deliberately misleading” WHO. “Disinformation about COVID-19 has already cost lives. It is essential that the Government issues clear and transparent messages at home to confront and rebut disinformation spread by foreign powers (insinuating to China obviously),” said MPs.
Casualty to Johnson could become the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria moment- the most immediate cause of World War I- for the world. This time, the war among the countries would not be of that firepower given the availability of nuclear weapon on both sides, but this war will be fought over economy.
Once the pandemic is over, China might not be the ‘factory of the world’ because no country is going to trade with people who are responsible for death of their loved ones.
Major war analogies are being used as the damage caused by Chinese virus to the countries like United States, United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, France, and Germany is more than that of World War I and World War II. So far, more than 12 lakh people have been infected with the virus and around 70,000 have died.
Surgeon General of the United States, Jerome Adams, in an interview with Fox News, said, “This is going to be our Pearl Harbor moment, our 9/11 moment, only it’s not going to be localized, it’s going to be happening all over the country and I want America to understand that.”
US has got many allies in this war as most of the countries in Western Europe, including its all-weather ally, United Kingdom, are furious over China. As per the research carried out in the United Kingdom, the global economy has been hit by a loss of 3.2 trillion pounds- more than the GDP of India for FY 19- and China should be held responsible for this.
15 senior members of Britain ruling Conservative Party wrote to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who himself has been found COVID-19 positive, to ‘rethink’ relations with Beijing and hold the Communist government responsible for this. They have asked the British government to demand compensation of 351 billion pounds- the loss to the British economy due to the virus.
The countries around the world hold China and WHO responsible for the outbreak of a full-blown pandemic, and rightly so. The virus reached throughout the world due to irresponsible decisions of Chinese government to suppress information about its spread and nature, and WHO was complicit in this.
Now China has partially overcome the disease and reopened its factories, to exports PPEs to the world. The country is crisis profiteering from the disease it created and ‘gifted’ to the world. The global superpowers like the United States, NATO alliance should hold China responsible and extract repatriations, just like it goes in war times.