‘The virus came from Europe,’ As Coronavirus hits Beijing, China blames Europe

China is scrambling to prevent an unprecedented CoVID-19 outbreak in its political capital, Beijing. Over 100 new cases have been added over the weekend in the city, with parts of the city, particularly the areas surrounding the Xinfadi market being forced to go under a stringent lockdown. The spike in cases comes after close to two months of Beijing reporting no new cases, sending authorities into a tizzy over the origins of the pathogen.

It must be mentioned here that the numbers coming out of Beijing are shady at best, with various reports claiming varying numbers.

Bearing true faith to their duplicitous character, however, China has been quick at pinning the blame over the new outbreak in its capital upon Europe. The genome sequencing of the virus strain tested in Beijing is reportedly being linked to Europe. The samples which have been tested from the Xinfadi wholesale market preliminarily indicate that the strain is similar to the ones which China found from imported cases. Yang Peng, from the Beijing Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said that an epidemiological investigation will now be conducted into early and key cases, and also more tests will be conducted on the strain of virus found in the Xinfadi cluster.

Xinfadi market in Beijing is the city’s biggest wholesale market for vegetables, meat and seafood, and close to 60% of the city’s farm produce is supplied for from this particular market which has now emerged as a lethal pathogenic hotspot. Zhang Yuxi, the market’s chairman, said on Friday that the virus has been traced to a chopping board used by a seller of  “imported salmon” at the market, further echoing the sentiments of Chinese authorities over the virus strain having European origins.

The city of 20 million now stands at a high risk of witnessing a CoVID-19 surge, as China’s pathogenic gift to the world now comes back to bite the dragon in its capital. Wuhan, ground zero of the Coronavirus outbreak, is also said to have been ravaged due to the virus strain originating from the city’s wet markets. Over 430,000 people have so far been killed by the virus strain globally.

This is not the first time when China is pinning the blame on foreign nations, while completely ignoring its own complacency, and even criminality, in letting the virus travel around the world initially. While the CCP has been quick in announcing questionable results of the genome sequencing carried out on samples from Beijing, it has maintained complete secrecy about the genome sequencing of the virus strain found in Wuhan. Authorities in Hubei province initially tried to cover up the outbreak in Wuhan and allowed millions of people to continue to travel unfettered.

During the initial outbreak, even as the world was beginning to question China’s role in allowing the current pandemic situation to aggravate, the CCP had shamelessly, and without proof, blamed the United States for the outbreak, claiming that it was the US Navy which had caused the outbreak in China. Even now, China is subtly pinning the blame over the new cases reported in Beijing to South Asian countries like India and Bangladesh, as some of the travellers test positive in the Chinese capital. China had then also rallied to blame the rise of cases in its Northern provinces on Russia, citing imported cases as the cause for a potential second wave in the country.

Now, in a typically similar behaviour, for China to blame Europe should not really come as a surprise. The world is increasingly siding against China, and individual European nations too are in no mood to share cordial relations with the oppressive CCP regime. As such, China is looking at mitigating the global adverse behaviour of nations, by blaming the West for the new outbreak in Beijing. However, it is fooling nobody by doing so.