Ahead Of WHO's Visit, China Is Incessantly Spreading Guilty Narratives Of The Spread Of COVID-19

Illustrations (Unsplash / Sam Balye)

JAKARTA - While increasing efforts to prevent the circulation of a new outbreak, China is diligently spreading narratives about the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. They dismissed criticism of the initial handling of COVID-19, which was first identified in Wuhan at the end of 2019. This they intensified ahead of the arrival of a team from the World Health Organization (WHO) to investigate the origin of COVID-19.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying was quoted as saying by Reuters, saying that the Bamboo Curtain Country would welcome the WHO team. Amid tensions of geopolitical conflict, experts say WHO will not be allowed to explore sensitive aspects of the outbreak. This is because China is reportedly desperate to avoid blame for the virus, which has killed more than 1.8 million people worldwide.

"Even before this investigation, high-ranking officials from both sides had been very polarized in their opinion on the origin of the outbreak," said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a US think tank. "They have to understand politics and draw conclusions that are acceptable to all the big parties," he added.

While other countries have continued to fight against a spike in cases, China is aggressively fighting the outbreak. After a cluster of new cases last week occurred in Shenyang City, the authorities immediately closed down the entire community. Some groups of workers are advised to stay at home.

On Saturday January 2, senior diplomat Wang Yi praised China's anti-pandemic efforts. He said China was not only holding back domestic contagion, but was "leading the way in building a global anti-epidemic defense" by providing assistance to more than 150 countries.

But given the criticism that China faces around the world, Wang is also the top official who questions the consensus on the origin of COVID-19. He said "an increasing number of studies" show that the virus is emerging in different regions.

Various speculations

China is also the only country that claims COVID-19 can be transmitted via frozen food shipments. China has even blamed the new outbreaks in Beijing and Dalian on contaminated shipping goods.

Last week, a study by the Chinese Center for Disease Control showed that blood samples from 4.43 percent of the Wuhan population contained COVID-19 antibodies. These results indicate that the city's transmission rate is much higher than was originally known.

But scientists say China should also share any findings that suggest COVID-19 is circulating domestically long before it is officially identified in December 2019.

However, a study in Italy suggests that COVID-19 may have existed in Europe months before China's first official case. Chinese state media used the research to support the theory that COVID-19 originated abroad and entered China via contaminated frozen food or foreign athletes competing at the World Military Games in Wuhan in October 2019.