China must pay a diplomatic price for its cover-up

When it comes to China, Dominic Raab says: ‘We can’t have business as usual after this crisis’. Business as usual is China masking the beginnings a deadly pandemic that has infected more than two million and killed 150,000 worldwide. Business as usual is Beijing covering up the existence of a new coronavirus for six crucial days and intentionally under-reporting infection and casualty rates. Business as usual is police harassment of doctors and the disappearance and presumed detention of Dr Ai Fen, who tried to alert colleagues to a new coronavirus in Wuhan. Business as usual is China restricting research into the origins of the virus and, in the estimation of international law scholar Irwin Cotler, conspiring to ‘conceal, destroy, falsify, and fabricate information about the rampant spread of Covid-19’.

It’s also business as usual in the West. Journalists rightly interrogating national governments’ management of a public health emergency are far less curious about the origin of the contagion.