The world puts an * next to China

When Donald Trump publicly called into question China’s Covid-19 death rate claims at a recent White House press conference, the chart he pointed to had an asterisk next to China’s name. Thanks to Beijing’s lack of transparency during the pandemic, and subsequent coverup, scepticism over its official statements is now the norm. While seemingly trivial, the asterisk is the powerful symbol of a new era, in which distrust is perhaps the salient feature of the world’s relations with China.

Americans are familiar with the asterisk from professional sports. Since Major League Baseball decided to put an asterisk next to Roger Maris’s name after he broke Babe Ruth’s single season home-run record in 1961 (as Maris had 162 games to hit his record-breaking 61 home runs, compared to 154 games when Ruth hit 60 in 1927), it has become the custom to append it to anything where the truth is not what it seems.