China’s Global Times government newspaper condemned Americans in an article on Monday for “shouting, kissing, and dancing” on New Year’s Eve while much of China was under brutal coronavirus lockdowns – necessitated by the Communist Party’s poor handling of the pandemic.
Scenes at the end of 2021 differed significantly on both sides of the planet to how they were in at the beginning of the year. One New Year’s Eve ago, the Chinese government staged a massive party in Wuhan – the city where the Chinese coronavirus originated and where authorities let it spread uncontrolled for months – for thousands of people, asserting that the global public should “get used to” Wuhan being a major party destination after being home to the worst pandemic in recent memory. A year later, Chinese authorities were forced to cancel New Year’s celebrations in Wuhan over coronavirus cases, even though authorities have insisted the largest outbreak is in Xi’an, a city 400 miles away.
“Despite the explosion in the number of [Chinese coronavirus] cases, cancelation of thousands of flights, health experts’ warnings have been making headlines, it was not enough to stop Americans celebrating,” the Global Times lamented on Monday, asserting that American “overconfidence” had created an unsustainable public health situation in the United States.
“When Americans in New York, Boston, Las Vegas and elsewhere were celebrating the New Year with shouting, kissing and dancing while ignoring health experts’ advice to wear masks and keep social distance, the epidemic in the US is riding a roller coaster going up at speed,” the newspaper claimed, “breaking daily records in case numbers and leaving many to wondering when this latest wave will peak, and how high it will be.”
Instead, the Global Times suggested that America should adopt China’s strategy of brutally locking up cities of millions of people with little notice, leaving them starving with no way of obtaining basic food and necessary medicine. This is the situation in Xi’an currently, locked down abruptly on December 23 over the uncontrolled spread of coronavirus in that city. Last week, locals began using Chinese government-run social media outlets like Weibo to complain that they had run out of food and authorities would neither let them out to go shopping or bring them necessary supplies. The complaints were so many that Weibo did not censor many of them and Beijing fired several local Xi’an and Shaanxi province Communist Party officials. The Chinese regime has also since claimed to have distributed some food supplies, flooding Weibo with photos of alleged home deliveries of vegetables.
A security guard checks information of a resident at the entrance of a residental area that is under restrictions following a recent coronavirus outbreak in Xian, in China’s northern Shaanxi province on December 23, 2021. (Photo by STR/AFP via Getty Images)
The state newspaper complained that similar scenes have not erupted throughout America.
“American society – from governments to ordinary people – treating the virus as a bad flu was a big mistake, and overconfidence and over-reliance on vaccines without strict social controls will cost more American lives from [Chinese coronavirus] and other diseases,” the outlet predicted, “as American hospitals become overwhelmed and even paralyzed in the coming days. They predict that US daily cases are likely to surge to 1 million.”
This photo taken on December 22, 2021 shows a staff member spraying disinfectant on street in Xi’an in China’s northern Shaanxi province. (Photo by STR/AFP via Getty Images)
The Global Times also demanded gratitude from American citizens – despite the Chinese government’s failures causing the Chinese coronavirus pandemic – because the lockdowns in China allegedly helped the Western world.
“China’s dynamic zero policy not only shielded the country from the raging pandemic, but also bought time for the West to build up its herd immunity, which the West should ‘thank’ China for, instead of being ungrateful,” the newspaper asserted.
“It seems to the Western media that China’s response is causing more problems than benefits, but Chinese experts said that what China did was extremely meaningful in controlling its domestic flare-ups and saving the world much time for combating the virus and boosting economic recovery, which the West should thank China for,” it concluded.
Many local Chinese governments shut down New Year’s Eve celebrations this year over the Xi’an disaster, as well as smaller localized outbreaks throughout the country. Both Beijing – which is scheduled to host the 2022 Winter Olympics in February – and Shanghai, the country’s largest cities, canceled scheduled New Year events. Wuhan joined other major cities such as Guangzhou and Wuhan in canceling large-scale parties.
In contrast, the Chinese government flooded social media last year with photos and videos of large crowds congregating in Wuhan to ring in 2021 – images that corporate outlets in the United States dutifully replicated, in contrast to the shocking images of an empty Times Square in New York under the orders of then-Mayor Bill de Blasio. The Communist Party billed the Wuhan party as a celebration of victory over the Chinese coronavirus, but two weeks later – about two incubation periods for the first iteration of the virus, now known as “alpha” – China was forced to lock down 11 different regions as outbreaks clearly linked to travel during the New Year holiday had given the virus the opportunity to spread at the national level.