Speaking to a symposium on international relations in Beijing on Friday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi denounced “virus politicization” — other countries holding China responsible for the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus— and said China wants to “open a dialogue with the US on an equal footing at all levels and in all fields for candid, in-depth, and constructive exchanges.”
As summarized by China’s state-run People’s Daily, Wang’s broadside against “virus politicization” was a not-so-thinly-veiled demand for the rest of the world to unquestioningly accept Beijing’s political narrative of the pandemic — a narrative that portrays the Chinese Communist Party as champions of global public health, rather than the people who unleashed the Chinese coronavirus on the rest of humanity through their incompetence, mendacity, and lust for power:
China explicitly opposes politicizing the coronavirus pandemic and labeling of the virus to prohibit the spread of any “political virus” rampaging across the world, the foreign minister said on Friday. He characterized China’s performance in the global fight against COVID-19 [Chinese coronavirus] as being guided by the “people-centered philosophy” of a “responsible” major country.
Dedication to serving the Chinese people is the abiding mission of China’s diplomacy, Wang said, noting that the country had taken active measures to ensure the safety and health of overseas Chinese nationals, like providing consular protection for them.
Wang praised China’s ostensible commitment to “win-win” diplomacy and “open cooperation to inject confidence into the global economic recovery.”
“China’s diplomacy will keep facilitating domestic development strategies, boosting the global economic recovery, promoting the building of a new type of international relations, and deepening regional and international cooperation, as well as participating into the process of global governance system reform and building the community with a shared future for mankind,” he asserted.
Another passage of Wang’s speech quoted by China’s state-run Global Times called on the United States to get over its prejudices against China and resume diplomatic dialogue as “an effective way to correctly understand each other’s strategic intentions as well as internal and external policies.”
Wang suggested this dialogue could begin with “bilateral cooperation in the field of anti-pandemic efforts,” followed by cooperation on “the global economy, climate change, counter-terrorism, and cyber issues.”
China is, of course, the world’s number one “cyber issue” with its constant electronic espionage and intellectual property theft, but Wang insisted the U.S. should set aside such concerns and stop viewing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as a “threat.”
“We always believe that as long as we keep an objective and rational attitude, increase mutual understanding and integrate our interests, we will be able to find a way for countries with different social systems and cultural backgrounds to coexist peacefully on this planet,” the foreign minister said, touching on another major CCP political narrative: its assertion that China’s outrageous human rights violations are merely an aspect of its unique “culture” and criticism amounts to meddling in China’s “internal affairs.”