If you’re tired of Western outlets pandering to China, this is a refreshing change.
On April 15, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Berlin decided to pen an open letter to the German tabloid Bild, Europe’s biggest news outlet, concerning its reporting which the embassy said blamed China for the outbreak of the coronavirus epidemic.
The letter, addressed to Bild editor-in-chief Julian Reichelt, takes issue with the reporting which accuses China of violating its obligations in reporting to the World Health Organization (WHO) in the early stages of the epidemic, that then turned into a pandemic.
According to the Chinese embassy, Bild also quotes British neocon think tank Henry Jackson Society that said China is legally responsible for the economic consequences of the global crisis – which are yet to be understood, but are believed to be enormous.
Needless to say, Beijing rejected all these accusations and scolded Bild for its reporting, suggesting even that purely anti-Chinese sentiment rather than any other motive might be behind such editorial policy.
Two days later, Reichelt published his response in a video on Facebook, and announced it on Twitter.
In the video – addressed to Chinese leader Xi Jinping – he says that while China is ruled through surveillance, it “refused to monitor the diseased wet markets”; that while critical newspapers and websites are “shut down” – stalls with “bat soup” continue to be open for business.
Reichelt then makes a connection between mass surveillance of the Chinese people and putting them in danger (ostensibly by the virus), along with other nations around the world.
Reichelt slams China of being incapable of producing any innovation but making itself rich solely on “intellectual property theft.” He also claims that China’s biggest export is coronavirus.
Xi, his authorities, and top researchers are also accused of not sharing data on coronavirus being highly contagious when then knew about it, and Reichelt thinks the motive behind this was “pride and nationalism.”
A Washington Post report is next quoted by Reichelt, which said the Wuhan lab had been researching the virus for a while.
“Why are your toxic laboratories not as secure as your prisons,” he asks, and makes another accusations: that China was planning to strengthen its position in the world by exporting this “plague” and then helping countries cope with it.
The Chinese embassy responded to this as well, calling it falsehoods and defamation.
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