Amidst the newfound culture of banning Chinese products and applications, blaming it for the emergence and spread of the Coronavirus, China conducted a three-day event to celebrate the recovery of the last corona patient in Wuhan.
China has been receiving a tremendous amount of backlash globally, since the spread of the virus, after its origination from Wuhan. Since the pandemic spread across the globe, it caused numerous amounts of deaths worldwide and the countries were forced to impose lock downs and quarantines to control the casualties. Businesses, educational institutions, travel, hospitality etc abruptly shut down, resulting in an extreme economic downfall of almost every country in the world, causing a major political unrest against China.
Backlash faced by China
Presently, the virus originated from China’s Wuhan has affected more than two billion people across the globe and resulted in more than eight million deaths so far. Amidst the pandemic, international tension against China rose up and Donald Trump, the president of The United States of America tweeted against the country, calling it “incompetent” and indicating that China was responsible for what Trump termed as “mass worldwide killing”.
Initially, when the United States and Europe were the most hit by the virus, Trump tweeted his response for China, alleging that the virus was a propaganda attack by China for the two countries.
Apart from United States of America, China also received backlash from countries like Australia, Germany and Britain. Australia has called in for an enquiry into the origination of the virus, amidst a blame game between America and China. Germany and Britain are suspicious about welcoming Huawei, a Chinese tech giant into their country for business.
The theories surrounding the virus and its origination
As China grew free from the virus, soon after it started crossing borders, certain theories surfaced globally, it was alleged that the origination and the spread of the virus was deliberate and China did it with the expectation of excelling in the world, topping the United States of America, economically.
USA and China at blocks due to the pandemic origination theories.
Another theory from China suggested that the virus was actually spread by the United States of America to defame China as it was allegedly threatened of China’s growing economic status in the world.
Border Issues with India; a fuel to the global fire
Amidst the virus, the theories and the blame game between the United States of America and China, border issues between India and China also amplified. Whist India accused China of breaching the bilateral agreement between the two nations by crossing the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh. China accused India of crossing the LAC first and violating the peace on the border. India and China by now, have had multiple talks about the Indo-China border issue, but no outcome has put forth by either of the countries so far.
The banning of Chinese Apps, services and people, all over the world
Due to the global backlash for the virus, the border issues and the trade conflicts, India initially took a step to ban 59 Chinese applications, including Tiktok, Helo and Wechat in July 2020. The sudden ban of the apps, caused a stir among the people, and the decision was praised as well as avidly criticized by the public online.
Last week, India banned another 118 Chinese applications, including a leading gaming application Pub-g mobile. After the banning of several Chinese applications by India, Donald Trump also banned Tiktok, one of the most used Chinese app globally in America. Donald Trump recently talked about banning another most used Chinese application named Alibaba.
The re-birth of Wuhan, an attempt to stabilize relations?
In a recent attempt to turn around the world’s anger due to the pandemic, China announced the re-birth of Beijing’s province, Wuhan, the place where the virus allegedly originated, last year.
The re-birth policy came after Wuhan province of Beijing opened it’s schools successfully, last week. The schools welcomed the children with all the necessary precautions and China made sure to publicize the event.
A Chinese official, Ling Songtian, told the media that, “There are a few places in the world today where you don’t need a mask, and can gather.” This was a supposed indication that Wuhan was one of those places now.
A three day tour was conducted to publicize the re-birth of the province, it included opening of schools, children performing ballet, a Yangtze riverfront cruise underneath a skyline with beautiful lighting and a renovated food market in the province.
The opening of the Wuhan province at such a large scale, gave out a message to the world about the revamped city and also to the probability of China’s willingness to reconcile its relations with rest of the world.