Bild, one of Germany’s major news outlets, rakes China over the coals By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/04/bild_one_of_germanys_major_news_outlets_rakes_china_over_the_coals.html

China has been working overtime to deflect responsibility for the Wuhan virus’s leap from a Chines bio lab into a worldwide pandemic that’s caused death and economic destruction around the globe. While Democrats want to blame Trump more than China, in England, people know that China is at fault and, in Germany, one newspaper has directly challenged China.

In America, a media in thrall to Trump Derangement Syndrome is promoting Chinese propaganda to derail Trump’s reelection campaign. (See, e.g., “CNN accused of ‘literally publishing Chinese propaganda.’”) This joint Chinese and mainstream media propaganda effort has worked, up to a point. According to a Rasmussen poll, 60% of Democrats believe that Trump is more responsible than China for the Wuhan virus in America.

Outside of the Democrat swamp, though, people have taken note of the fact that the Wuhan virus is a Chinese phenomenon. They understand that, while China may not have released the virus deliberately, its subsequent cover-up and lies turned the virus into a devastating worldwide pandemic.

Thus, the same Rasmussen poll reveals that 69% of voters overall believe that China is at fault, a view held by 83% of Republicans and 65% of Independents.

In England, a Henry Jackson Society poll also revealed a real hardening in attitudes towards China:

  • 74% of British adults believe “the Chinese Government is to blame for allowing COVID-19 to spread”. Just 19% believe it is not to blame;
  • 71% of the public would support the British Government suing China in international court “if it became evident that the Chinese government breached international law in responding to the initial outbreak and spread of COVID-19”. Just 6% would oppose such action;
  • More British adults now oppose Huawei’s role in the UK’s 5G network than support it.
  • 40% of British adults oppose allowing the firm to build the UK’s network, just 27% support it.
  •  The proportion who oppose allowing Huawei a role rises to 51% amongst Conservative voters in the 2019 election;
  • 69% of the British public believe that the virus began in a wet market in Wuhan, China;
  • 83% of the public believe that the British Government should demand an international inquiry into the response of the Chinese Government to the COVID-19 crisis;
  • 45% of the public believe that the Chinese Government is mainly to blame for the damage caused in the UK by Coronavirus. 15% believe the UK government is mainly to blame and 31% believe that the UK and Chinese Government’s are equally to blame.

Meanwhile, in Germany, one major publication is attacking China directly for its responsibility vis-à-vis the Wuhan virus. Bild, a daily broadsheet with a circulation of over 2 million, wrote an article asking “whether China should pay for the massive economic damage the coronavirus is inflicting worldwide.” It held that China owed Germany almost $162 billion. The Chinese ambassador in Berlin, in an open letter, took umbrage at this suggestion:

“I followed your reporting on the corona pandemic in general and China’s alleged guilt in particular today. Apart from the fact that we consider it a pretty bad style to blame a country for a pandemic that is affecting the whole world and then to present an explicit account of alleged Chinese debts to Germany, the article ignores some essential facts.”

She added that “We note that many countries now struggling with COVID-19 have had time to prepare for the cross-border spread of the pathogen after China reported its outbreak under IHR [World Health Organization] guidelines.”

Unlike most media outlets, Bild did not respond with a groveling apology. Instead, Julian Reichelt, Bild’s editor-in-chief, countered with a video that savagely attacked, not just China’s approach to the Wuhan virus, but the Chinese government. Reichelt accused China of being a surveillance state, a place so lacking in innovation that it had no choice other than to steal other countries’ intellectual property, a dissembler that hid information about the Wuhan virus, and a grossly negligent caretaker of dangerous research labs.

Reichelt’s most brutal truth was that “Your [Xi’s] power is crumbling. *** You plan to strengthen China through a plague that you exported. You will not succeed. Corona will be your political end, sooner or later.” You can view Reichelt repeating these accusations in the video, below:

 

Reichelt is correct. It’s a disgrace that the Democrats’ control over the media means that 60% of American Democrats reject the truth. The reality is that China is using the chaos it created to go on a bargain-buying spree around the world. Those countries in which China found bargains should void those sales – but keep any money already paid as partial compensation for the economic havoc China has wreaked around the world.

***

Transcript of the Bild video (via Bild):

Dear President Xi Jinping

Your embassy in Berlin has addressed me in an open letter because we asked in our newspaper BILD whether China should pay for the massive economic damage the corona virus is inflicting worldwide.

Let me respond:

1. You rule by surveillance. You wouldn’t be president without surveillance.

You monitor everything, every citizen, but you refuse to monitor the diseased wet markets in your country.

You shut down every newspaper and website that is critical of your rule, but not the stalls where bat soup is sold. You are not only monitoring your people, you are endangering them – and with them, the rest of the world.

2. Surveillance is a denial of freedom. And a nation that is not free, is not creative.

A nation that is not innovative, does not invent anything. This is why you have made your country the world champion in intellectual property theft.

China enriches itself with the inventions of others, instead of inventing on its own. The reason China does not innovate and invent is that you don’t let the young people in your country think freely. China’s greatest export hit (that nobody wanted to have, but which has nevertheless gone around the world) is Corona.

3. You, your government and your scientists had to know long ago that Corona is highly infectious, but you left the world in the dark about it.

Your top experts didn’t respond when Western researchers asked to know what was going on in Wuhan.

You were too proud and too nationalistic to tell the truth, which you felt was a national disgrace.

4. The “Washington Post” reports that your laboratories in Wuhan have been researching corona viruses in bats, but without maintaining the highest safety standards.

Why are your toxic laboratories not as secure as your prisons for political prisoners?

Would you like to explain this to the grieving widows, daughters, sons, husbands, parents of Corona victims all over the world?

5. In your country, your people are whispering about you. Your power is crumbling.

You have created an inscrutable, non-transparent China. Before Corona, China was known as a surveillance state. Now, China is known as a surveillance state that infected the world with a deadly disease.

That is your political legacy.

Your embassy tells me that I am not living up to the “traditional friendship of our peoples.”I suppose you consider it a great “friendship” when you now generously send masks around the world. This isn’t friendship, I would call it imperialism hidden behind a smile – a Trojan Horse.

You plan to strengthen China through a plague that you exported. You will not succeed. Corona will be your political end, sooner or later.

Yours sincerely

Julian Reichelt

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