https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15933/china-coronavirus-winning
Last January, no doubt underestimating the threat to France itself, President Emmanuel Macron made a gift of five million surgical masks to the People’s Republic. When it became clear, just three weeks later, that France itself might urgently need the masks, Beijing came out with a barrage of excuses to avoid restitution. And when the French agreed to buy masks at three times the price, China signed the contract but sold a good part of the masks at five times the price to last-minute private buyers from the United States. Beijing has played the same trick on a number of other countries, notably Chile, which last week lodged formal protest.
One thing is certain: public opinion in many countries is today more hostile to doing business with China. And that could adversely affect both normal trade and “sweetheart” deals like the one Britain planned to conclude with Huawei.
Campaigns to boycott Chinese goods have already started in more than 40 countries on all continents.
“Is China Winning?” This was the cover headline that the British weekly The Economist unfurled earlier this month for a lengthy report on how the major powers might emerge out of the current coronavirus crisis.
This is not the first time that a section of Western media, often including The Economist, pronounce the Western democracies, especially the United States, as losers in comparison with rivals and/or enemies.
In the 1980s, the magazine beat the drums for “Japan As Number One”, echoing Ezra Vogel’s book-length rodomontade for the so-called “faultless economic model.” In the 1990s, The Economist, with President Suharto on its cover, predicted the rise of Indonesia as one of the world’s top economic powers. And in 2005, the magazine offered another sensational cover with the headline: “Has Iran Won?”
