Inq has been at work deciphering Australia’s new and evolving China policy and we’ve come up with five variations.
Here’s how wedge politics works when it comes to a new threat from afar. We’re calling it “Stop the Bats”.
After all, it worked before.
1. Wet market — all an accident
This position gives China the benefit of the doubt. It assumes that, when COVID-19 jumped species from an infected bat at a Wuhan wildlife market, no one was the wiser and, next thing, the world was infected.
You can’t blame anyone. Heck, bat-shit happens. And really it could have happened anywhere.
This would be classic wet-left thinking — way too left for Anthony Albanese if he wants a shot at PM. (See two, below.)
A “no blame” position, though, is a good place for ex-politicians to head if they don’t want to cause offence.
Bob Carr, former foreign affairs minister and former director of the Australia-China Relations Institute, has decided the real culprit is bad Australian diplomacy.
Fellow former foreign affairs minister Julie Bishop wants “a global review” to look at the United States and Europe as well, so it’s not “squarely aimed” China.
2. Wet market — sinister silence
As above, but it assumes Chinese officials decided to keep the truth of the virus from the rest of the world — and its own population — because that’s how repressive one-party states work.
This proves the failings of the Chinese system of government and why we need to be on guard about China’s expansionism: don’t trust China.
This one is favoured by the Morrison government at the moment.
Others in this camp: Britain and the Five Eyes intelligence network, and former top public servant Martin Parkinson.
But Morrison’s call for an inquiry into how it all came to be keeps open the possibility of a more hard-line position (see option three below).
Inq can see some government MPs veering towards option three. These include Peter Dutton and parliamentary intelligence and security committee chairman Andrew Hastie. Hastie has previously said that “the Chinese Communist Party seeks to reshape the global order and Australia’s position in it”.
3. Made in lab — with evil intent
The theory that Chinese scientists made the virus in a lab in Wuhan can really only mean one thing: China planned to unleash COVID-19 in order to destroy the West, thereby handing China world domination.
The qualifier here that the virus may have “accidentally escaped” might sometimes be used for manners.
This is a policy position favoured by US President Donald Trump — who is seeking re-election — and backed by the Murdochs’ Fox News. Watch for that particular policy creep into Australia as it emerges as a populist position for some.
It’s also the favoured theory of author and critic of the Chinese government Clive Hamilton, who told Sky News’ Sharri Markson that the idea the coronavirus originated in a Wuhan wet market “simply doesn’t stack up”.
Queensland Coalition MP George Christensen, who is setting up a “China inquiry” website, is probably already at stage three.
4. Actually, it didn’t start in China at all
At the other end of the spectrum is the theory that the virus might have started outside China and been introduced by a returning citizen. This is the kindest of all to China and casts it as a victim of a horrible accident.
This tends to be favoured by business magnates with huge iron ore deals with China — who are allowed to stay friends with the Morrison government because, well, money…
Signed up to this is Twiggy Forrest. It may also include the University of Queensland, which is taking action against a student who has been critical of China.
5. America made it — and blamed China
This is a position favoured by China and popular on Chinese messaging app WeChat.
It has no apparent political support in Australia — yet. Inq reckons that if anyone would support it, it would be NSW Labor MP Shaoquett Moselmane, who made a name for himself praising China’s President Xi for his handling of the coronavirus crisis, and warned that “the obsolete scum of white Australia” has re-emerged.
The request for a health enquiry should have been isolated from politics. It would have been better as an request from UN, moved by Latvia, seconded by Australia and passed by the entire assembly. Instead ScoMo timed his thrust smack after Donald Trump was trying to make trouble with China. Are we an advanced medical nation or just a dog trotting at Donald Trump’s heels?
Since Dep’ty Dawg got his tin star as sheriff in the Pacific it has been your final 8 words.
The authors have misrepresented Clive Hamilton’s position, at least the version of it expressed in The Age (and SMH?) on May 9, where he wrote:
“Note first that it’s not a conspiracy theory; it’s an accident hypothesis. And we should not mix up the claim of an accidental leak of a naturally occurring virus with the claim that the virus was constructed or manipulated in a laboratory to become more potent. Genetic analysis has disproved the latter.”
https://www.theage.com.au/national/it-would-be-unwise-to-dismiss-donald-trump-s-wuhan-lab-leak-theory-20200507-p54qyg.html
The authors here are giving ‘accidentally escaped’ short shrift by assuming it could only plausibly ‘escape from lab’ if it were actually ‘made in lab’ for nefarious purposes. Surely there are some less loony politicians who would subscribe to the less loony Hamilton position, ‘research on bats in lab – accidental infection of lab assistant’, which is at least plausible if unlikely. As Hamilton says, real scientists know that the virus could not have been created in a lab, not that this has deterred the likes of Trump.
An important distinction. After all, Anthrax did escape from a USSR lab once.
And, in 2001, was mailed to Congress members et al from a US one – Fort Detrick, Maryland.
An important distinction. After all, Anthrax did escape from a USSR lab once.
Did you mean smallpox?
Important distinctions like the difference between a deliberate act of spreading from a Lab and a Lab accident are lost on many in the media.
Clive Hamilton made a pretty good case when interviewed the other night by Bolt.
There is another version which I saw in an interview on UK TV which had an ex-British Military Commander saying that the latest theory was that Wuhan Lab workers were selling used Lab animals into the wet market for some beer money.
This theory is a novel way of combining the Lab escape with the wet market with shades of the melamine bulking of baby formula to make a few extra bucks in the society with China’s civic values.
Distinctions of that nature are not the only thing that are lost on the media.
We now have the spectacle of a news outlet reporting on a scientific paper (on the binding of SARS-CoV-2 to ACE receptors as determined by mathematical models) that hasn’t been peer reviewed let alone published. The manner in which it has been reported (and in the USA that was in a news outlet noted for its support of conspiracy theories) will have fed the conspiracy theorists paranoia beautifully (to borrow one of the phrases much beloved of he who cheats at golf and on his wives) and if it isn’t published the conspiracy theorists will go nuts but it won’t have been the fault of anyone in the media.
That is one of the problems that we face with the reduction of resources accessible to journalists to enable them to check sources. So we have a double problem, less time or energy to put into pursuing any of the topics that the media feeds on and fewer resources to do it properly.
A deeply hypocritical position for any Western country to adopt. Likewise the appalling bias of the four articles by Hardaker.
While “many fear China, seeing it as different, its world view as malign, and deeply suspecting its long-term intentions”, the same could fairly be said of the United States – Imperial America has long shown utter contempt for inconvenient norms of international law and good practice. Imperial America has repeatedly undertaken wars of aggression without censure, paid for by asset- and income-stripping its own people. Russia is attacked over MH17, yet the United States received no censure for the equally reckless downing of IranAir655.
Especially if its massive output of brutal, violent, vengeful, and post-apocalypse cinema is any measure of the psyche of a nation. Murder has become real-life entertainment – the ultimate Hollywood blockbuster. The US suffered more mass killings in 2019 than any year on record – 41 incidents and a total of 211 deaths, while its cops murder a thousand mostly black citizens a year with impunity.