By Sun Xi
The COVID-19 pandemic has become one of the deadliest pandemics in human history and is still evolving. It is necessary and important for us to find out the origins of the COVID-19 virus, but the origin tracing should be a scientific issue rather than a geopolitical game.
First, the joint WHO-China investigation should be respected. The COVID-19 virus was first publicly reported in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, but that did not necessarily mean China must be the origin of such a new virus.
On Feb 9, 2021, the joint World Health Organization-China investigation team held a press conference to present the preliminary findings from its four-week field study.
The 319-page joint report supported the natural outbreak theory and clearly stressed it was "extremely unlikely" that the COVID-19 virus leaked from a Chinese lab. If we cannot trust the WHO, the top and authoritative agency under the United Nations responsible for international public health, who else can we rely on?
Second, double-standard approaches should be discouraged. Intentionally ignoring the WHO investigation result, certain US politicians have repeatedly called for a reinvestigation of China.
Washington has vowed that the United States and its allies will "work together" to "exercise the necessary pressure on China" amid the global tracing of the COVID-19 origins, urging Beijing to be a "participant" and provide "transparent data and access."
However, a recent study by the US National Institutes of Health suggests that COVID-19 could have been circulating in the United States as early as December 2019. Therefore, if new worldwide tracing is indeed necessary, then the primary focus should be on America instead of China.
Third, cooperation rather than confrontation should be welcomed. Mislabeling COVID-19 as the "China virus" or "Asia virus" has sadly led to xenophobic violence targeting Chinese or Asian people in the US and other western societies.
Recently, the Group of Seven (G7) summit in England set a unified tone to rival China, so more confrontation will be expected in the future.
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and the country has been transformed and is progressing significantly under the CCP's regime since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. However, distrust and hostility between the West and China remains.
Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has deepened such a confrontation between the two sides, although this global crisis in fact offers a valuable opportunity for them to cooperate.
Optimistically speaking, it is never too late to join hands, especially when the whole world is still suffering from the pandemic. First of all, please stop politicizing the tracing of the origins of COVID-19.
- Sun Xi, a 1980s China-born alumnus of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, is an independent commentary writer based in Singapore.
Source: Korean Times