A Rant on the Chinese Communist Party's Ideology Surrounding the COVID 19 Pandemic.

This is a satirical piece intended to educate and inform the reader about the nuances surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic.

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I want to let you in on a little secret. The world wasn’t always like this. This past year, we have had nothing better to do other than sit at home like fat uninspired couch potatoes. Watching on in awe as the freedoms we once fought so hard for are stripped away in the blink of an eye. A wet slap in the face to anyone who is fervently nostalgic for any form of nationalistic pride. We are evocatively looking for someone to blame and China I’m afraid you're it.

The fools of this world, aimlessly following their false narratives are predictable but nonetheless dangerous. Uniting wholeheartedly in the racist idiosyncrasies of nationhood. The political propaganda and sharp-toothed so-called realism, evoke an ever more dreary outlook on the outcome of this problematic pandemic as it continues to ravage the world. An ecological coup d'etat as it were. I digress.

China, now stronger than ever, dances with the light of Prometheus. Having been handed the fire that created human civilization, metaphorically of course. The burning question at the tip of all of our tongues is; What will they do with it? Such provisions of power are overwhelming and the world is waiting to see what China’s next move will be. After all, they are the ones who should take proper responsibility for their actions right?

I’m going to briefly mention the Great Leap Forward and give those of us who were not inclined to listen to their history teachers at school, a little educational background on the matter. Mao Zedong (previous chairman of the CCP) enacted policies during the early 60s that crippled China, causing mass starvation and leaving upwards of 36 million people to die. Social pressures, economic mismanagement, and radical agricultural changes in regulations were imposed by the government to completely debilitate the country. Why are we talking about the Chinese Famine you ask? Good question.

The answer is the wet markets. During this time Chinese farmers engaged in what we call agricultural collectivisation. Zedong was actively transforming the country into a communist society by any means necessary. The poorest people we're paying the ultimate price with their lives. Private farming was banned, and those who engaged were persecuted and banded as counter-revolutionaries. This caused an ecological imbalance resulting in mass crop failure. Anyone who dared speak out was harassed and eventually killed by the CCP. As a direct result of Zedong's policies, the people starving from malnutrition began eating grass, leather, soil, and decomposing animal and human bodies.

Once China was up and running again in the 60s and early 70s, the wet market culture grew exponentially. It happened as a consequence of the traumas that the country had so recently suffered. The economic disparity was rife and disproportionate and had forced broken people into an unethical stance. The danger of transmissible animal to human disease would prove to be inevitable. Scientists had been warning of the dangers of zoonotic transmissions for years, especially in China.

The consumption of wild animals has a long and enduring history in China and the great famine cemented the cultural importance of eating anything that moves. During this period we saw the greatest butchery of wild animals in modern history. Whilst a lot of Chinese died of famine during this time, arguably a higher number died from eating poisonous and toxic substances contracted through wild animal meat. The starving people started digging up graves and selling human meat. The villages would often kill passers-by and even adopted baby swapping. They’d exchange their infants with neighbours so they wouldn’t commit the cardinal sin of eating one of their own children. Sound familiar?

What I'm referring to, is Jonathan Swift's famous Juvenalian satire "A Modern Proposal" which, in 1729 was published to great abhorrence from the general public. Swift shocked a nation out of its ignorance through sheer comedy. He repugnantly proposed eating Irish babies and serving them as a delicacy to the rich, as a way of staving off poverty in England. If we were to turn things on their heads a little and apply this satire to modern China it would read something like "A Modest Proposal for Eating the Rich". The stark truth is that China's unbalanced economy only serves to propagate the ever-widening gap between the rich and poor.

These disparity driven values, forced upon the Chinese by the CCP have created deep divisions ingrained in the everyday lives of its people. The whole notion of being humane goes out the window once the population is half-starving and cowering to their supreme masters in an obedient stupor. Let's make things clear, the Chinese people are not to blame here. The overarching abominable snowman that manifests itself as the Chinese Communist Party is.

Contemporary China is surely over the days of the Great Famine but scholars are insisting that this deep-rooted past is ingrained into Chinese society. The culture is proving extremely hard to ignore. The deep memory of hunger is too much to forget and has had an everlasting impact on modern Chinese eating habits. In the past, these wild and exotic meats were only eaten by the poor. It is now the rich elite who greedily feast on the virus-filled meat of endangered species such as the Pangolin and Crocodile.

Wet markets haven't really been shut down, despite a nationwide ban on the sale of wild animals coming into effect in mid-January. These wet markets are densely distributed around the urban areas and within walking distance of most city dwellers. They offer cheaper and sometimes fresher alternatives to the more costly supermarkets. The infamous wet market in Wuhan, thought to be the epicentre of the outbreak is actually a wholesale market, selling its produce to the many smaller wet markets dotted around the urban centre.

We all know the pandemic is said to have started in a wet market in Wuhan. A fact that is surely undeniable given the evidence. But do we know how patient zero contracted the virus or who patient zero is? In mid-November 2019, several job posts were advertised on the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s website. They were asking for researchers to find the link between Coronavirus and Bats.

Specifically, they wanted to know about the longevity of the virus and why the Bats carried it but seemed to live long and normal lives.

A few days later and on the same forum, another job advert was posted with the following headline. “We have discovered a terrible new virus and we need your help to come and deal with it”. This is the first instance (publicly at least) that the COVID 19 virus was acknowledged.

In the two years previous, Zhang Li (the lead scientist at WIV) and her team headed south, to Yunnan Province to research SARS-like viruses. She found that the virus originated in bats. Interested in the risk of animal to human transition (zoonosis), Li took blood samples from 218 people in rural Yunnan Province.

Of the 218 people tested, 6 were positive for the SARS-like Coronavirus. The team had made a new discovery in human transmissivity, they needed help to deal with it quickly. This all happened a full three years until China alerted the world to the COVID 19 pandemic.

Now fast forward to February 2020. News spreads of a young researcher and colleague of Zhang Li, at the (WIV) is missing. Working with Li on the virology of Bats, Huang Yan Lin is believed to be patient zero. She hasn't been seen for weeks. Nobody can say what happened, let alone those closest to her. I suppose for fear of reprisal from the CCP. Her profile page on the (WIV) website was scrubbed from existence like she was never there.

There is a lesson to be learned here. One that teaches us the importance of transparency, especially in times as testing as these. Nations of all sizes and stature need to be open and honest. They need to go above and beyond their own call of duty to do the right thing. Whether it be in the interests of their own economic policies or not. It's a big ask, I know.

Sometimes it makes you wonder if it is hard-wired in our human nature to be selfish? Or is Huang Yan Lin still out there somewhere, silenced and alone?

The CCP has been detrimental in its handling of this pandemic. But what’s new? In a world of fake news and the almighty Chinese propaganda machine, there are too many loose ends to make any sense of it all. This is a solemn time where public image resonates more than the truth.

We have a population subjected to a social points system, risking jail time or being shunned by their communities if they dare to step outside the totalitarian structures they find themselves in. The narrative now stretched beyond recognition is crippled and failing to do its job as the world looks on for answers and more importantly a culprit.

Does this sound like a future you want to live in?

By Ashley Mangtani

From: United Kingdom

Website: https://humanityreality.co.uk

Twitter: bookish_ash