Corona War? US-China conflict against the backdrop of COVID-19

 

-Amita Apte  

 

 

Since the last five years the world has witnessed the two giant economies, US and China, fight a financial war and compete for global hegemony. China now controls different countries in the world with its expansionist trade and investment policies. Through these policies it exploits the debtor countries in every way possible. It extracts their natural resources and uses their ports and infrastructure for its geopolitical and geoeconomic ambitions. Doing so, it provides employment to its own people in these countries and utterly neglects the natives of the respective country. The loans it provides for these huge infrastructure projects to all these countries are also given at very high interest rates. By now, China has made it extremely difficult for countries to get out of its debt trap. Some of these countries, such as Maldives and Sri Lanka, realized the tight clutches of China only recently. But there is not much they can do.

 

In the last four decades, China has been able to become a indispensable global manufacturing hub and has tapped all the markets in the world no matter major or small. It sells its products at aggressive prices often compromising on quality. Doing so, it has threatened the economies of numerous nation. Heavy dependency on China for life essentials has also raised a red flag on account of this COVID-19 pandemic. A US Department of Commerce study found that 97% of all antibiotics sold in the US are imported from China. Same is the case with many other countries of the world. The Chinese state's violent past compels one to reckon the havoc it can cause?

 

On the other side, the US history is no different. We all are aware of pogroms of native Americans, slavery and how America emerged as a superpower. Rich, powerful and developed economies have always exploited third world countries for their selfish purposes. Today, US is the most powerful nation in the world order. Its powerful military has tremendous expeditionary capabilities, its naval bases are spread all across, claiming almost all the strategic locations in the waters. The US is blamed for creating war situations so that they can sell their weapons to different countries in the world. Its currency flows via many countries in the form of donations, loans and investments in exchange of maintaining US' strategic interests. Their multi-billion pharma companies have built their empires throughout. And why only drugs? They are into everything. The US is the most powerful economy in the world. And they absolutely do not like the threats China is inflicting upon them.

 

 

China is trying its best to take the number one position in this power play. We all are aware of the trade war going on between the countries and how they are trying to pull each other down. Now, both Beijing and Washington are using the coronavirus pandemic to pull each other down. What are the accusations? Beijing is accused of many things. The first and the foremost thing is Beijing didn't pay any attention to the cries of the ‘whistleblower’ scientists. Another most important thing is that they hid the news about this pandemic from the world. Had they been quick in sharing the information, there wouldn't have been so much of chaos. They started correcting the blunders they have made very late. In all, Beijing has not at all been responsible in handling this situation. And above all they accuse Washington of spreading the virus in Wuhan.

 

 

The White House is using every platform available to establish the fact that the virus was developed in China. And their lousy response to its spread is taking a toll on the whole world now. China’s animal market have come under intense public scrutiny. Whereas China accuses American soldiers to have carried the coronavirus to Wuhan. China is now restricting and screening the US media inquiring about their staff, finance, operations and real estates in China. After Beijing on Wednesday morning set restrictive measures on some mainstream US media outlets, the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was quick to label China's defensive moves as "foreclosing the world's ability to conduct the free press operations." He said China's actions against US measures restricting Chinese media agencies are not "apples to apples." All this has ebbed the China-US relations to their lowest in 30 years.

 

It seems, this spit-firing is not going to stop any time soon. The Pharma sector has become a hot cake for everyone and all are trying to grab the biggest piece possible. In such a warlike geopolitical setting, how has India positioned itself? Indian government has handled this situation extremely efficiently and is applauded by the World Health Organization and friendly nations like Japan and Maldives. Some countries are also surprised to see the way India is working on a war footing to fight this war against viruses while providing the necessary help and assistance to its neighboring countries. India's prudent, insightful, and assuring leadership is upholding sanity in the mind numbing China-US Cold War.