Pressure Mounts on China to Pay Reparations for COVID-19
By: Will Reynolds and Jonathan Stormer Pezzi
The aid packages donated by the People's Republic of China undergo disinfection upon arrival at the Villamor Air Base in Pasay City on March 21, 2020. The donation includes assorted medical supplies, personal protective equipment, and testing kits for coronavirus. TOTO LOZANO/PRESIDENTIAL PHOTO
New York — Leaders throughout the international community are now calling for China to pay reparations for their role in the COVID-19 pandemic. These demands, initially and primarily contained to the United States, are now being heard from government officials and businesspeople from West Africa to Australia.
The justification for why China must pay are varied, although all hinge upon the argument that Beijing either deliberately or accidentally failed to contain the virus within its borders.
“Whatever the origins of the virus, and right now I think the best circumstantial evidence points to those labs in Wuhan …, it’s clear to me that once China realized how deadly this virus can be, how contagious it was, that they made the conscious decision to let it get outside of their borders,” says US Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas.
Senator Cotton has been a vocal proponent of investigating the origins of the virus, doubting that the pandemic originated in the markets of Wuhan. He asserts that there is evidence to suggest the virus’s true inception was likely in the Wuhan Center for Disease Control, an institution just minutes from the infamous marketplace.
US Congressmen and political pundits are now calling for an official investigation into the origins of the virus, some outright accusing the Beijing government of manufacturing the virus themselves.
China has expectedly fired back, implicating the US military in introducing the virus to Wuhan when members of the US army visited the city in October.
As relations between these two superpowers continue to deteriorate, other leaders of affected countries are demanding redress. A former government minister in Nigeria and Vice-President for the Africa Region at the World Bank, Oby Ezekwesili, has joined in these calls.
“Unfortunately and unfairly, my country, Nigeria, is one of fifty-four countries in Africa that are struggling to respond to the disruptive effects of China’s failure to take responsibility for a pandemic that could have been easily contained and localised to avoid the ruin it has caused our continent and the world at large,” says Ezekwesili.
She asserts that China’s acts of negligence in December and early January resulted in the global pandemic, and consequently slowed the continent’s positive economic growth of 2.9% in 2019 to a contraction of 5.1% in 2020. Because of these economic consequences, she believes Africa should be compensated by the canceling of over $140 billion in loans its governments, contractors and banks advanced to Africa over the last two decades.
Ezekwesili and others’ rhetoric is partially fueled by a damaged China-Africa relationship following racially-motivated crackdowns against Africans throughout China. Numerous videos have surfaced throughout the internet, often depicting violent discrimination against China’s African population after a series of tests in Guangzhou resulted in 111 Africans confirmed positive with the virus.
Most famously, a McDonald’s in Guangzhou barred black people from entering the business.
More countries and associations in the West have echoed these sentiments of retribution as well. The International Council of Jurists (ICJ), based in London, has urged the United Nations Human Rights Council to inquire and direct China to compensate the international community for their role in the pandemic. They specifically accuse Beijing of “developing a biological weapon capable of mass destruction of mankind throughout the world.”
An Australian member of parliament has also suggested that Australia seize land owned by Chinese companies as a means of collecting damages.
Taking offense to the criticism, Chinese diplomats and ministers have been sparring with anyone who suggests Chinese responsibility in the pandemic.
“Did anyone ask the US to offer compensations for the 2009 H1N1 flu, which was first diagnosed before breaking out on a large scale in the US and then spread to 214 countries and regions, killing nearly 200,000 people? The financial turmoil in the US triggered by the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 turned into a global financial crisis. Did anyone ask the US to take the consequences? We must understand that our enemy is the virus, not China,” says Sun Saixiong, a Chinese diplomat posted in Nigeria.
As there is little historical precedent for reparations other than in the case of war, China being forced to pay directly for reparations is unlikely, though not impossible.
What is far more likely, however, and already happening in some instances, is China’s business interests will be severely hampered as a consequence of their role in the pandemic. Some governments are taking those steps.
The Trump administration recently blocked the sale of certain technological equipment to Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies. Although Huawei’s American business interests have been unsettled for a while, some believe the timing of this recent move indicates it was done as a slap on China’s wrist.
Several countries and international organizations may look towards the World Health Organization’s 2005 International Health Regulations, which require every state bound to this treaty, 195 countries including China, to report all relevant information in a timely manner to the World Health Organization (WHO) in the case of a possible transnational public health risk. Because there is evidence to suggest that China provided faulty data to the public and refused international assistance in the early stages of the pandemic, it is distinctly possible that states leverage this route for retribution.