(Minghui.org) As confirmed coronavirus cases and the death toll continue to rise quickly in the United Kingdom, concerns about the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s covering up and lack of transparency have prompted many lawmakers to reflect on their foreign policies and reevaluate UK’s relationship with China.
“There’s no doubt, we can’t have business as usual after this crisis and we’ll have to ask the hard questions about how it came about and how it couldn’t have been stopped earlier.” said UK’s foreign secretary Dominic Raab, during the daily briefing about the coronavirus pandemic on April 16.
He said there will be a “very, very deep dive” into the cause of the pandemic and that they can’t “flinch from that at all.”
As of April 20, UK has reported 124,743 infection cases, with 16,509 total deaths from the CCP Virus, commonly known as the Wuhan coronavirus.
Rethinking the Relationship with China
Owen Paterson, a UK Member of Parliament (MP), accused the Chinese regime of hiding the full extent of the coronavirus outbreak and knowingly allowing it to spread across the world.
Paterson joined fourteen other senior MP's to sign a letter to Prime Minister Boris Johnson on April 4, calling for a change in the country’s foreign policy with China.
The letter said: “Legally binding international healthcare regulations require states to provide full information on all potential pandemics. It appears likely that in its early response to the outbreak, China failed to uphold its obligations.
“This omission allowed the disease to spread throughout the world with extraordinarily serious consequences in terms of global health and the economy. The cost to the UK may be, as a Henry Jackson Society report now suggests, over £350 billion.
“Over time, we have allowed ourselves to grow dependent on China and have failed to take a strategic view of Britain’s long-term economic, technical and security needs.
“Once the crisis has passed, we urge the Government to rethink our wider relationship with China,” the letter said.
“The Chinese Communist Party Will Do Anything to Hang Onto Power”
Tom Tugendhat, Chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee said in an interview with Sky News that, “What we’ve seen out of this COVID-19 is not so much that this is China's fault, but it has been made very clear that the Chinese Communist Party will do anything to hang onto power, including risk the lives of its own citizens. If it will do that to its own citizens, how much do you think it will risk ours?”
Tugendhat wrote on his Twitter page, “We need an international investigation into the Covid-19 epidemic. It has already cost too many lives and will take many more. We cannot allow cover-ups or lies to put us all at risk. Even now, false data from Beijing is undermining our ability to respond.”
Tobias Ellwood, Chair of the Defence Committee, supports an investigation into China’s coverup. He wrote on Twitter on April 17, that China “made no effort to identify who ‘patient zero’ was.” and “Its daily ‘official’ figures leave more questions than answers.”
Lord William Hague, UK’s ex-foreign secretary warned that the Chinese Communist Party does not “play by our rules” and that the country cannot be “dependent on China in many respects, including on technology.”
“Can any of us see China agreeing to and permitting an international investigation into what's happened here? I think that's very unlikely and there have been co-ordinated attempts by China, on social media, to spread ideas that it was somebody else’s fault.” he said in a debate hosted by Policy Exchange think tank.
Political and Moral Imperative to Stand Up to China
In an article “Beware China’s masked diplomacy” published on Spectator on March 30, journalist David Patrikarakos offered some thoughts about what the world should do after the coronavirus crisis.
He said, “The world is angry (with China). But will it stay that way? Will the desire for a reckoning remain six months or a year down the line once the crisis has passed and thoughts naturally turn to renewal? I think it must. I think it is both a political and a moral imperative to make sure that it does, because by then I think it will be a question of national self-determination. If we really want to understand how robust our politics is, and if we really want to understand where the global balance of power truly lies, it will become clear when all this ends.
“We ignored China’s threats over 5G. We ignored its imprisonment of over a million Uighurs. In truth, we have ignored pretty much every crime it commits. We cannot ignore its role in COIVD-19. If we do, it will be an unequivocal admission that the West will not now or ever stand up to China.”
Category: Wuhan Virus
