Communist China and the origin of the Coronavirus
The Corona Virus outbreak which emerged in China is quickly spreading throughout the world. With a death toll of over a couple of million across the globe, the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared it a pandemic. From Beijing to Brussels, from Rome to Washington, London, and beyond, almost all major cities seem to have been in its grip for the past few weeks. This isn’t a new phenomenon for China; in 2003, the SARS virus also emerged there, and under similar circumstances, before spreading around the world and killing nearly 800. The aim of this article is to elaborate on why new viruses keep emerging in China and the policies implemented by Communist China decades ago which might be the reason for the outbreak today.
The Chinese great famine and subsequent policies of the Chinese Government.
On October 1, 1949, the Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong declared the creation of the People’s Republic of China ending the costly civil war between the Communist Party and the Nationalist Party. A decade after the Communist Party took power, China witnessed the greatest famine in the history of the world. More than 45 million people lost their lives owing to forced starvation and brutality. We now have enough pieces of evidence to prove that China’s famine wasn’t caused by the lack of food grains but by a series of institutional failures resulting from the policies implemented by Mao Zedong.
The Communist Party of China (CCCP) under the leadership of Mao implemented a series of policy which was collectively known as the Giant Leap Forward. There is in-fact an interesting bit of history which connects the COVID-19 outbreak and the Giant Leap Forward. The years 1959–61 was a period of turmoil for the Chinese government who was already struggling to feed its 900 million citizens.
The government which controlled all of China’s food production was on the brink of collapse and was forced to give away the control to private entities irrespective of the fact that the Communist doctrines hold private property as the sole cause of all human miseries. While larger companies increasingly dominated the pork and poultry industry, smaller farmers started harvesting wild animals like bats, snakes, and rodents. As the government was already failing to sustain its people, it encouraged small scale wildlife farming as a means to empower people to feed and lift themself out of poverty. The Chinese government opened Pandora’s box and wildlife farming which was until then a backyard operation transformed into a full-fledged industry.
In the year 1988, the Chinese government introduced the Wildlife Protection Law which explicitly declared wildlife to be a natural resource owned by the state which further paved the way for illegal wildlife farming. All local farms turned into industrial-sized operations. Even endangered species weren’t spared and were killed and sold into the local “wet-market” for extra profits.
Chinese “wet markets” and the origin of the Corona Virus
A “wet market” in Wuhan, China, is catching the blame as the probable source of the current coronavirus outbreak that’s sweeping the globe. A wet market (sometimes referred to as a “wildlife market”) sells live and dead animals — including fish, birds, badgers, bats, pangolins, and turtles — for human consumption. The markets are generally “wet” due to the water splashing from the tubs in which the sea animals are kept. It has been widely speculated that COVID-19’s origin point could be a bat that is sold for soup in the market.
The killing and sale of what is known as bushmeat in Africa are thought to be a source of Ebola. HIV was transmitted via a Chimpanzee. Bird flu likely came from chickens at a market in Hong Kong in 1997. Measles is also believed to have evolved from a virus that infected cattle. “Wet markets” put people and live dead animals like cats. dogs and civets at constant close contact with each other which is why it is easy for a virus to jump from an animal to a human.
Coronavirus is an example of a Zoonotic disease meaning they first spread from animals to humans. Experts believed that the virus was transmitted to a pangolin by a bat which was later transmitted to a human who consumed the pangolin. The Chinese authorities have now shut the Wet Market in Wuhan but the damage has already been done. With no antidote or cure, doctors are still clueless about how to treat people infected with this deadly disease.
The case of the Coronavirus outbreak has to be a standard example of how bad government policies can affect people and change their lives drastically. Thousands of people have already died across multiple countries and numerous nations are in a state of an absolute lockdown. Maintaining social isolation is said to be the only effective method to avoid this disease.
I urge everyone to stay safe, stay at home.
