Ultra-Nationalism is Dangerous Under a Global Pandemic
Stop with the US-China blame game
In the recent political tic-for-tat blame game, both the US and China have tried to shift responsibility for the spread of the coronavirus by downplaying their failings in virus response while escalating accusations of blame aimed at each other. Trump and other Republicans have labelled COVID-19 the “Chinese virus” and a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson had accused the US army of bringing the epidemic to Wuhan when the city hosted the Military World Games last October.
The news-media industry had also taken a hit in the show-down of political narrative-shaping and muscle-flexing, as a series of journalist expulsions on both sides push US.-China ties to the worst that it has been in decades.
Such aggressive behaviors not only escalate tensions on the national level, but may also create lasting divides between the people of China and the US, which may take decades or more to re-bridge.
Among others, cosmopolitan Chinese, most of whom have studied abroad in the West, have taken to social media to express their discontent with the way that Western media organizations have chosen to frame the coronavirus pandemic.
Such discontent were mostly directed towards earlier reporting with insensitive…
