03/04/2020
- ‘As two of the great countries on Earth, cooperation between China and the US could, and should, be used to bring a more positive outcome for all humankind,’ academics say
- ‘Political bickering does nothing to contribute to the healthy development of Sino-US relations, nor will it help the people of the world to rationally and accurately understand and cope with the pandemic,’ they say
Chinese academics have urged nations to cooperate to find a solution to the global public health crisis. Photo: AFP
A group of 100 Chinese scholars has signed an open letter calling on the
and China to put an end to their political blame game and work together to fight the
.
The signatories, who include former diplomats and academics from various fields, including political science, international relations and sociology, said that while the origins of the coronavirus remained unknown, hurling accusations achieved nothing but hurt.
Nations should stop “complaining, finger-pointing and blaming one another” and instead cooperate to find a solution to the global public health crisis, they said.
“Political bickering does nothing to contribute to the healthy development of Sino-US relations, nor will it help the people of the world to rationally and accurately understand and cope with the pandemic,” the scholars said in the letter published on Thursday in online news magazine The Diplomat.
“As two of the great countries on Earth, cooperation between China and the US could, and should, be used to bring a more positive outcome for all humankind,” it said.
The scholars also urged the two sides to put aside their bickering over where and how the disease originated.
“At this stage of the pandemic, the exact source and origin of Covid-19 remain undetermined, but these questions are unimportant and finger-pointing is demeaning and hurtful to everyone,” they said.
US and Chinese officials have sparred for weeks over the origins of the coronavirus, which was first detected in the central Chinese city of
Wuhan but has since spread around the world, infecting more than 1 million people and killing close to 53,000.
Donald Trump has repeatedly referred to the pathogen as the “Chinese virus”. Photo: Bloomberg
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly referred to the pathogen as the “Chinese virus”, while other US politicians have said it was created in a Chinese laboratory. For China’s part, foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian suggested the coronavirus
might have been carried into the country by US soldiers.
China’s ambassador to the US
Cui Tiankai said in an interview on American television last month that speculating about the origin of the virus was “harmful”, but the finger-pointing on both sides has plunged relations between the two countries to a new low.
The open letter was the idea of Wang Wen, executive dean of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University in Beijing, who said its aim was not only to show the willingness of China’s intellectual elite to promote solidarity and reduce tensions, but to make clear that the priority right now was saving lives.
“We did not criticise anyone in the letter, or mention any names. We did not want to fuel the current disputes and confrontations,” he said.
“Most Chinese intellectuals are peaceful, rational and constructive, and thankfully we quickly reached consensus on the content of the letter.”
China to stage day of mourning for thousands killed by Covid-19
The scholars said that after months of battling the coronavirus and seeing the situation at home improve, China now wanted to share its experience and knowledge with other countries as they seek to contain its spread.
“Chinese people have made unimaginable efforts and sacrifices to achieve hard-won results,” Wang said.
“We are grateful for the support of the international community, including donations from American friends, during the most critical stage of the fight … and we are willing to share our experiences with other countries and provide all available assistance to them.”
Wu Sike, a former Chinese special envoy to the Middle East, was among the signatories to the open letter. Photo: Xinhua
Among the other signatories were Wu Sike, a senior fellow at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies and former special envoy to the Middle East, and Wang Yiwei, an international relations professor at Renmin University, who described the Covid-19 pandemic as a “global issue that overrides geopolitics concerns”.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Trump agreed in a telephone call last week to work together to contain the spread of Covid-19, but critics have questioned how long their cordiality can last against a backdrop of rising China-US tensions over trade, the media and regional security.
Source: SCMP
Posted in Academics, “Chinese virus”, Beijing, blaming, China-US tensions, China’s ambassador to the US, Chinese academics, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Chinese special envoy to the Middle East, come together, complaining, cooperation, coronavirus, COVID-19, Covid-19 pandemic, Earth, finger-pointing, former diplomats, global, great countries on Earth, humankind, international relations,, nations, open letter, origins, pandemics, Political bickering, political blame game, political science, positive outcome, public health crisis, regional security, Renmin University, signatories, Sino-US relations, sociology, The Diplomat, Uncategorized, United States, urges, US President Donald Trump, US soldiers, Washington, Wuhan |
Leave a Comment »
05/05/2019
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States accused China on Friday of putting well more than a million minority Muslims in “concentration camps,” in some of the strongest U.S. condemnation to date of what it calls Beijing’s mass detention of mostly Muslim Uighur minority and other Muslim groups.
The comments by Randall Schriver, who leads Asia policy at the U.S. Defense Department, are likely to increase tension with Beijing, which is sensitive to international criticism and describes the sites as vocational education training centres aimed at stemming the threat of Islamic extremism.
Former detainees have described to Reuters being tortured during interrogation at the camps, living in crowded cells and being subjected to a brutal daily regimen of party indoctrination that drove some people to suicide.
Some of the sprawling facilities are ringed with razor wire and watch towers.
“The (Chinese) Communist Party is using the security forces for mass imprisonment of Chinese Muslims in concentration camps,” Schriver told a Pentagon briefing during a broader discussion about China’s military, estimating that the number of detained Muslims could be “closer to 3 million citizens.”
Schriver, an assistant secretary of defence, defended his use of a term normally associated with Nazi Germany as appropriate, under the circumstances.
When asked by a reporter why he used the term, Schriver said that it was justified “given what we understand to be the magnitude of the detention, at least a million but likely closer to 3 million citizens out of a population of about 10 million.””So a very significant portion of the population, (given) what’s happening there, what the goals are of the Chinese government and their own public comments make that a very, I think, appropriate description,” he said.
The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday used the term re-education camps to describe the sites and said Chinese activity was “reminiscent of the 1930s.”
The U.S. government has weighed sanctions against senior Chinese officials in Xinjiang, a vast region bordering central Asia that is home to millions of Uighurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities. China has warned that it would retaliate “in proportion” against any U.S. sanctions.
The governor of Xinjiang in March directly dismissed comparisons to concentration camps, saying they were “the same as boarding schools.”
U.S. officials have said China has made criminal many aspects of religious practice and culture in Xinjiang, including punishment for teaching Muslim texts to children and bans on parents giving their children Uighur names.
Academics and journalists have documented grid-style police checkpoints across Xinjiang and mass DNA collection, and human rights advocates have decried martial law-type conditions there.
Source: Reuters
Posted in Academics, Asia policy at the U.S. Defense Department, assistant secretary of defence, Beijing, China alert, Chinese embassy, Communist Party, concentration camps, human rights advocates, Islamic extremism, journalists, martial law-type conditions, mass DNA collection, Mike Pompeo, minority Muslims, Nazi Germany, U.S. says, U.S. Secretary of State, Uighur, Uncategorized, vocational education training centres, Washington, Xinjiang |
Leave a Comment »
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 