Check out the 3.5-minute clip from an hour long interview with Kishore Mahbubani (Distinguished Fellow, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore) and Anton Roux (CEO of ADC Forum, Australian Davos Connection)
“How do you view the emerging sentiment in the media, of China must pay for Covid?”
4 (FOUR) points to be noted (From Kishore Mahbubani):
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Consider the consequences: If you make it a universal rule that if a country does damage to other countries, whether intentionally or unintentionally, it must always compensate other countries; as you know in 2008, 2009 financial crisis began with the Lehman Brother’s collapse, in New York, right? Now, it did a tremendous amount of damage to many economics around the world. Did any Australians then suggest “Hey, the United States did a lot of damage to the world with the 2008, 2009 financial crisis. We should get compensation from the United States.” Nobody did, right? (1)
What should we learn from this is that instead of being punitive to the country that suffered the first, we should immediately help the country that gets affected first because if we don’t help them, we’ll get affected too.
Now we’re actually very fortunate that at the end of the day the Chinese, after their initial missteps and bungles, came down so hard, so tough that they locked, stopped it completely, almost, in China. And they did some very brave decisions, like locking up a province of 60 million people, 2 days before Chinese new year. Now that’s amazing. I can’t imagine any American politicians locking down America 2 days before Thanksgiving. It’s almost impossible, ‘cause everybody wants to go home for Thanksgiving. And that was what China did. So let’s be very clear and clinical about what China did.
China did many things wrong, but China also did many things right. And the people who say this is not just the World Health Organization. I recommend you read an open letter from the Lancet which is a very prestigious British medical journal, a letter that is signed by thousands of professionals saying “Hey, China did an amazing job, actually, to stop it in its spread.” I think it’s very important to be very fair and objective in our assessment these days.
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Notes:
1.“Hey, the United States did a lot of damage to the world with the 2008, 2009 financial crisis. We should get compensation from the United States.” Nobody did, right?
- I wonder why not... Why no one suggested or asked the question then?
https://youtu.be/0FGisqJW1cg Kishore Mahbubani: the implications of the current crisis for the US-China relationship | Anton Roux, ADC Forum. Video; 1.01:23, Conducted April 9th, 2020. Uploaded April 10th, 2020.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30418-9/fulltext Statement in support of the scientists, public health professionals, and medical professionals of China combatting COVID-19; Published Feb 19th, 2020.
https://www.change.org/p/support-for-the-public-health-professionals-of-china-combatting-covid-19 Support for the Public Health Professionals of China Combatting COVID-19; 19,322 signatures as of April 20th, 2020.
