A few weeks back I did a post that discussed the first of Philippe Lemoine’s four essays on China’s response to the Covid-19 epidemic. Now I’ve had a chance to read all four of what will likely become the definitive account of China’s role in the pandemic. I cannot recommend them highly enough. Over at MoneyIllusion I discuss the second essay, and here I’d like to discuss the concluding paragraphs of the fourth essay:
I have examined in detail the accusations made against China in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic. I have concluded that there is a grain of truth to some of them—mistakes were certainly made in the early days of the crisis and the Chinese authorities have not always been forthcoming with information about the epidemic. Nevertheless, a careful review of the evidence suggests that most of the allegations are either exaggerated, unsubstantiated, or nonsensical, and sometimes they are all three. In particular, the claim that China is somehow responsible for the botched response to the pandemic in most Western countries doesn’t withstand even cursory scrutiny. Yet this claim continues to be made—not only by government officials eager to scapegoat China for their own lamentable failures, but also by journalists and citizens who ought to be more concerned about how badly their own countries have been misgoverned during this public health emergency.
I have highlighted several instances in which Western officials and journalists have misrepresented or distorted evidence. This may be a consequence of confirmation bias, fear of being accused of helping China or a tacit assumption that, since the Chinese regime is evil and hated, there’s nothing particularly wrong with dissembling to make it look bad. But, whatever the reason, this disregard for accuracy is dangerous, particularly on the part of journalists, who ought to at least strive to pursue truth irrespective of their personal ideological leanings. And it has contributed to a feedback loop I have observed over the past few months—people blame China for the pandemic because they adopt low evidentiary standards when it comes to accusations against China, which makes them hysterical about China, which in turn leads them to further lower their evidentiary standards, which makes them believe even more nonsensical accusations against China, etc. If people would only pause to consider whether or not the accusations against China make sense, they might realise that many of them do not.
As I wrote in the introduction to this series, there are many reasons to dislike and distrust the Chinese regime. But when dislike and distrust disable the ability to parse evidence and think clearly, they disfigure our understanding of reality. Hatred of the Chinese regime has become so strong and pervasive in the West—especially in the US, where China is seen as its main geopolitical foe—that it creates incentives that allow unsubstantiated allegations to spread largely unchecked. Indeed, not only does this prejudice mean that people adopt a lower evidentiary standard to examine such allegations, but anyone who points out they are unsubstantiated risks being accused of being China’s dupe. As the rivalry between the US and China grows, we should expect disinformation about China to become increasingly common. This is especially true since, as we have seen repeatedly in these essays, China hawks in the US administration are clearly trying to influence public opinion about China by leaking misleading information. China’s regime is appalling in many ways, and it’s understandable that people feel no sympathy toward it, but this fact should not make us accept dubious claims just because they fit our preconceptions. On the contrary, knowing that we feel that way and that it will unconsciously make us less cautious when evaluating claims that cast China in a dark light, we should be extra careful before we accept such claims.
When we look back at history, there are numerous examples of a sort of spiral of misinformation, where actual flaws in a foreign regime lead us to become too credulous about further accusations made against that regime. For instance, if Saddam Hussein is known to have tortured people and to have repeatedly lied about his military activities, who wants to go out on a limb and defend him from the specific accusation that he is developing WMDs? A few people (including some of my fellow Econlog bloggers) might have the courage to ask for proof of charges made against highly unpopular regimes, but not many. History shows that if we base our foreign policy decisions on false accusations against unpopular governments, it usually does not end well.
Here’s The Economist:
Thanks to its high quality and low prices, Huawei’s telecoms gear is popular around the world. Not in America, where the Chinese giant is banished over (unsubstantiated) fears that it could be used by spies in Beijing to eavesdrop on Americans. But expelling Huawei from the United States—and pressing allies like Australia and Britain to do the same—was not enough for the Trump administration. It seems to want Huawei dead.
It’s certainly possible that Huawei is spying on the US, but given Lemoine’s documentation of how the US government has repeatedly lied about China’s role in the Covid-19 pandemic, promoting completely unsubstantiated rumors that the virus escaped from a Chinese lab, why should we accept on faith that Huawei is a national security threat to the US?
And what are we to make of the fact that the US government has seemed willing to use Huawei as a stick to achieve its trade negotiation demands? What does it suggest if the US government is willing to do something that they claim would hurt our national security in exchange for a few more soybean exports?
READER COMMENTS
David Henderson
Sep 11 2020 at 4:50pm
Excellent. Actually, the way many journalists write about China–they’re bad and therefore every charge against them is true–is similar to the way many journalists write about Trump.
Jon Murphy
Sep 11 2020 at 5:05pm
This is the key question here. I have seen lots of people lately making the argument for restricting trade with China for national security reasons. But the fact the US government continues to make certain demands to China to expand trade suggests China is no real threat (or, to the extent they are, trade is not enabling them).
John Hall
Sep 11 2020 at 6:00pm
Another issue with Huawei is that they are alleged to have stolen code from other firms. If you steal technology instead of developing it yourself, then it will be cheaper.
Fazal Majid
Sep 11 2020 at 6:31pm
According to British Telecom’s chief architect, Huawei’s 5G gear is years ahead of the competition.
https://www.lightreading.com/mobile/5g/bts-mcrae-huawei-is-the-only-true-5g-supplier-right-now/d/d-id/747734
You don’t get there by copying others’ tech (the copying allegations against Huawei were for different types of equipment).
The uncomfortable truth is Huawei has been outspending it’s bean-counter-run competition in R&D by at least 2:1 for the last 20 years (an ex-colleague who went to work for Nortel told me that circa 1998).
Now, whether Huawei spied on it’s customers or not is irrelevant from a national security perspective, it’s capabilities that matter, and any Chinese company is susceptible to the Chinese government pressure (just as US companies are to ours’). The Chinese have been caught vulnerable because they have in fact not actively been working to reduce their dependence on Western technology. You can bet they will not let this happen again, and will go all out on industrial espionage targeting ASML, Applied Materials and other semiconductor technology companies. After all, if Huawei gear can’t be sold in the West, whether it is because of geopolitics or intellectual property violations matters little.
Komori
Sep 12 2020 at 9:33am
The allegations against Huawei about stealing code are true, although I have no experience with their 5G gear. However, many years ago I was involved in evaluating networking gear. The company I was working for was rebadging networking gear to sell under their name, and their current supplier was really not meeting their goals. Huawei was one of the companies whose gear I evaluated, and my first comment upon looking at it was “Better contact Legal first”. They had copied Cisco IOS blatantly; it wasn’t just the command structure, but the odd little corner-case bugs you could only feasibly get by copying the code in its entirety.
Needless to say, we didn’t go with Huawei.
Hayden
Sep 14 2020 at 10:42pm
It could be that Cisco was copying Huawei also. Or the bugs were just a coincidence. Also, can you really trust anything on a Chinese income statement?
bill
Sep 12 2020 at 9:54am
I think sensible China policy involves friendliness/detente when possible. And relationships with its other rivals like India and Vietnam. A strategy of America Alone is about the worst one we can choose.
Phil H
Sep 13 2020 at 11:11pm
“who wants to go out on a limb and defend him from the specific accusation that he is developing WMDs? A few people (including some of my fellow Econlog bloggers) might have the courage to ask for proof of charges made against highly unpopular regimes, but not many.”
I like you guys, but there’s a bit of self-mythologising going on here. Pretty much the entire British public was asking that same question: the largest street march ever in the UK was in protest against joining the war in Iraq.
On the China question, though, yeah. China didn’t have the best response, but it was a good response.
Comments are closed.