COVID-19 provides basis for attack on China by neo-liberal marketeers

My support for China is NOT because I am of Chinese origins. My global citizenship precedes my nationality, ethnicity, country of birth and residence. I support China because China has the courage and vision to experiment with an alternative social, economic and political model instead of following blindly or being dictated to by the predatory neo-liberal unfettered free market as distinct from a market economy.

China's model vs predatory neo-liberal unfettered free market

China has made great achievements in meeting its people's basic needs and rights not to starve, to have shelter, education and increasingly better life. In the process, China has made huge unimaginable progress but also serious mistakes, suffered some severe setbacks and hardships and withstood relentless attacks by predatory neo-liberal unfettered free marketeers.

Neo-liberal free marketeers represented by the US-led Western powers that control global wealth are attacking China because of China's alternative model that challenges neo-liberal free market model.

The neo-liberal free marketeers have enriched a tiny minority in every continent and many more in Western Europe and North America but have created misery, suffering and wars in the Middle East, Africa, the Americas and Asia.

Oxfam reported in 2019 that 26 families own 50 percent of what is owned by the poorer half of the world – 3.8 billion people. Credit Suisse reported that the world's richest 1 percent owns more than half of the world's wealth. Nearly half of the world's population – more than 3 billion people – live on less than 2.50 US dollars a day. More than 1.3 billion live in extreme poverty – less than 1.25 US dollars a day. One billion children are living in poverty. In the UK and the US growing numbers of people are using food banks.

The above is the outcome of the neo-liberal free market. The World Bank and the UN reported that China has lifted more than 850 million people out of poverty in the past 40 years. China's poverty rate fell from 88 percent in 1981 to 0.07 percent in 2015.

COVID-19: basis for attack on China's model

The mouthpieces of the US-led Western powers are using COVID-19 to attack, demonize and to discredit China's alternative model that is making huge progress in improving the Chinese people's lives.

The bright side is that there are countless "YouTube" and other media postings by Western people condemning racists smears against China and supporting China. The Western media has showed its true colors by resorting to base gutter racism to demonize China.

· The US Wall Street Journal proclaimed that "China is the real sick man of Asia" and revealed its gutter pedigree.

· The UK Economist has a picture of the globe wrapped in a huge red mask – does anyone wear red masks? The red mask resembles China's flag.

· A French newspaper, Le Courier Picard, featured an Asian woman wearing a mask on with a headline "Yellow Alert" with an editorial "A New Yellow Peril."

· A German magazine, Der Spiegel, showed a masked person with "Made in China" as the strapline.

· A Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, printed China's national flag with coronavirus particles in place of the stars.

Apologists for racism justify the above on the grounds of "free speech." Will these racist hypocrites in the US and Western Europe today dare to make similar public racist slurs against Israel?

The establishments of the US and Europe that pay lip service that the holocaust must never happen again, are instead fermenting racism against Muslims and Jews, and that it is totally acceptable under "free speech" to use COVID-19 to spew racism against China.

The US-led Western powers and media are quick to use the appealing term "free." But do we ask "free" for who and for what? It is essentially "free" for those with power, who control and own huge resources, to do as they please!

200 years of Western powers' virulent attack on China

China has been under the virulent attack by Western powers led previously by the UK and now the US because China refuses to be subjugated as their colony and be subservient to Western powers' insatiable barbaric greed that has morphed into "respectable" predatory neo-liberal unfettered free market.

The Western powers used their people, supported by their warships and troops, to journey thousands of miles to grab land, steal resources, enslave people and commit genocide across the globe to satisfy their insatiable barbaric greed.

More than 80 million natives of America, Australia and New Zealand over a few centuries were exterminated. Is there an international Genocide Memorial Day to ensure that this will never happen again?

Brendan Simms', Cambridge University professor, new book (Hitler-Only the World Was Enough) published in 2019 traces that Hitler's ideology was that the United States and the British Empire were models for Germany's own empire, similarly to be founded on land grabbing, racism and violence.

What infuriates the Western powers is that it failed to subdue and enslave China in spite of drugging China with opium, alliances of nations with huge armies invading China at the turn of the 20th century, seizing China's coastal cities and putting signs that "Chinese and dogs are not allowed entry."

The global bank, HSBC was founded in 1865 by British opium drug pushers to fund the opium trade. Two of them, Thomas Sutherland and Francis Chomley, were on the British Hong Kong legislative Council. HSBC has continued with its drug pushing activities.

In 2012, HSBC paid 1.9 billion US dollars fine for dealing with at least 881 million US dollars from the sale of illegal drugs. Evidence was found of HSBC moving money for Saudi banks tied to terrorist groups. Were any HSBC directors arrested and charged? No, but the CFO of Huawei was arrested in Canada on the order of the US on allegation of offences relating to US bullying sanctions on Iran.

Until today the Western powers continue with their efforts to destabilize and create disunity within China so that they could exploit a weakened China as they have done in the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and other parts of Asia.

Is China a threat?

Western politicians and media are daily brainwashing their people to be anti-China, proclaiming China the enemy and threat. David Davis, former contender for the UK Conservative Party leadership and former UK government cabinet minister, was reported on February 23, 2020, to refer to China as "the enemies" when campaigning for the UK to overturn its decision to use Huawei in UK's roll-out of 5G. The questions to pose are:

· Have Chinese warships sailed up the Thames, the Hudson rivers, the Rhine, the Seine to blast cities on the rivers' shores?

· Have Chinese ships sailed up these rivers to dump drugs to enrich China?

· Have Chinese troops attacked the US and Europe to subjugate these countries?

· Are there Chinese missiles pointed at the US and Europe sited outside China within a thousand miles of the borders of these countries?

· Are there Chinese troops stationed within 500 miles off the shores of US or Europe?

· Are there Chinese warships in the Gulf of Mexico, the Western or Eastern coasts of the US?

The Western powers have done every one of the above to China. There are currently 400 and more US bases with US troops and military personnel surrounding China from Western Asia to North East Asia. The US biggest naval presence is in the Pacific and off the coast of China.

Attack on and fear of China

All the Western powers' aggression against China is for one reason – their insatiable barbaric greed to lay their blood-stained hands on China's resources which the Western powers coveted for more than two centuries. In recent years it is also because of their envy and fear that China's growth would parallel and balance the US dominance of the world.

The fear of China is further fueled by China's growth based on a social, economic and political model that is the antithesis to the predatory neo-liberal unfettered free market model.

Positive development

A very positive development is people in the West, despite the rise of fascism in the US and Europe, are awakened to the injustices perpetuated by the US-led Western powers. People all over the world do not share the vulgarity and insatiable barbaric greed of the US-led cabals.

Stephen Chang is a retired business adviser in the UK. The article reflects the author's opinions, and not necessarily the views of CGTN.