Don’t Be Fooled by China’s Mask Diplomacy

We’ve seen something like this before. Straight from its well-versed playbook, China has gone on a “charm offensive” to try to make the world forget Beijing’s culpability in the coronavirus crisis. This time, the charm offensive comes in the form of masks and ventilators.

A decade ago, it was common to hear China advocate for its peaceful rise. Regional countries had nothing to worry about, or so the narrative went. That charm offensive turned out to be a ruse. By the mid-2010s, China had embarked on an aggressive maritime campaign against its neighbors. Whether it was employing military and paramilitary assets against Japan in the East China Sea or pursuing large-scale artificial island building in the South China Sea, the peaceful rise narrative proved to be a distraction from Beijing’s true intentions.

Echoes of this behavior can be seen in China’s response to COVID-19 and behavior vis-à-vis its neighbors. Despite China’s denial, there is ample evidence to believe that the coronavirus began in China. Early on, Chinese leadership apparently knew the epidemic was out of control. Worse, it hid the extent of the outbreak from the international community, doing everything in its power to cover up its culpability.

To divert the world’s attention, China has provided coronavirus-related aid to hundreds of countries that include tens of millions of masks, millions of testing kits, and ventilators, including 1,000 for New York. This makes for good news but belies China’s actions against neighbors struggling with the pandemic. In the few short months since COVID-19 began spreading beyond China’s borders, China has continued—and in some cases escalated—provocations against its neighbors, both in the air and maritime domains, to challenge sovereignty claims as these states struggle with the weight of the pandemic.

Συνέχεια ανάγνωσης εδώ

Πηγή: rand.org