[Skybird]

A whimsical opinion piece from FOCUS.

China's great self-deception: now it's all blown open

Wasn't China just touted to us as the laboratory of modernity? And now? Now they're sticking test sticks in salmon and condemning millions to house arrest for fortune cookies and expired yogurt.

I have been to many countries in the world in my lifetime. I belong to a generation that was still allowed to fly without a guilty conscience. Actually, I liked it everywhere.

I was also in China once. I was there on a state visit as a member of the journalistic entourage of the German president.

From a tourist point of view, there's nothing to complain about. The country has breathtaking landscapes to offer. The Forbidden City is one of the architectural marvels that must be seen. Shanghai is a megalopolis that changes its face so quickly that every six months the city map is outdated.

In Beijing, we were invited to a state banquet. We were seated at tables of 12. My seat neighbor to the right was some bigwig in the state apparatus, my neighbor to the left did something with finance.

If you ever get an invitation to a state dinner, think twice about attending. It's usually a mind-numbing event. Of course, you don't let that show. After all, you're not invited as a private citizen, but as a representative of your country. So you try to make a good impression.

I tried to get a conversation going in English. But it was obvious that I was talking to the wrong people. The Chinese to my right was typing into his cell phone without even looking at me. The neighbor to my left turned his back on me and talked on the phone at ease while slurping his soup at the same time. The only consolation was that my fellow passengers were no better off, as a glance across the other tables told me.

I have to admit, this experience has clouded my image of China as a cultural country a bit. I am convinced that there are also charming, modest Chinese who know how to behave toward strangers in such a way that they do not feel that hospitality is a dirty word. I just haven't met them.

The crazy thing about the Chinese is: they think they are the crown of creation. I don't think there is any people who are as full of themselves as the Chinese. Anyone who isn't like them is considered a second-class person - when it comes down to it. I would have thought that a nation that has to be painstakingly taught not to spit on the ground at every opportunity would still have room for improvement in terms of civilization, as the saying goes. But that is probably the typical European snootiness.

Why this little preface? Because for weeks I have been finding reports in the newspapers about how they are imposing one lockdown after another in Shanghai. In Beijing, too, citizens fear a new curfew.

No one is allowed to leave the apartment, not even to walk the dog. Robots patrol the streets, exhorting people to stay in their homes. They are starving. Since residents in Shanghai stepped out onto their balconies to shout out their desperation, they are also forbidden to enter. Those caught opening the balcony window face serious consequences.

Only those who have the misfortune to end up in one of the quarantine centers are worse off. The hygienic conditions in the camps are so disastrous that one is guaranteed to catch, if not covid, then some other terrible disease. There are reports of old people being dragged from their beds at night to be segregated. Children are separated from their parents, babies from their mothers. No one is safe anymore.

I read the reports from Shanghai with a mixture of fascination and horror. Wasn't China, until just now, being touted to us as the Mecca of high technology? As the country where everything happens ten times as fast as here? As the future laboratory of capitalism and the beacon of modernity? And now they are putting test sticks into salmon because the virus was supposedly introduced via Norwegian salmon stocks, and condemning millions to house arrest with fortune cookies and expired yogurt. I imagined modernity differently.

All over the world, life is starting to get back to normal, except in China. Why? Because national pride prevents the Chinese from being vaccinated with a vaccine that works. There is a Chinese vaccine, but it is no good against Omicron. It is one thing to copy Adidas sneakers or Stihl chainsaws, and quite another to copy an mRNA vaccine. There is a contract with Biontech for the delivery of 100 million doses of the vaccine, but it lacks approval because the state leadership sees its use as an admission of weakness. So the only option is the permanent lockdown. Zero Covid Forever.

I've never understood how anyone can stand China. This mixture of crony capitalism, control addiction, and undisguised aggressiveness would drive me crazy. But I met a lot of people who raved about China. The speed, they said, the efficiency! Learning from Asia would mean learning to win.

That was also true of Corona for a long time. Do you remember, two years ago, when we had talk shows full of young women with Asian immigrant backgrounds who could explain to us exactly what they were doing better than us far to the east? It has become noticeably quieter around the No Covid friends.

A very big China fan was Angela Merkel. Her eyes lit up when she spoke of her visits to Xi Jinping. No chancellor has visited the People's Republic as often as she has. She was there twelve times during her term. I think she secretly admired Xi Jinping for the way he governed the country. To be able to govern the country as he did, without any silly talk from the side, that would have been her dream, too. One would like to know how she sees it today. But she has disappeared.
Xi Jinping wants to be re-elected in the fall

Perhaps in the future we should look more carefully at whom we depend on economically. I'm not in favor of closing ourselves off or rolling back globalization, not at all. But it would be nice if we didn't repeat the mistake we made with Russia. Anyone who puts 1.5 million people into re-education camps just because they belong to a religious community they distrust at the head of state can be trusted with anything, even evil.

Chinese State and Party leader Xi Jinping said a year ago about the fight against Covid-19: "Judging by how the pandemic has been handled by different governments and political systems, we can clearly see who is better." At that point, it still looked like China would come through the crisis as a model country.

Xi Jinping wants to be re-elected in the fall. He has had the constitution amended specifically for this purpose. He will be in power even longer than Mao. I see no reason to disagree with him. "Judged by the results...": sure, why not?

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)