China's government is now seeking to recast the pandemic as a political win. And it has taken a bellicose — sometimes threatening — approach to other countries that are critical of its response to the coronavirus.
China has shifted blame by accusing the U.S. military, without providing evidence, of first bringing the virus to Wuhan when it competed in sports games last October. The claim has gained traction on the mainland.
"People in China feel a sense of pride because they had to sacrifice and that the leadership in the [Chinese Communist] party led them in an effective way," said, a former deputy assistant secretary of state and now chair of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California, San Diego. "Either the Chinese diplomats are delusional or they are simply doing their very best to prevent the international narrative from seeping into domestic Chinese discourse and undermining the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party. And I would wager that the second is probably more likely than the first," said Economy, at the Council on Foreign Relation.
"The epidemic at home was a real domestic crisis for the party leadership, and I think they've gone into overdrive to shore up domestic support," said Shirk, who is writing a book entitled, about Chinese politics and diplomacy."But what's happened is they're overdoing it in a way that's causing this international backlash against them. So it's very counterproductive.
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