Kerry Brown’s “China Smoking Gun” article in Newsweek is a glorified propaganda piece

I don’t know Kerry Brown, a Professor of Chinese Studies at King’s College, so I can’t say anything about him. I can say that his recent article in Newsweek attempting to absolve China of responsibility for its role in the coronavirus pandemic is deeply flawed.

Brown argues that China, while guilty of acting suspiciously during this outbreak, has not actually done anything wrong. Further, he contends that any damage done by the Covid-19 pandemic internationally cannot be attributed to China because countries like the UK have done more damage to themselves through their own folly. Lastly, he asserts that some of China’s more pernicious behavior during the pandemic, such as using PPE supply to gain leverage for Huawei or engaging in global disinformation campaigns, is simply due to China’s inexperience acting as a world power. Brown concludes by saying that the West has an irrational bias against China, fueled by no less than racism towards Asians — an accusation familiar to anyone who has spoken critically of China.

At best, the article is an awkward balancing act between two things which aren’t remotely the same (eg, my steak is slightly overdone, your steak has been cooked until it resembles a piece of charcoal — by Brown’s logic, both steaks are “burnt”). At worst, the article reads as a propaganda piece for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), echoing several of the same lines they have been blasting at full volume across their various outlets since early March.

The following are selected quotes from the article, along with my response indicating why I feel Brown’s argument falls short. I conclude this piece with a list of the very positive things China has done for the world throughout the pandemic.

• In the opening of the article, Brown states: “[China has] been accused of distorting the global economy. And President Donald Trump has consistently accused it of unfair trade practices. But when you get to details, these involve violation of the spirit of the law, not the letter.”
• I am fairly certain the T-Mobile/Tappy espionage case involving Huawei violates “the letter of the law” and not just its spirit. Same to be said for the practice of illegally shipping fentanyl into the US, fueling the American opioid epidemic. That said, this is unrelated to the Covid-19 issue.

• “Until now, in a metaphorical court with any sense of fairness, the best charge against China was deeply suspicious behavior, not anything that could draw an unequivocal guilty verdict.”
• Ah, yes, causing citizen journalists who spoke of the virus to disappear, forcing doctors to confess to rumormongering when they were simply trying to tell friends about a new virus in December—you know, classic “suspicious behavior.”

• “A parliamentary committee of backbench politicians issued a frenetic call to arms last year about the need for the precious liberal institutions of the U.K. to guard against autocracy. The fact that many of them, including the committee’s chair, Tom Tugendhat, were vociferous supporters of the chaotic quest to leave the European Union — something that arguably did far more to undermine the U.K.’s global role and security situation — has been brushed aside.”
• A flagrant false equivalence. Brown’s argument is, it seems, that it is illogical to worry about a foreign power subverting the UK’s liberal institutions because, after all, the UK hurt itself more with Brexit. But alas, these two are not remotely the same. A democratic country like the UK is free to vote for Brexit, even if that choice is not necessarily best for the country (and the verdict is still out on how much damage Brexit will do the UK long term). Additionally, Brexit has literally nothing to do with the current pandemic.

• “The Henry Jackson Society, a British foreign policy think tank, took things a step further, demanding hundreds of billions of pounds of reparations for the economic damage the virus is likely to do. This echoes the punitive demands for money made toward China in the imperial era, more than a century ago, which contributed to the country’s descent into decades of poverty and war.”
• Another false equivalence. Many people have chosen to use the word reparations to invoke the sentiment of foreign powers bullying a feeble China after the Opium Wars of the 1800s or the Boxer Rebellion of 1899–1901. But China of 2020 is not feeble. Increasingly it has become a force to be feared, as illustrated by incidents with the NBA and hotel/airline/fashion industries. This is not to say I favor “reparations” but Brown’s framing of the argument is flawed nonetheless. The balance of power between the UK and China today in 2020 is not what it was in the mid 1800’s. The “China is a victim” narrative is not only tired but also disingenuous.

• “Images of aid being sent to Italy and other hard-hit places may have sprung from good intentions. But just a little advice from some more European-savvy public relations advisers may have alerted China to the dangers of appearing opportunistic…. And while the boxes of face masks and other items being sent played well for domestic media in China, they were probably not such a good thing everywhere else. No one likes their suffering to figure as part of someone else’s grand campaign for validation.”
• This isn’t simply a PR issue — on top of the PR issue, there’s also fairly obvious “mask diplomacy” going on, in which companies like Huawei have donated PPE to countries that are preparing to select who will build their 5G network.

• “Young diplomats at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing have only exacerbated matters, producing puzzling footage that they claim shows the virus came from the United States.”
• Mr. Brown is referring to a conspiracy theory first pushed by the young Zhao Lijian (there were others, too, but Zhao was the most prominent). The conspiracy theory says the coronavirus was either leaked from a US lab or brought to Wuhan by the US military. Alas, Zhao’s only fault was his youthful overzealousness. Does Brown have nothing to say of Zhao’s superiors, who have clearly not punished him in any way for sparking the conspiracy? Does he have nothing to say about the state-run Global Times defending Zhao’s “wolf warrior” style of diplomacy?

• “There is a valid scientific debate about the issue of origins. But as Chinese Ambassador to the U.S. Cui Tiankai wisely noted, now is not the time, and this is not the way, to conduct it. Diplomats are no more qualified to talk about virology than anyone else — except virologists. The scientists will eventually have to settle this one.”
• This is the CCP’s favorite propaganda point: “Nobody knows where the virus came from yet, so it’s impossible to say it came from China.” At this point, there is no serious scientist outside of China who contends that the outbreak started anywhere outside of Wuhan.
• Also, it does not matter where the virus originated. If it was from a bat in China or a pangolin in Malaysia (or a snake in the Mojave desert), it does not matter. What matters is that the first country to detect the virus did not sound the alarm bell as loudly and quickly as they should have.

• “As COVID-19 began to spread, Beijing should have said more consistently that this is a human crisis. It was a time to demonstrate human solidarity. To prevent bad blood from building up into what is now threatening to be a new Cold War.”
• No. Before the virus began spreading internationally, Beijing could have told world leaders what they knew, when they knew it, ie: human to human transmission was all but confirmed by January 14th, if not sooner. Brown seems to treat the early days of the outbreak with selective amnesia, as if the chapter in which Li Wenliang and others were silenced simply did not happen.
• Furthermore, there is no shortage of Chinese state media outlets proclaiming that the virus demonstrates the need to rally around “a shared future of mankind” (人类命运共同体). Speaking about the virus as a “human crisis” has essentially become a propaganda term.

• “Through all of this turmoil, on all sides, reckless opportunism and seeking to pin responsibility on anyone only adds to the problem — it doesn’t help solve it.”
• How does “seeking to pin responsibility” on someone make the problem worse, assuming the problem we are talking about is the pandemic and not the China’s image on the global stage?
• This virus was going to ravage the world regardless of how hot Donald Trump’s temper got. Compared with Trump, the leaders of Italy, Spain, France, and the UK have been relatively subdued in their criticism of China. The infections per capita in these countries are currently on-par with the US.

• “But it is pretty clear that whatever role China may have had, it was more than supplemented by the often panicky, chaotic and inept response of other nations.”
• This is similar to the Brexit logic Brown pushed above: “I hurt you. But you hurt yourself more than I hurt you, so you can’t be mad at me.”

• “Compounding the matter by seeking to pin the blame on others is cowardly and dishonest.”
• Pretending that bad statesmanship on the part of some Western leaders makes the virus more infectious is dishonest.

• “[In the eyes of Western countries] China’s original sin was to practice capitalism, successfully, and not to politically reform.”
• For most of the past 40 years, the West 1) has been doing business with China and 2) has not been using “Democracy” as a stick to change China. If, in the eyes of the West, China’s “original sin” was successfully practicing capitalism, neither of these things would be true.
• If by “politically reform” Brown means following the rules that all other WTO members follow, abstaining from state-backed industrial espionage, and allowing free flow of information so that viruses like Covid-19 are discussed openly before it’s too late, then yes, I’m sure many in the West would like to see China reform.

• [China’s original sin] is also, for some of the more virulent in the Cold War camp, to be an Asian country daring to become the world’s largest economy.
• This is a common form of gaslighting employed by the American left (and apparently Kerry Brown) to shut down arguments. Anyone who has criticized China is familiar with the following: “Your criticisms are based on racism and prejudice. You are racist for thinking this.”

• “We should be coming together, not tearing ourselves apart.”
• This is the same point made by prominent voices within the Communist Party. Colonel Zhou Bo, Director of the Center for International Security Cooperation within China’s National Defense Ministry recently made this argument in the South China Morning Post. Fu Ying, Chairperson of the National Peoples’s Congress Foreign Affairs Committee recently made this argument in the Economist. Whenever there is international backlash against China, voices from within the State come out to extoll the mutual benefits of cooperation. This point of view flatly ignores the downsides of over-reliance on China, eg: shortage of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and medicine during the Covid-19 crisis.

Overall, I feel disappointed that someone who wields a Director position at a prestigious university and gives Ted talks would stage a defense of China on these grounds. Many of his core arguments are simply a repackaging of what Chinese diplomats have been saying on Twitter, in interviews, and in editorials. As someone outside of Party officialdom, Brown could have brought a fresh perspective.

There is no lack of examples in support of China’s performance during the pandemic. He could point out that:

• Most governments failed to stem travel from China after the Wuhan lockdown on January 23rd (locking down Wuhan, a city of over 10 million people, was something of a nuclear option for China — any world leader who wasn’t awake to the dangers of Covid-19 after the lockdown simply wasn’t going to wake up until it was too late).
• Many governments failed to implement social distancing measures until community spread was already taking place. I suppose they were overly confident that somehow Democracy would prevent them from getting sick.
• China is not responsible for the errors at the US CDC which delayed the rollout of PCR diagnostic testing.
• Despite batches of substandard PPE and test kits having been sold to numerous countries, overall China still plays a vital role in the global supply chain for PPE. Being able to buy N95 NIOSH masks from China right now is a privilege.
• Beijing has initiated new QC measures to ensure that overseas buyers are getting quality products.
• Countless individuals and organizations in China, as well as Chinese diaspora overseas, have volunteered time and money to help hospitals acquire PPE.
• Chinese doctors and scientists have been in communication with their international counterparts to help transfer useful knowledge and experience about the virus.

Brown’s article reads like a propaganda piece. He acknowledges that China made PR mistakes by flaunting images of donated masks but completely omits the facts that China silenced doctors and withheld information about human-to-human transmission for at least six days. He uses false equivalences when his key points don’t have solid ground to stand on. He relies on the same arguments proffered by high-ranking Party officials rather than discussing the very real contributions of Chinese individuals towards combatting the virus. In doing so, he makes it seem like the goal of his piece is to appease an audience in China rather than to provide an honest accounting to the typical Newsweek reader. I, for one, am not persuaded by articles written this way.

In Brown’s own words, “a little advice from some more European-savvy public relations advisers” could have made his piece more convincing for a Western audience.