Opinion | Truth is a casualty, when science is a servant to politics

By Philip Yeung, A university teacher

If you harbor suspicions that America would stoop low to win, Christopher Ford's Open Letter on the Coronavirus investigation should remove all doubt.

Now Ford is not exactly a nobody. He was the former Assistant Secretary of State in charge of Arms Control and International Security. He was the product of a Harvard-Oxford education, a Rhodes Scholar, and a think-tank heavyweight. Above all, he is a 24-carat China hawk. And yet, he came to grief for insisting that any State Department investigation into the claims against China must be vetted by third-party scientists. For that simple act of intellectual integrity, they accused him of "licking China's boots."

Ford's letter tells us three things: First, the US government itself was in turmoil over how to reinvestigate the origins of the pandemic, yet it asked its allies like Australia to adopt a unified position against China on this issue. Second, the power of the rightwing media such as Fox News in driving false narratives and silencing the voice of reason is frightening and amoral. Third, that fidelity to truth is a mirage if it concerns China.

This is a strange age, sad and dangerous at the same time. US hostility towards China is now an all-out war without bombs and bullets. Nothing is off-limits if it can bring China to its knees.

In the dying days of the Trump administration, Mike Pompeo ordered an investigation ostensibly into the origins of the coronavirus. But this super China hawk had a hidden sinister agenda. His team bypassed independent scientists and intelligence experts, hell-bent on accusing China of engineering the virus as a biological weapon, and of having deliberately unleashed it on the world population after it had secretly vaccinated its own people. Its purpose was to paint China as a Biological Weapons violator. These are wild and irresponsible assertions and yet rightwing media in America are ready to see it as gospel truth.

To be a superpower, you need three things: economic power, military power, and mass media with a global reach. China may possess economic and military clout, but it woefully lacks the soft power of global persuasion.

Now you know why China balks at another investigation. It is crystal clear that the US would not rest until it gets the result it wants to satisfy its own geopolitical objectives.

Australia, simple-mindedly, joined the US chorus for a reinvestigation, rupturing its relationship with a key trading partner, when American motives are suspect.

Ford's vilification was extremely ugly, aided and abetted by Fox News. In the end, he somehow managed to prevent the State Department from releasing an official statement that contains wildly unverified claims against China. But if this vilification can happen to a card-carrying China hawk, what chance does truth have in surviving media distortions?

China has no global military ambition, only an economic one. Its Belt and Road Initiative is intended to create global wealth for all trading partners. When you stack China's international behavior against the US, China looks like a choir boy. Had China been guilty of war crimes on the US scale, slaughtering millions of innocent civilians, and dumping napalm to denude Vietnamese forests, it would have been tarred and feathered as an evil empire. And yet, the US is still smelling like a rose, dictating its twisted values to the rest of the world.

China has no stomach nor any use for biological weapons. It was a victim of Japanese germ warfare during the Second World War. All it wants is to be the world's best-governed country, boasting breathtaking infrastructure, technology that has improved livelihood, and lifting 800 million out of poverty. The West has never given China any credit for the biggest achievements in human history. Its multiple good deeds have been totally discounted by its communist label.

For a country at peace, China has been viciously targeted for extreme US hostility. If it's not over Huawei's 5-G technology, it's over the spread of COVID-19.

The Trump administration, a notorious climate denier, and a believer in junk science, had little regard for truth or science. When they demanded a new investigation into COVID-19 "free from interference and undue influence", they forgot to include "freedom from American interference".

Sadly, the anti-China madness unleashed by Trump has not been repudiated by his successor, cornering the two superpowers into a dangerous confrontation. Sooner or later, the world will pay for American insanity.

In this toxic environment, the smoking gun will never be found. We will never know the origins of the virus. Trump and his lackeys had blatantly smeared China, calling Covid-19 "KungFlu" "WuFlu" or "the Chinese virus". They are only interested in stigmatizing China.

People in the West are ready to believe the worst about China, including that it has a "past grotesque history in bioweapons work". What utter nonsense! But all the US has to do is to sow doubts, and media hacks will amplify these wild assertions.

The Spanish Flu of 1918-20 killed more than 50 million people. Its origins were never known, although several theories had been floated about its origins, including the dirty trenches on the battlefield in the First World War. The COVID-19 story will likely meet the same fate, thanks to American ill-will and irrationality towards China.

When science is a servant to politics, truth becomes a rare commodity.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.