An Insight into Chinese“Discrimination” Through Tedros Adhanom

Op-ed by Yan Xia

As the Covid-19 that originated from Wuhan sweeps the world, each country is geared up to fight the pandemic and protect its people. Although numerous are demanding decision-makers to implement open, transparent and independent investigations into the incident, “racial discrimination” has become a heated topic of conversations around the world.

During lockdowns wherelive entertainments are suspended, none could have anticipated that “discrimination” would become the focus of the public.

Following this pandemic, Tedros Adhanom, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) rose to unprecedented fame. Pushed to the edge whilst facing accusations from all over the world, Tedros suddenly found a narrow breakthrough to defend his reputation. He publicly claimed that he has been discriminated by Taiwan netizens for as long as 3 months with names such as “negro” and other “racist comments”.

The small island nation, Taiwan, who has been quietly fighting the pandemic with much success, is once again dragged into the dirty mud of international politics. In order to prove the their innocence, the president of Taiwan Tsai Ing-Wen personally countered Tedros’ claim, commencing an unexpected war of words that revolves around “racial discrimination”.

As history has taught us, “racism” always bring tremendous harm to human society. In this civilized world, there are zero tolerance for any racist comments or tendencies in countries with rule of law. Hence, accusations of “racism” always hold the advantage of “political correctness” deemed invincible in public debates. When a black or Chinese successfully link his mistakes with “racism”, he stands a great chance to divert public opinions away from himself, which means he has a great possibility to escape from said accusations.

It seems that Tedros has really done his homework.

According to the news in Taiwan, authorities have made follow-up investigations into the cyber warriors who made racist comments. They concluded that the commenters were not from Taiwan, but actually from mainland China. In other words, it is possible that China cyber warriors took the opportunity to frame Taiwan for this discrimination. Alas, this is totally not unexpected.

In today’s world, it is impossible to launch online racial discrimination in a democratic society that is sustainable for more than 3 months. However, within the great firewalls of China, there is one condition that offensive cyber comments can survive. That is they have been authorized by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Before the pandemic, no one paid much attention to the leader of WHO and his friendly ties with the CCP. However, after the virus outbreak, people finally realised that Tedros is not just in good terms with the CCP, but they are literally inseparable buddies. Knowing this, it is quite understandable why some netizens “praise” Tedros as “Secretary Tedros”.

Despite all odds, Tedros fully endorsed the CCP’s actions during the pandemic. Naturally in response,the CCP had to orchestrate a show of “Tedros being discriminated by the Taiwanese” in an effort to save his reputation. By bringing this accusation to the international stage, not only can this diminish Taiwan’s success in fighting this pandemic but also turn Tedros from an accomplice that threats humanity to an innocent victim of “racism”.

“Anti-racism” has always been a way of self-protection for overseas Chinese. Whenever there is conflict, victims will immediately proclaim to be a representation of their race. They will not hesitate to elevate isolated incidents to racial conflict in order to express their zero-tolerance against “racism”.

But in truth, many Chinese living in China are used to “discrimination”. Not only are they tolerating discrimination in their communities, but are quite ready to participate in various racist movements.

This is because under the monolithic education of the Chinese Communist Party, everything is opposite to the values held by western civilised societies. Whilst western societies view zero tolerance as political correctness, in China “discrimination” is exactly a proclamation of “political correctness”; the CCP calls for its people to strongly disfavour “nonconformists”. As a result, whichever group the CCP decides to discriminate, the entire society will follow suit. For example, discrimination towards petitioners and Falun Gong followers;discrimination of low-ended populations by driving them out of big cities;discrimination towards Hong Kong anti-extradition protestors, even calling them “cockroaches” and so on.

There are other more common forms of “discrimination”, such as metropolitans looking down on farmers and labourers, the rich discriminating against the poor, Chinese mainlanders calling Taiwanese “tai bai zi” (meaning unsophisticated lowbrows), Chinese calling westerners “gweilo” (a racially deprecatory slur), and not to mention Hong Kongers’ discrimination towards mainlanders who flooded their city and purchased everything.

At the beginning of the pandemic, people of Wuhan and Hubei were the first to be discriminated by therest of China. Just like rats crossing the street, they were reported or even physically beaten by people from other cities. Now, it is the African’s who live in China to be banished, beaten up, and have restrictions on their movements.

In China, the above discriminations are common phenomena and the victims would never protest against them. The logic is simple. Without Consent and assistance from the Chinese government, there will be no collective discriminative action. Maybe this is for the “maintenance of stability”, or to divert public attention, or even for certain political purposes. Regardless, “discrimination” is no doubt an effective weapon for the government to maintain its position, and yes, it does not break the law.

Only when similar phenomena appear overseas will Chinese resolutely object against “discrimination”. This is because western laws are made to selflessly assist victims and bring back justice, which is the reason why such “racial discrimination” in the Tedros-style eventuated.