The fundamental problem here is trust: no one can trust the Chinese government to tell the truth, to open itself to external scrutiny, or to properly and publicly investigate itself.
Australia's Globalization Expert
Salvatore Babones Posts
Why has the WHO failed so miserably in tackling the coronavirus crisis? The answer is in the acronym.
The coronavirus lockdown may have to stay in place for the rest of April, but the lockdown mentality must end.
A global resurgence in national self-reliance might actually be a good thing for America’s place in the world.
Western democracies may lose the coronavirus propaganda war, but China certainly won’t win it.
Forget geopolitics, neo-nationalism, and that hackneyed bugbear, the future of liberal international order. The big coronavirus moment is virtual. Before the virus, the offline world was primary, the online world secondary. Since the virus, the online world has become the real reality.
If you want to maintain freedom of navigation in troubled waters, you have to be able to take a hit and keep on sailing. Bring back the battleship. Or at least the pocket battleship.
Robert Guiscard’s warrior wife, Sikelgaita, bore him eight children. She was a Lombard princess whose name literally meant ‘victory at the point of a spear’. They played things tough, those old Lombards.