There is scant comfort for Britain and other Western democracies in seeing China – the source of the deadly Covid-19 virus – emerging so rapidly and strongly from the crisis.
The Chinese economy is already up and running again even as the US, the UK and other nations are battling to hold back the tide of illness, death and economic destruction plunging them into a recession ‘worse than the global financial crisis’, according to the International Monetary Fund.
What is becoming clear is that by ramping up production and driving recovery, China could be the big winner from the global downturn – and that is an alarming prospect.
The ability of its leader, Xi Jinping, to invoke the ruthless powers of the state to combat coronavirus and to make sure dissenting voices were silenced gave the Chinese a huge advantage.
This week, Beijing proudly announced it had no new coronavirus deaths. Furthermore, any new cases are the result of Chinese citizens infected abroad returning home.
So China is flaunting its triumph over coronavirus – but be in no doubt it is also set to exploit the paralysis that has enveloped Western economies to its own ends, in terms of finance, and greater global power.
Yet this is the nation that failed to alert the world at the earliest opportunity to this new strain thought to have evolved in its unsanitary live animal markets; allowed the virus to incubate and spread for vital weeks before conceding it was a major public health issue; and which has by common consent been less than honest about infection and death rates.
Nor can we ignore growing international concern that in the race to return to business as usual, many experts fear the lockdown in Wuhan, where Covid-19 appeared, has been lifted too early.
Yesterday, tens of thousands of people left the city, igniting fears of a second wave of infections spread throughout China – and beyond.
The broader, more depressing truth is that the acquiescence of the West to China’s drive for manufacturing, economic and diplomatic domination leaves us handicapped.
Yes, Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ rhetoric has been actively deployed by applying $115billion of tariffs on Chinese goods entering the US – certainly more effective than his posturing yesterday about cutting funds to the World Health Organisation over its China bias. But the damage was done long before that.
In early March this year, even as coronavirus was sweeping out of Wuhan, China’s Jingye group gained a foothold in another UK strategic industry when it bought the British Steel plant at Scunthorpe and on Teesside, saving 3,000 jobs.
Of course, China’s commercial global ambitions have never been a secret. Its ‘Belt & Road’ initiative – or ‘New Silk Road’ – was unveiled in 2013 and aims to be the world’s biggest infrastructure and development project, with investment in 70 or so countries and international organisations.