NOT THE TIME TO PUNISH CHINA

Re: “Trump says China wants him to lose re-election bid”, (BP, May 1).

I have grave misgivings about US President Donald Trump’s idea of “punishing” China for the coronavirus. I notice nobody has ever punished the US for inventing and deploying the atomic bomb.

It is easily documented that the US government intentionally caused those events. No such evidence is available in the case of the coronavirus.

Current thinking admits the virus may have originated in a wet market in Wuhan, so may not have been a product of human intent at all.

China is a large and powerful country of over one billion people. History shows that people can become extremely stroppy when their patriotic instincts are offended. Common sense suggests it is unwise to arouse those instincts without solid proof.

The US president is appallingly ignorant about many things.

His recent off-the-cuff suggestion that people might ward off the coronavirus by inoculating themselves with disinfectant is ample evidence.

His ignorance is a danger both to the US and to the world at large because there is always the possibility he may act on it. No country ought to base its actions on proactive ignorance.

So I caution the US not even to think about “punishing” China for the coronavirus, especially since it has never punished China for other, more demonstrable outrages, such as the Tiananmen massacre, the persecution of the Uighurs, and the enslavement of Tibet.

Even the announcement of such an attempt might provoke another bloviating letter to this newspaper from the Chinese embassy, and that would be hard for some readers to stomach.

S Tsow