A Chinese Communist Party-linked account mocked India's Covid crisis on social media showing burning bodies while China sent burning rockets to space. It backfired but why are they doing this? Does China want to be ostracized by the global community?

China mocked India, USA, Japan, Australia (QUAD countries) and other western countries on Covid crisis as they consider them rivals and never lose an opportunity to mock, abuse or even threaten them as part of ‘wolf diplomacy’. China will appreciate Belt and Road friendly countries because they are in deep red with Chinese debt and hence will never say anything against China. The bankruptcy of Sri Lanka and Pakistan are recent cases with many more to follow. But ‘karma’ is behind China and proved that ‘what you reap is what you sow’.

Between 1958 and 1961, Chinese leader Mao's policies resulted in the death of 20 million or more people in famines, and amidst the chaos and tragedy, Chinese authorities decided not to provide statistics on the number of deaths in the famines as the population declined for the first time in world’s most populous country. The same thing repeated again in China in 2022 when the population declined. It seems the recently launched Chinese plan of allowing second child policy in 2016 and third child policy in 2021 is yet to take off.

China pulled the world economy in the 2000’s decade and enjoyed 10% plus annual GDP growth but declining since the current leadership took over in 2013. The pandemic brought more uncertainties – from ‘only China’ to ‘China plus one’ to ‘minus China’ is most global business leaders are thinking now. This is the worst case scenario for China as manufacturing looks for alternate countries.

China reported nearly 13,000 Covid deaths in hospitals between January 13 to 19 2023, after a top health official said the vast majority of the population has already been infected by the virus. China’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said 681 hospitalised patients had died of respiratory failure caused by coronavirus infection, and 11,977 had died of other diseases combined with an infection over the period. The figures do not include those who died from the virus at home. The National Health Commission of China revealed a total of 59,938 Covid-related deaths were reported between December 8, 2022 and January 12 2023, claiming that the spike in cases could be attributed to lifting of the Covid policy on December 7, 2022. One may consider that 13k deaths in a week or 16k in a month may not be a big deal where population is 1.4 billion but China publishing weekly death reports itself is a big deal indeed.

This may be because actual deaths are much higher. China's hospital is flooded with dead bodies and long queues are seen at crematoria, which were captured by satellite images. Airfinity, an independent forecasting firm, has estimated daily Covid deaths in China will peak at around 36,000 over the Lunar New Year holiday. Millions of people have travelled in China recently for long-awaited family reunions to mark the biggest holiday in the lunar calendar that fell on Sunday, raising fears of new outbreaks. A top health official said China will not experience a second wave in 2-3 months after millions return to villages to mark the Lunar New Year as nearly 80% of the population has already been infected by the virus.

All these proves ‘Karma works’! The killer virus was detected in Wuhan city of China but they tried to blame Italy and India saying probably the virus appeared there before Wuhan. They also blamed USA for the deaths there as Donald Trump pulled out of WHO and blamed WHO-China joint cover-up.

China tried to punish countries like Australia who demanded a fair Wuhan virus origin investigation with banning almost all products including barley, meat and coal. As China suffered one of the worst drought in decades in 2022, food security became a concern and power sector came under strain due to coal shortages with many industrial cities had to face scheduled power cuts impacting industrial output. Realising the mistake, China in 2023 is trying to rebuild trade relationship with Australia. Again Karma.

They tried to push medical equipment’s and vaccine sale to almost all countries during the crisis. They were given partly as grant and partly as undisclosed amount sale depending upon friendship ties. The Chinese vaccines proved ineffective in China. This means China’s Belt and Road friends must also be suffering from ineffective Chinese vaccine. Many of these B&R countries are on the verge of economic collapse and demanding debt waiver. If they don’t give waiver, friendship and China’s strategic hold in those countries will suffer and if China gives waiver, their own economy had to absorb the loan cost. Again Karma.

Chinese economy was badly impacted in 2022 with 3% growth (low by any Chinese standard) due to ‘zero Covid’ policy as industrial production went down. The year 2023 started with high death toll after zero covid lockdowns were relaxed and projected 4.5% growth. In 2023, China is the worst affected country due to Covid-19 while rest of the world limping back to normalcy, partly thanks to India’s bulk supply of vaccines.

China will never buy Indian vaccines because of their past policies. Again, all KARMA.