Tweeted smear simply amplifies poor judgment

In all the crises in an individual's affairs there are two broad courses of action to choose from. One can either hold up one's hand and confess to having erred or one can try and sidestep the fallout by trying to pin the blame on someone else.

At a time when the novel coronavirus had yet to make its presence known worldwide, US President Donald Trump, who at that point had yet to be confronted with this choice, was fulsome in his praise of China's efforts to contain the outbreak in Hubei province.

With the benefit of hindsight－and a somewhat jaundiced view of the world perhaps－one might conclude that his bonhomous utterances were born, not of concern for China's plight but rather the belief that China's decision to bring its economy to a halt would be to the advantage of his "America First" campaign.

Now a month later, when he is being heavily criticized for having ignored all the urgings of the World Health Organization and others to ensure the country was prepared for the inevitable spread of the virus on US soil, whatever sympathy there may have been in his remarks has been thrown to wind in favor of a more unsavory turn of phrase.

In reverting to type by firing off blame-and-shame tweets implying the novel virus is one that has Chinese characteristics, he has not only sought to foist on China responsibility for the coronavirus chaos in the United States, he has attempted to do so by pandering to the baser instincts of the crowd.

The outbreak of the plague in San Francisco's Chinatown at the beginning of the last century led to the pernicious prejudice toward Chinese immigrants being indelibly associated with disease, and that long-latent association in the US has been incubated in recent years with the administration's exploitation of China as the cause of any－indeed all－of the US' troubles. Thus The Wall Street Journal's willingness to indulge the "sick man of Asia" jibe.

The US leader, of course, is well aware, this is not a man-made, made-in-China threat. Instead, as experts have repeatedly made clear, it is just another natural disaster that human nature may have enabled. Trump's "Chinese virus" tweet therefore has simply been played as his "get-out-of-jail-by-framing-someone-else" card.

Having previously refrained from indulging in the stigmatizing of China as the origin of the virus, as others in Washington have done－take a bow for that, Mike－Trump has caved in under pressure as the US stock market, on which he has pinned the success of his presidency, has gone into meltdown.

With his administration's mismanagement of the situation precipitating an acute crisis within the US and he himself now encountering flak, the US president has retreated to the comfort zone of his proven supporter-favored approach of if there's a problem blame it on China.

The Chinese, which have been engaging in their own brutal battle with the virus, have naturally been less than enamored of this read-my-tweet passing of the buck, which once again stigmatizes them as a threat and a disease, particularly since their own struggle should have served to forewarn the US of what was to come.

Since it is not a Chinese "demon" but rather a demon that first appeared in China, whether the virus originated in China or not is really immaterial. What is pertinent is that China had to make the initial response to the outbreak after it became clear that a cluster of infections that appeared in Hubei's capital Wuhan was rapidly growing and spreading. While doing so, it has shared its experiences with the international community, along with its repeatedly updated diagnosis and treatment plans and the conclusions of the joint investigation team of 25 Chinese and foreign experts.

However, jingoism and anti-China racism are the tried and tested fail-safes of this US administration whenever the ship of state starts springing a leak. China not unreasonably is far from being gruntled by this practice, and has decided to make its disgruntlement clear. It is unlikely the US president would take kindly to the mess in the US being known as the "Trump affliction".

Couching the virus like a cyber threat may play to the gallery, but to the less partisan wider audience it simply shines a spotlight on the shortcomings of his performance in this time of national crisis.

The author is a senior editor with China Daily