The Update Desk: Chinese Things

The other day I did a Quick Take on Chinese Things, noting the reason why it's unnecessary and inflammatory to continue referring to COVID-19 as the Chinese virus or the China virus, as the president and many in the GOP have been doing. After all,

I know the virus originated in China - everyone in the world knows it, protestations on China's social media or within the Chinese government notwithstanding...

And I wondered why we never referred to anything else by the Chinese point of origin.

So, why treat the virus so differently from every other product or object that originate there that are never referred to as 'Chinese' things or 'China' things.  I mean, when was the last time you heard anyone refer to their iPhone as their Chinese Phone? 

Of course you haven't. We don't do that, because it doesn't fit the narrative. But, we learned yesterday, when the G-7 foreign ministers were unable to come to terms on language for a joint statement about the global pandemic, because Secretary of State Mike Pompeo couldn't bring himself to not push the damn narrative.

That's right. According to the linked Politico article,

European officials said Pompeo had insisted in identifying the COVID-19 virus as the "Wuhan virus" even though the World Health Organization (WHO) and others have cautioned against giving it a geographic name because of its global nature.

Nor only has he not backed down from it, the article noted that Pompeo has actually been "stepping up" his use of the language. And It appears that Pompeo might not have gotten the message from his boss that it was no longer necessary to associate the virus with China.

On the other hand, maybe the message from the president as that he would no longer call it that, but for everyone else, the name-calling was still fair game.

After the meeting, Pompeo noted that everyone there was aware of what the Chinese had done in their messaging and, I would assume, in their downplaying of the virus in the beginning

Every one of the nations that was at that meeting (yesterday) was deeply aware of the disinformation campaign that the Chinese Communist Party is engaged in to try and deflect from what has really taken place here. 

And I'd suggest that every one of the nations that was at the meeting was "deeply aware" of other deflection going on, coming from a place other than China, would you agree?  In fact, according to the article,

Other foreign ministers were not nearly as emphatic in their own comments about the meeting, with at least one leaving open the suggestion that China is not the only country trying to use the outbreak to advance political points.

France's foreign minister, in fact, said that he had

underscored the need to combat any attempt to exploit the crisis for political purposes and expressed the view that the unity of all in order to effectively combat the pandemic must now take precedence over any other considerations.

Wouldn't that be something, if it happened?