China Must Pay Covid-19 Compensation and Reparations

By Stephen Kangal
March 23, 2020

Stephen KangalWe must take into judicious account today that The People’s Republic of China (PRC) with whom T&T enjoys cordial and mutually – beneficial fruitful diplomatic and trade relations is afloat and awash with a huge windfall of trillions of hard currency US dollars silos derived from unending trade surpluses realised especially with the USA and increasingly with the rest of the World.

The PRC now has adopted a deliberately accelerated global trade and investment expansion foreign policy with its trillions to dominate contemporary trade with the rest of the world. It is this that keeps the Chinese economy so buoyant, growth-driven and resilient that it can bring the world economic welfare to a halt as the COVID-19 pandemic is amply demonstrating to our collective detriment and sorrow.

We must also seriously consider and appreciate that some cultural practices taking place in the PRC have been impacting quite disastrously on countries beyond its borders with firstly the Hong Kong Flu, H1N1, SARS and now the dreaded Covid-19 through permitting distasteful and dangerous culinary practices based on sordid and widespread wild live animals consumption. Its recent ban on this practice is further confirmation of this deep connexion to COVID-19.

The current COVID-19 pandemic is alleged to have originated in the epi-centre of the Wuhan Provincial wild animal market in the PRC. It is this plague that is causing huge and astronomical loss of wealth, human lives and suffering as well as stress and loss of confidence globally that has imposed an unprecedented virtual global curfew and shut-down.

The world is virtually closed for business and so are our schools. The response to this rapidly spreading pandemic is an unprecedented, swift and all-inclusive quarantine in our homes.

Beijing has the capacity to pay and must pay.

We must initiate and vociferously call upon and lobby The Socialist Government of the People’s Republic of China through its various Overseas Missions with a view to obtaining reparations for the COVID-19 generated astronomical losses suffered by countries to which these Missions are accredited including the struggling Caricom countries.

These Chinese Embassies and consular agents must positively recommend to Beijing that adequate and effective compensation and reparations be immediately paid and disbursed as required by the tenets of international law to the plaintiff disadvantaged international community of nations.

This for carelessly unleashing for the fourth time in a row this biological catastrophic disaster from areas located within its sovereign territory on the rest of the world. This pandemic that has dislocated life globally is also resulting in agonising stress and trauma in a virtual doomsday armageddon that is fraught with enormous uncertainty as to where and when it will start to abate and who will die?

Let us pray that the Cuban immunity-boosting drug (Interferon alfa-2b) can bring some much- needed respite to our flagging fortunes from this PRC-originating biological disaster.

The Chinese cannot get away scotch-free at our collective loss and damages suffered from this Chinese-originating “biological weapon of mass destruction” that is in fact creating a huge market for Chinese-Cuban made pharmaceuticals. They must donate the drug freely.

Beijing must be made to pay for inflicting this international tort on an already-depressed and unsuspecting world economy.

11 thoughts on “China Must Pay Covid-19 Compensation and Reparations”

  1. In reference to this comment: “…now the dreaded Covid-19 through permitting distasteful and dangerous culinary practices based on sordid and widespread wild live animals consumption. Its recent ban on this practice is further confirmation of this deep connexion to COVID-19.”

    The article “Pinning Coronavirus on How Chinese People Eat Plays Into Racist Assumptions” sufficiently debunks your suggestion.

    “Second, the hypocritical idea that some animals are socially permissible to eat, while others are not, is a belief in one’s own cultural hegemony. American meat companies produced 26.3 billion pounds of beef in 2017; in India, the slaughter or sale of cows is prohibited in multiple states, and has been weaponized by Hindu nationalists against the Muslim minority. Eating horse meat has historic precedence in Europe (including France) and Asia; the appearance of horse tartare on an episode of Top Chef Canada in 2011 was enough to trigger a boycott and mass outrage. Wild game — including deer, squirrel, and feral hogs — are still hunted and eaten in the U.S., a tradition that would surely make residents of some other nations turn up their nose. And that’s not to mention the mass-produced and overly processed junk that has overtaken Americans’ plates, leaving people “simultaneously overfed and undernourished.”

    Source: https://www.eater.com/2020/1/31/21117076/coronavirus-incites-racism-against-chinese-people-and-their-diets-wuhan-market

    Additionally, in “Coronavirus Fears Are Reviving Racist Ideas About Chinese Food”

    “What’s deemed an “acceptable” meat—and the manner by which to obtain it—is nothing more than the result of different cultural values and norms. In the United States, where we’re used to a limited protein range and a shopping model that puts plastic-wrapped, disembodied animal parts in cold cases at grocery stores, there’s an undercurrent that what people in Asia eat is inherently “weird” and unsettling. When those eating practices are linked, however inconclusively, to health scares—as they are currently—those beliefs become loud rationalizations for dehumanizing Chinese people and treating their lives as less worthy.”

    Source: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/4ag37q/coronavirus-fears-are-reviving-racist-ideas-about-chinese-food

  2. Well you will certainly open a pandora’s box here if you want to talk about reparations
    1) Then should the Brits pay reparations for the 150-year opium war on China in which they effectively force the Chinese to use and buy opium estimated at $5trillion plus interest British Pounds?
    2) Should all the European colonial powers/America pay reparations for slavery to Africa, the Caribbean and Central and South American countries $20Trillion Plus interest
    3) America has an outstanding bill in Iraq, Libya, Iran, Cuba. about $10Trillion
    see this attached link https://www.rt.com/uk/483317-matt-ridley-china-reparations-covid19/

    1. These would appear to be crimes against humanity that are under the remit of the International Criminal Court pioneered by the late ANR Robinson.

      1. Which two countries refuse to come the under jurisdiction of the ICC (kids)? The US & Israel Why? Because they have cocoa in d sun ,well done class Exactly who are these war criminals class? H. Kissinger, T Blair, G Bush Jr, D Rumsfled, Sarakozy (Rwanada),A Pinochet and the list continues Sir.
        What have we learned today kids that might is right, he who has the biggest guns makes the rules .Thank you class and now for your home work in every society there are people and institution that a labouring to sabotage your country from the inside can you identify any of them class this is due next week for marks you will get a gold star and if your lucky get into a prestige school even though your is ah black hen chicken .

  3. The pivotal point that I am putting forward is one that is based on a fundamental principle of International Law that posits that if an activity in this case the COVID-19 were to originate within the territorial jurisdiction of one state and then begin to have effect or extend to the territorial jurisdiction of other states then the state that harboured, incubated or gave rise to this adverse viral activity is responsible and liable to pay damages to the states so disadvantaged that is now the international community of Nations. That is as simple as I can put it for discussion and further debate.

  4. Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, known as FSIA
    https://www.fjc.gov/sites/default/files/materials/41/FSIA_Guide_2d_ed_2018.pdf

    No, China Can’t Be Sued Over Coronavirus

    Nation-states are immune from such lawsuits.

    By Stephen L. Carter
    March 24, 2020, 11:00 AM GMT-4

    EXTRACT:

    “The government of China is protected by the doctrine of sovereign immunity, and the regime’s undoubted misconduct does not constitute sufficient grounds for a waiver.

    Sovereign immunity is not a favor courts do for foreign regimes. It’s an act of reciprocity, a peace treaty resting on a shared understanding that we will not allow our people to sue you if you will not allow your people to sue us. So broad is the traditional doctrine that a British court held in 1894 that even if a foreign ruler moves into one’s country, takes on an assumed name and conceals his true position, and enters into a contract, a lawsuit against him for breach is still barred.

    Until 1952, the U.S. generally took the position that the immunity of foreign sovereigns was absolute. 1 That year, the State Department took the position that it would more closely scrutinize claims of immunity where the case involved a commercial dispute. That in turn led to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, known as FSIA, passed in 1976, a statute intended (in the words of one federal court) “to protect foreign sovereigns from the burdens of litigation, including the cost and aggravation of discovery.”

    So broad are the statute’s protections that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that a foreign country need not even file an answer to a complaint — what lawyers call entering an appearance — in order for immunity to apply. 2 For example, when the family of a boy allegedly killed by a malfunctioning hunting rifle sued the manufacturer, a company owned by the Chinese government, the defendant did not bother offering a response in court. Instead, the company just sent the lawsuit documents back to the plaintiff, and the company was held to be immune.

    Of course, if control of a company turns out to rest in private hands, sovereign immunity offers no defense. U.S. courts have been willing to go as far as tracing the actual ownership of a foreign corporation, to be sure that a government in fact controls the majority of shares. This, too, has been applied to Chinese companies (Chinese businesses get sued a lot). 3 Even before the current outbreak, an increasing number of Chinese companies have been asserting sovereign immunity in U.S. courts. But none of this would have any application to a suit against the Chinese government itself.

    What about other exceptions in the statute? The Florida class action suit asserts that the exception for commercial activities applies, but it’s not easy to see how. The suit also purports to fall within the exception for death or harm “caused by the tortious act or omission of that foreign state or of any official or employee of that foreign state while acting within the scope of his office or employment.” But that section specifically bars any claim “based upon the exercise or performance or the failure to exercise or perform a discretionary function regardless of whether the discretion be abused.” It’s hard to find a way around this restriction.”

    Full https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-03-24/can-china-be-sued-over-the-coronavirus

  5. My case is based on the application of the principles and tenets of international law and jurisprudence- not municipal law. It is intended to be adjudicated by an International tribunal or Court such as the International Court of Justice States where states that are the subjects of international law are the litigants- not individuals.

  6. your leader and master of the free world, the most technological advance country on earth, that can hear a pin drop anywhere on the planet, also fumbled the ball. they both should compensate the world.

  7. Your arguments are dubious and you would have no case in the ICJ.

    Makes little sense unless you have all the nations who allowed viruses to afflict the world have to pay for it. Does Europe and the U.S. pay reparations for the Spanish Flu? Fifty million dead.

    Making a judgmental comment about which animals can be eaten is apocryphal. “Horrid practices” are all relative. Some believe that eating pigs are horrid; some believe the same about cows.

    China owes the world nothing unless we find out that they purposely infect the global population. We are all part of this global society and when we start pointing fingers, you get a situation like what we have here in U.S…. a rudderless ship with a runaway virus and a leader who is only concerned about how it affects his reelection.

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