France summons Chinese envoy on COVID-19 comment, German newspaper criticise Xi over handling pandemic crisis

Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said in a ministry statement: "Certain recent public stances by representatives of the Chinese Embassy in France are not in keeping with the quality of the bilateral relationship between our two countries or with the relationships of trust and friendship between the French President and President Xi Jinping and between myself and my counterpart, Mr Wang Yi."

"I clearly expressed to the Chinese Ambassador to France my disapproval of certain recent remarks when he was summoned to the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs in the morning of Tuesday 14 April," read the statement.

French authorities objected to two published items in particular. In the first, the ambassador claimed that amid the coronavirus outbreak “old-age pensioners in nursing homes are forced to sign statements foreswearing emergency treatment”, and that healthcare personnel in care homes “have abandoned their jobs from one day to the next, collectively deserted, allowing residents to die of hunger and illness”, reported The Irish Times.

The second item concerned a petition by French parliamentarians to admit Taiwan, which is not recognised by China, to the World Health Organisation (WHO), reporte the newspaper.

In Germany,  Julian Reichelt, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Bild criticised Chinese President Xi Jinping for his regimes' handling of the COVID-19 outbreak.

"You [Xi], your government and your scientists had to know long ago that coronavirus is highly infectious, but you left the world in the dark about it. Your top experts didn't respond when Western researchers asked to know what was going on in Wuhan. You were too proud and too nationalistic to tell the truth, which you felt was a national disgrace,” wrote Julian Reichelt, editor-in-chief of Germany’s largest paper, Bild, which had questioned if China, “should pay for the massive economic damage the coronavirus is inflicting worldwide," reported Fox News.

Reichelt added: “You rule by surveillance. You wouldn't be president without surveillance. You monitor everything, every citizen, but you refuse to monitor the diseased wet markets in your country. You shut down every newspaper and website that is critical of your rule, but not the stalls where bat soup is sold. You are not only monitoring your people, you are endangering them – and with them, the rest of the world.”

China denied the allegations:

The letter from China’s embassy said as reported by Fox News: “I followed your reporting on the corona pandemic in general and China's alleged guilt in particular today. Apart from the fact that we consider it a pretty bad style to blame a country for a pandemic that is affecting the whole world and then to present an explicit account of alleged Chinese debts to Germany, the article ignores some essential facts.” 

"We note that many countries now struggling with COVID-19 have had time to prepare for the cross-border spread of the pathogen after China reported its outbreak under IHR [World Health Organization] guidelines," the letter read.

Meanwhile, putting pressure on China, German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday asked Beijing to be transparent as possible over the outbreak of the infectious disease.

"I believe the more transparent China is about the origin story of the virus, the better it is for everyone in the world in order to learn from it," Merkel told reporters in Berlin Monday, reported Channel News Asia.

Germany has already taken on China by joining the UK, France and the US  as Bild, the tabloid newspaper in the country, put together a £130bn invoice that Beijing "owes" Berlin following the impact of Covid-19.

Image: Internet Wallpaper