"We will have to demand compensation from China for the damage suffered"

Francis Journot is a member of the “Clothes made in France” and “Rendez-nous notre industrie” associations. He also runs the www.collectivite-nationale.fr website .

We can condemn many of the decisions of leaders of states overwhelmed by an unprecedented health, financial and social crisis or blame them for having delayed reacting. But in their defense, the Chinese regime lied and favored the flash spread of a coronavirus which could have been eradicated when it affected only a few patients and should never have left the region of Wuhan and China. Given this criminal management, the United States and the European Union would be justified in demanding, together, a global amount making it possible to compensate at least part of the global damage.

Criminal behavior towards the Chinese people and all of humanity

Censorship of the medical word and the press to hide the danger of contagion and the death toll, the Chinese dictatorship wanted to prevent a virus from tarnishing the image of China. Obsessed with his dream of absolute domination of the world economy, Xi Jinping deliberately put his fellow citizens and all of humanity at risk. In the article "The death of a coronavirus doctor causes an uproar in China" published on February 7, 2020 in the New York Times , the journalist Li Yuan described the vast protest campaign in China after the death of Doctor Wenliang, arrested by the Chinese authorities for having launched the alert at the end of December. She noted that the Communist Party propaganda machine had failed to control the surge of messages from furious Chinese.

According to the survey of 13 March 2020 conducted by Josephine Ma from Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post who had access to confidential government documents: "The first confirmed case of Covid-19 in China dates back to 17 November" . The journalist does not rule out the possibility of a previous case before mid-November.

Xi Jinping could not have forgotten the SARS epidemic, the management of which by his predecessor was also criticized. This coronavirus had killed 800 people in 2002/2003. Its mode of human-to-human transmission and the type of complication were close but also its origin attributed to the bat which would have transmitted it to mammals sold on markets of live animals. Furthermore, the authorities have not applied the law which, since 2003, has prohibited the trade and consumption of wild animals. In his article of April 14, 2020 published by the Washington Post , the columnist Josh Rogin prefers to point the finger at the laboratory of Wuhan which studies the coronaviruses of bats. But whatever the starting point of the epidemic, the Chinese head of state has certainly been informed of the contagious nature of the coronavirus. He was therefore probably aware of the risk of a deadly global pandemic when it was still possible to halt the spread of the virus which, according to documents consulted by the South China Morning Post , only affected 9 patients in November and 27 in mid -December 2020. However, this one preferred to maintain the celebration of the Chinese New year which was to take place on January 25 before being finally canceled. Preparations have stirred a large population and an interactive map of movements in the region of the epicenter located in Wuhan, published by the New York Times "How the Virus Got Out" , tells us that 7 million travelers left the city before the containment ordered on January 23, 2020. It is not known how many of them then spread the Chinese virus mainly by train through China and by plane to the four corners of the world.

Questioned on April 7, 2020 by the television channel TF1, the journalist, sinologist and writer Ursula Gauthier estimated that the number of deaths due to Covid-19 in all of China, officially 3291, should be multiplied by 30 or at least 97,000 and the figure of 81,782 contaminated, multiplied by 15 or 1.21 million. During an interview granted on April 4 to the regional newspaper Ouest France, the president of Solidarité Chine Marie Holzman, a specialist in China, explained that the information filtering through the diaspora cited a figure of 60,000 dead. At a time when the United States and Italy are paying the highest price in terms of death, Xi Jinping accuses, according to the association, of American athletes visiting in October in Wuhan or of the Italians, of having imported the virus.

The Chinese government denies its responsibility for the deaths of these hundreds of thousands of people and hopes that the reversals and the manipulation of the truth, which usually operate in China, will also work abroad. So the world is shocked for the moment, more busy protecting themselves, saving their businesses and jobs or burying their dead, but the resentment and hostility towards Xi Jinping and China could then prove to be strong.

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The Chinese dictatorship will sooner or later have to apologize publicly to calm the anger of the families of the deceased victims, including many Chinese citizens. The number of deaths has certainly exceeded 300,000 (the USA, Italy, Spain, France and Great Britain alone record 120,000 deaths, and perhaps 42,000 in China and probably more than,000 deaths in the other 180 countries with 5.5 billion inhabitants). The figure could quickly climb to half a million if we believe the worrying estimates concerning the spread in countries with poor sanitation including the Middle East and Africa.

Relatives of the victims could form a collective action for homicides over the coming months, which could lead Chinese leaders to explain themselves before an international criminal court. Several large law firms will certainly be in the running to organize an international "class action" out of the ordinary that can obtain a condemnation to the payment of several hundred billion euros in damages.

A crisis whose cost is difficult to grasp

In France, the 59% increase in debt (700 billion euros) in the 6 years following the 2008 crisis, the weakening of the industry and the predation of foreign operators, the closings of companies, the loss of a million jobs and markets abandoned definitively in favor of other countries including China which then saw its GDP per capita increase by 60%, show us that the last world crisis cost the hexagon , depending on the elements and negative effects taken into account during the decade, the equivalent of 70% of a year of GDP (based on the year 2008). It is feared that the cost of the Covid-19 crisis will be even higher.

The European Central Bank (ECB), led by Christine Lagarde, and the European states seem to have taken the measure of the gravity of the new drama. However, although considerable, the sums mobilized to support national economies, expressed as percentages of the respective GDP, which reach 20% in Italy, 19% in Germany, 17% in Great Britain and 15% in France, might not be enough. We do not know how long the crisis will last, nor do we manage to define the outline of the ravages and implications. It is feared that many countries will see their debt soar and reach an unbearable level. If austerity measures were then introduced in order to comply with the Maastricht Treaty which recommends a limit of public deficit not exceeding 3% of GDP, could then be added to the health and economic crisis, general and unmanageable social unrest which would precipitate the explosion of the EU.

Should we, for fear of facing it, ignore China's responsibility and choose to make people pay by recommending them to work more, as advocated by certain political leaders who have already forgotten the movement of yellow vests in a France in on the brink of revolution? Even if the subject of a tax increase is for the moment avoided, the European peoples are not fooled and know that they will be presented with the addition. The antiphon of a virtuous austerity would then return.

Make China pay and save the EU or make Europeans pay and condemn the EU to break up, that is the question that European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen will now have to ask. Indeed, the European Commission has understood that it is at a crossroads and knows that it cannot run the suicidal risk of causing, after the departure of Great Britain, the dissatisfaction which would precede a referendum in Italy, in Spain or France because that would definitively seal the fate of the EU. Ursula Von der Leyen is stepping on eggs and has apologized to the EU for Italy's failure to rescue Italy. A recent poll indicated that almost half of Italians, who were previously rather Europhiles, would now vote for an exit from the EU.

If we think that it will be difficult to sustain the economy for a long time and finance its reconstruction, then we have to be pragmatic and put the Asian giant to work. He must now fulfill a duty for two reasons. Its full responsibility in the onset of the current crisis but also its hegemonic and abusive position in industrial matters acquired in a questionable manner by appropriating high technology and know-how sometimes in violation of international rights and to the detriment of its competitors. This has enabled it to monopolize growth and to be at the forefront of the rich countries in two decades.

So it would be fair for China to play its part in repairing the world economy. This could take the form of a compromise intervening directly between, on the one hand, the EU and the United States which would also represent the interests of other members of the international community eligible for compensation in proportion to their economic contraction and the prejudice suffered and secondly, China. This act could provide an appropriate framework for all parties. First for the United States because the bereaved, unemployed or ruined American families expect from President Donald Trump, six months before the presidential election, a condemnation of the attitude of Chinese power and the promise of reparation. financial. Then, for the European authorities who are aware that the existence of the EU is hanging by a thread and know that the European populations who, after having paid a heavy human price, would not accept new constraints budgetary. And finally, for China because this agreement which would offer it the possibility of amending, would be likely to reduce the resentment towards it, of the populations of the 185 States affected by the Covid-19. Xi Jinping must give up his dream of world domination and think of the Chinese people because we can guess that in the absence of apologies to the families of the victims and a gesture of appeasement such as the one proposed here, the presence of the China and the preservation of its interests, but especially the safety of its nationals, could be called into question in many countries.

The Wuhan virus could cost all countries, if we refer to previous crisis experiences, the equivalent of one year of global GDP (85,000 billion euros in 2019) or more if the we share the analysis of financial experts who evoke a crisis comparable to that of 1929. A precise evaluation of the cost of the Covid-19 crisis can only be carried out after 6/7 years. But a payment of 15,000 billion euros would start to repair the damage. China can raise this amount because it has 4200 billion dollars in foreign exchange reserves or treasury bills that can be quickly mobilized, can borrow capital and sell large companies with high added value, property rights or other goods. This contribution, which would be equivalent to one year of Chinese GDP, would therefore be bearable and reasonable because it would not constitute, if we assume an assumption of the global cost of the crisis (excluding human cost) of 70,000 to 100,000 billion euros, only a small part of the amount of the damage. But many questions remain: will we know several waves of Covid19? Vaccine? Number of business failures and unemployment rate? Half a billion new poor according to Oxfam, political and social unrest, etc.) An annuity of 3000 billion euros for 8 years would ensure continuity in repairing the economic ravages inflicted on the world. Admittedly, this level of participation in supporting the economy would undoubtedly prove to be insufficient, but it would nevertheless make it possible to mitigate the violence of this crisis.