Ten days after the chemical-spill train accident in Ohio, a spokeswoman for China's foreign ministry slandered the United States.
That shows Beijing's obsession with Washington
Munich/Beijing – China's wolf warriors rarely miss an opportunity to react with a certain glee to political crises in the USA.
Whether it's about the repeated, horrific deadly shots of white police officers on blacks or the attempts by ex-President Donald Trump to brand his election defeat at the end of 2020 as a fraud and to sabotage the inauguration of his successor Joe Biden by storming the Houses of Parliament: all of that were welcome opportunities, especially for some State Department spokesmen known as "wolf warriors," to point the finger at the unloved superpower -- while demonstrating the superiority of the Chinese system.
A new quality, however, is the reaction of State Department spokeswoman Hua Chunying to the chemical accident in the US state of Ohio in early February.
On February 3, a 50-car freight train derailed in East Palestine.
Several tankers caught fire.
It quickly became clear that the train had toxic chemicals on board, including the carcinogenic chemical vinyl chloride, which is used in plastic production.
Pictures showed a huge plume of smoke.
Expressions of sympathy are common in such calamities.
But Hua etched several times on Twitter in the direction of the USA, albeit with a few days delay.
"Now we know why the US government was upset about a wandering balloon - to distract people from the #OhioChernobyl chemical explosion," Hua tweeted this week in reference to the suspected spy balloon shot down by the US.
"For Washington, the balloon is obviously much more important than the safety and health of the Americans." It is unclear whether she herself came up with the hashtag to link the accident to the reactor disaster in 1986 at the then Soviet Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
In any case, the comparison between Ohio and one of the greatest catastrophes of modern times is now spreading widely in Chinese social media.
There is also talk of "Chernobyl 2.0".
Now we know why the US gov fussed over a wandering balloon — to take people's eyes off the chemical explosion #OhioChernobyl.
Clearly for Washington the balloon is much more important than Americans' safety and health.
pic.twitter.com/Jjb7UDyO61
— Hua Chunying 华春莹 (@SpokespersonCHN) February 16, 2023
Chemical accident in the USA: Internal criticism of railway infrastructure and safety
Local authorities had blown up some of the cargo to prevent an uncontrolled explosion and neutralize the chemicals.
Around 2,000 residents were temporarily evacuated, and schools and shops were closed.
Then thousands of dead animals were found.
There are growing fears in the region of water contamination and the later effects of vinyl chloride and other spilled chemicals, such as respiratory hazard hydrogen chloride.
In fact, the incident also offers enough cause for criticism in the United States.
Politicians criticized the decay of the railway infrastructure or reforms that had led to more lax control and thus less safety in train traffic.
The fact that the US media nationally reported on the incident only days later and that US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg only spoke publicly ten days later also offers critics an open flank to whisper about alleged secrecy.
Internationally, too, there was initially little reporting;
and just a few days after the accident, the catastrophic earthquake in Turkey and Syria eclipsed everything else anyway.
China: interference in US internal affairs
But the criticism from China, in its attacks on the US, is doing something that asks for itself: criticizing “internal affairs” in a tone that is hardly appropriate for diplomats.
The party organ
Global Times
repeatedly criticized Washington's sluggish reaction to the accident in several reports.
On Thursday, even the Chinese Embassy at the EU in Brussels took up the narrative.
From a report by the official Xinhua news agency, the embassy tweeted sentences that emphasize fears and problems, not empathy.
"We should know when trains carrying hazardous materials pass through the state of Ohio," she quoted Ohio Governor Mike DeVine as saying from the report.
This had asked the US Congress to better regulate safety in rail traffic.
“Why is the Chinese representation to the EU tweeting about the Ohio train derailment?” commented China expert Noah Barkin of the Rhodium Group think tank.
“It is a horrific incident that certainly points to major oversights.
But gleefully wallowing in the misery of others doesn't look good.
And that will be seen in Europe as well.
Very strange public diplomacy.”
In the past few days, China has also picked up the report by US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who on his blog sees the USA as the mastermind behind the blowing up of the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea.
The United States rejects the accusations made by the award-winning reporter, who has repeatedly been noticed by incorrect research.
Some experts also questioned the report.
but China urged the US to explain the incident to the world.
When asked why the US media didn't jump on Hersh's story, State Department spokeswoman Mao Ning said, "It proves that some US media don't care about the truth."
China obsessed with competition from the US
All of this shows once again the obsession in Beijing with the USA, which is increasingly viewed as an enemy.
China blames the US for Russia's invasion of Ukraine and accuses Washington of a containment policy on Beijing.
It is not entirely wrong that the attitude towards China is also becoming harder and harder in the USA - even if US President Joe Biden was trying to calm things down in view of the balloon affair: "We are not striving for a new Cold War", Biden said Thursday.
He expects to talk to China's head of state Xi Jinping about the downed balloon.
The overflight of the Chinese balloon in US airspace could have been triggered by a simple error combined with poor weather conditions, the Washington Post wrote on Friday.
The balloon affair is a "test of the US's ability to properly manage crises and its seriousness in stabilizing relations with China," said Hua's colleague, foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin, on Friday.
It is to be hoped that things will calm down again quickly.
Meanwhile, Ohio is continuing to clean up.