Field Notes from a Pandemic Read online

  Now, though, with the virus, it quickly became apparent that one situation’s problem was another’s solution. Near the end of January, the city had imposed a state of emergency, ostensibly to deal with the pandemic, even though the region had only five confirmed cases of the virus at the time, all of which were found in people who had visited Wuhan. There is no question COVID-19 measures were necessary, and the Hong Kong government had been under fire for reacting slowly, but banning gatherings of more than four people was also the perfect solution to curbing the protests. Authorities eventually arrested fifteen protest leaders, a move that would have invited massive backlash and chaos in the streets if it had happened before COVID-19. Now, the student-activist Joshua Wong, the de facto face of the movement, said on a podcast that the containment measures made it “impossible for us to mobilize.” Then came the finishing move. Beijing introduced a new national security law in Hong Kong against what it deemed treason, sedition, and secession — effectively a move to take complete control. Demonstrators planned to march again, but with the world engulfed by the virus, even as Western leaders condemned the new law, hardly anyone else was watching. Since 2019, Beijing had held off on such daring salvos in Hong Kong, perhaps mindful of the international backlash after troops opened fire on Tiananmen Square protestors in 1989. Now, it had found its moment. Also amid the pandemic, a top Chinese general said his country would not rule out using military force to take back Taiwan, a territory China claims, which has long had U.S. support. On the heels of pestilence, the clarion of war.

  And China never forgets. The Asian giant is the land of the long game, the proud “Middle Kingdom” of the world, the literal translation of its name, “middle” not referring to middling-ness but to a prime, central position. Beginning over 150 years ago, China had suffered what it called a “century of humiliation,” losing wars with outside powers that are forever etched into national memory. Like its attempt to control the South China Sea and the triple-digit-billions of dollars it poured into African infrastructure, Beijing’s initial creep into Hong Kong represented an outward push, growing and expanding, trying to impose a new hegemony onto the world and avenge the humiliations of ages past. It was distilled into a message attributed to the founding father Mao Zedong, with his heavy Hunan regional accent, all the way back when the People’s Republic was founded in 1949: “The Chinese people have stood up.”

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  That need to rectify perceived past slights is a powerful motivator. Once one of two global superpowers, the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of the Cold War. Then an intelligence officer in East Germany, Vladimir Putin was deeply affected by those events. When he became president in 1999, he wrote, “Russia faces the real danger that it could be relegated to the second, or even the third tier.” So, in Putin’s two-decades-and-counting of effective power, evidence mounted of Russia’s overseas assassinations, hacking, annexation of Crimea, military intervention in the Middle East, and interference in Western elections. Putin would make repeated denials, but there is no question that everything he does draws from the same reserve, from that moment in history when his beloved country fell, defeated by the West — not that different from China. To be sure, Russia has much military and intelligence might, but little so-called soft power. Its economy is not even in the world’s top ten, ranking just below Canada’s. Moscow thus has less to gain from the pandemic than Beijing. But in the turbulence of COVID-19, Russia too saw opportunity, and reportedly, it did what it does best.

  Disinformation, even as Russia repeatedly denies any use of the tactic, has its roots in the Soviet Union. The term is, in fact, a loanword from there, adopted from the Kremlin, although it is not inherently Russian. The term comes from dezinformatsiya, which is itself a form of disinformation, coined in that way by Russia to suggest Western origin. (The leader Joseph Stalin allegedly thought it French-sounding.)

  In the age of COVID-19, a leaked European Union document disclosed that Russia had been disseminating fake news online in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish, using conflicting and confounding reports to complicate the bloc’s dissemination of its COVID-19 response. According to the document, “The overarching aim of Kremlin disinformation is to aggravate the public health crisis in Western countries…in line with the Kremlin’s broader strategy of attempting to subvert European societies.” China had allegedly been doing the same thing — learning from Russia, in fact. According to analysis by the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a project of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, Beijing had been signalling a “move toward a more Russian style of information manipulation.” The Chinese allegedly boosted existing conspiracy theories and also drew from campaigns by Russia and Iran. A ProPublica investigation found co-ordinated Twitter accounts had posted about Beijing’s glorious triumph and leadership amid the pandemic — part of a ten-thousand-strong network. China’s moves make it “clear that a new era of disinformation has dawned,” a Freedom House analysis reads. China has denied acting improperly, a stance it holds so strongly that it reportedly tried to stop an EU report on Beijing’s disinformation and ended up getting the bloc to water it down. Yet, the covert aside, plain as a pike, the world could see Chinese senior officials and state media spreading suggestions on social media that the United States was responsible for the coronavirus.

  Sowing disinformation is simple. The Internet and our digital connectivity have made it easier to reach the masses, and the masses are gullible. Research shows most American students, from middle school to even university, can’t tell the difference between real news and propaganda. The essence of disinformation, for the most part, isn’t to steer people in any particular direction, but simply to sow chaos and disunity. Such division causes a loss of trust and faith in institutions. It is destabilizing. It can and does weaken the receiving countries, for poison in the mind often manifests in directions that even the trolls may not expect. It does not take a lot to swing elections, with the results of many districts decided by tiny margins. In 2016, it did not take a lot for an American to fire a gun in a pizza parlour in which he incorrectly believed children were being sexually abused by Democratic Party members. A lot can hinge on memes and tweets, on robot social media accounts, and on rumour and manipulated photos. Now, more than ever before, a face can truly launch a thousand ships.

  Then, of course, there is the good ole traditional spy craft. Two Canadian intelligence agencies said “it is near certain that state-sponsored actors have shifted their focus during the pandemic” and warned of “an increased risk of foreign interference and espionage.” They didn’t specify from what countries the hostile moves would come, but in the past, one agency had more than once accused China and Russia of such activities.

  And for China in particular, hand in hand with the disinformation and intelligence work came the medical aid and protective gear it had been handing out around the world. When Germany and France responded to the pandemic by restricting exports of protective equipment, sparking backlash from neighbours, China was reaching outward in what observers have called “face mask diplomacy.” China prominently publicized what it portrayed as aid sent to the hard-hit Italy. From Spain to France, and to the Czech Republic — the Asian country capitalized on the public-relations moments as well. It may be cynical to overly analyze goodwill, but then again, Spain later complained the Chinese test kits it bought from a private company didn’t work. The results of Beijing’s overtures are clear for all to see. Serbia’s president Aleksandar Vučić said of the pandemic, “The only country that can help us is China.” Italy’s ambassador to the European Union said when his country asked for help with protective medical equipment: “Not a single EU country responded…. Only China responded bilaterally. Certainly, this is not a good sign of European solidarity.” China looked like a rescuing hero, eclipsing the old world leader, the United States — which was also on the receiving end of Chinese charity, with a donation of tes
t kits and masks by the billionaire co-founder of Alibaba, Jack Ma.

  Beneath everything runs an economic crusade. Given the accusations of China’s enforced wall of silence during the earliest known spread of COVID-19, and of similar actions during the SARS epidemic, what the country presents as its progress in its fight against the virus should be examined critically and in context. But what is clear is that when everyone else was still reeling from the effects of COVID-19, China, which dealt with it swiftly and accordingly, was already restarting its economy as other countries were shutting theirs down. “Beijing intends to use the global dislocation and downturn to attract foreign investment, to seize strategic market share and resources…to, as Chinese sources put it, ‘leap-frog’ industrially,” reported an analysis by Horizon Advisory, a consultancy focused on China. This was amid economic devastation almost everywhere else, beyond just the United States. The north of Italy, the country’s hardest hit region, accounts for 50 per cent of the economy. Germany’s economy shrank by 2.2 per cent in the first three months of 2020, the sharpest quarter-on-quarter decline since the 2008 financial crisis. The American billionaire financier George Soros said the European Union could disintegrate in the wake of the new coronavirus outbreak unless the bloc makes certain drastic economic measures. Horizon Advisory’s analysis pulled no punches when it stated, “In COVID-19, Beijing sees the chance to win.” How far the country can go, how effectively China can take advantage of the situation, remains to be seen. Far more certain, though, is that the further rise of players like China will be at the expense of the West. This is not a value judgement, but a dispassionate statement of the times — and one with certain consensus. Research from the University of Calgary reads: “Moscow also views the virus as a fortuitous harbinger of the end of the post–Cold War liberal world order.”

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  I took up running while staying in Bayreuth, although I’ve never been much of a runner. My choice of exercise is rock climbing, which I try to do three times a week, being a bit of an obsessive. If I’m in a city for more than two weeks, I have to find a local facility to visit. But with the pandemic, the lone climbing gym in Bayreuth was closed. So, if I was to stay in any kind of shape, I was forced to take up running. I didn’t even have the shoes, having packed only one pair of leather boots for the whole trip. I had to buy off-brand runners from a discount supermarket, the only place that sold shoes and was allowed to remain open. They were fifteen euros and purple, not my favourite colour, but Risako said they looked “nice.” Personally, I didn’t think they were worth even five euros. I suspect they were of slightly different sizes and, as such, my feet constantly ached in them, particularly the left one. By the end of my first long run down Wittelsbacherring (a street named after the House of Wittelsbach, the clan of King Ludwig II), I was exhausted, and my feet throbbed. I longed to get back to a time where I could resume my rock climbing, a discipline that’s far easier on the body, believe it or not.

  The most common gyms in Germany, by a wide margin, are called McFit, whose slogan, translated from the German, is “Simply Look Good.” They’re cheap, plentiful, and open at all hours of the day and night, not unlike the GoodLife chain in Canada. In North America, the Mc prefix is used pejoratively (like in “McMansion,” to describe mass-produced houses of low quality), evoking the U.S. restaurant chain McDonald’s. The negative connotation clearly did not make it cross the Atlantic, and while funny, it’s not surprising. Germans, I’ve always felt, love the United States. Some may not like the U.S. government or its leader, whichever iteration of either, but American culture as a whole is desirable in Germany and much emulated. Mc prefix aside, Germans also love to swear in English because its vulgarities often hold the sort of meaning that cannot otherwise be perfectly encapsulated in a single word. Even Chancellor Angela Merkel is fond of casually dropping the stateside word “shitstorm.” She may well have used that or some other English profanity when she saw the reports that said President Donald Trump — rather ham-fistedly — tried to get CureVac, a German firm working on a coronavirus vaccine, to move its research wing to the United States, ostensibly to develop said vaccine exclusively for his country. From the level of cultural role model and Marshall Plan economic saviour, the U.S. has seriously declined in its relations with Germany. It didn’t help matters when, a little later, the president announced he was going to remove nearly 10,000 of his 34,500 troops in Germany, where the United States has extensive overseas bases. That prompted one German lawmaker to warn that the only winners in such a move would be Russia and China.

  So once again, while the United States continued to fritter away its goodwill, China was going around the world handing out face masks, taking advantage of its favourable position. The so-called factory of the world dominates all sorts of supply chains. China is the world’s biggest supplier of the raw materials for medication. Before the pandemic, China made one out of every two of the world’s face masks. When it was first hit by the virus, being the only one, it also had unfettered access to more of the global supply of protective equipment. When the rest of the world started feeling the effects later, they discovered China had scooped up all the face masks and other gear. Nothing suggests this was malicious, of course. China was dealing with a spectre it had never seen before and legitimately needed the equipment. But the fallout cannot be disputed. Lacking protective gear and life-saving tools, the West and the rest were left more vulnerable, and that scramble for what they lacked caused discord, division, and ultimately, dependency on China. That made China powerful, and China knows it. According to Horizon Advisory, again, the sort of market share and resources China intends to seize amid the pandemic are “especially those that force dependence.”

  The cost of Western countries’ dependence has been made painfully obvious by the pandemic. But the dependence is not just on China. It is also on each other. Nations are reeling as they realize that the pursuit of efficiency, the sourcing of supplies from around the world, has demonstrated their vulnerabilities. So, with the decline of the world order we’ve known will be another decline — the decline of our interconnectedness that has been its chief pillar. As the world becomes less stable, so too will it become more divided. We were already seeing this before the pandemic; the outbreak of COVID-19 just laid it bare and provided a push.

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  Risako was leaving Germany. Her university in Japan was actually ordering her home. She didn’t have a choice, and she was sad. With the travel restrictions, with every country banning everyone but citizens and residents, once Risako went back to Japan, she was uncertain when she would be able to return to Germany and her studies. I’d see Elias again, of course, what with his having family in Canada, but Risako? I don’t know. Probably never. That made me sad.

  Not long after, I received an email about my own plans for returning home: my flight back to Canada, a prized, nonstop Munich–Toronto route, had been cancelled. The only source of comfort was that they did not require me to call in once more. The airline had automatically issued me a new ticket. It was probably a source of comfort for them as well, not having to listen to my voice yet again. The problem, though, was that the new route was no longer nonstop. It had two connections, first in Frankfurt and then Montreal.

  In normal times, I would not have minded a few transfers, but with the pandemic and how fast things could change, any layover added an extra layer of risk. If an onward flight got cancelled, I could very well get stuck mid-route. I had already almost had that happen to me in China. I did not want to dance with the devil yet again. But I did not have a choice.

  Travel had effectively become an act of desperation. As countries shut their borders, travellers became trapped in severe lockdowns, sometimes kept unilaterally in their hotel rooms, watching entire airports close, their hopes of returning home turning bleak. People were having to pay through the nose for accommodations — expenses for which they hadn’t planned. The more fortunate one
s were paying near-business-class prices for specially arranged government repatriation flights. Along with restricting inbound travel, the European Union had also issued a directive to allow foreigners already on the continent to remain beyond the terms of their visas, already anticipating some might get stuck due to the disruptions. The excitement and expectation of travel as most of us had known it had ceased to be — it was now fraught with fear, apprehension, and an uncertain outcome. As I walked to the train station to see Risako off, I couldn’t help but think that this simple gesture of saying goodbye to someone was in danger of disappearing too, and perhaps of not returning for some time — a small representation of something bigger.

  While the insidious creep of COVID-19 was decimating human travel, it was doing much the same to the free flow of goods, as important supply chains between countries slowed to a halt. Businesses and countries alike are now having to reconsider the globalized manner in which they conduct commerce. Returning to normal after this pandemic has passed may be hugely risky, knowing what we know, hearing what we hear from epidemiologists who had, years ago, predicted something like this would happen and are predicting it will happen again.