Could China have done more to prevent the coronavirus pandemic? One tabloid editor in Germany certainly thinks so and an extraordinary bust-up has broken out between the Chinese government and his newspaper as a result. The row kicked off last week when Bild – the best-selling paper in Germany – published an editorial entitled ‘What China owes us’, calling for China to pay reparations of £130 billion for the damage done by the outbreak of the virus.
Later that day, the Chinese embassy in Berlin then responded with an open letter saying ‘we regard the style in which you ‘campaign’ against China in your current report on page two as infamous… Those who do the same as you do with today’s Bild newspaper fuel nationalism, prejudice and xenophobia’.
It’s safe to say Bild editor Julian Reichelt didn’t take the criticism lying down. Reichelt has since retaliated with a no-holds-barred response to China’s President Xi Jinping, in which he reads the Chinese leadership the riot act:
You shut down every newspaper and website that is critical of your rule, but not the stalls where bat soup is sold.
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