This is the essence of it. Bigger countries bully smaller countries, whether by troops on the ground, trade embargoes, or more subtle influencing or coercion. More powerful groups bully less powerful groups. More powerful people bully less powerful people.

I have no idea why people are attacking China. The idea of 'punishing' China seems like an abrogation of responsibility. CV19 originated in China, and China's initial suppression of whistleblowers was a dereliction of duty and did cause an outbreak when a different type of government might have managed to contain the virus. However their actions since then, purely in terms of suppressing the virus, have been exemplary, particularly compared with the atrocious mismanagement we've seen from other nations.

The rest of the world knew what was coming, and chose to do nothing until it was too late. Certain prominent politicians around the globe now seek to blame China in order to hide their own failure to take action. If the US/UK/whoever had implemented 14-day quarantine procedures for people entering the country as soon as the outbreak in China became apparent, then the death tolls in these countries would be negligible or zero, and the economic damage would have been slight rather than extreme. Blaming China is the 'grown-up' equivalent of the kid in the playground who is caught out doing something bad, then they just point at another kid and say 'he started it!'. You can't just try to pin your own failing on someone else, particularly if you run a country. Governments act too slowly, and are reactive rather than proactive. They are interested in what might make them look bad right now, rather than what might make them look bad a couple of weeks down the line. Our fault as voters in democracies really, it is us who put these idiots in power.



And this thing about the South China Sea, I am not defending China's attempts to wrest control over the area, but... this has been going on for years, but suddenly now it is a huge issue? Ridiculous. The people who are suddenly outraged by China's behaviour there and are demanding retributive action need to ask themselves why they had zero interest in this topic prior to the CV19 outbreak.