Bending Over for China

With the arrival of the new administration, comes the changing of the guard for diplomats, as all diplomats are chosen by the president’s administration. Biden’s new diplomats in China, however, have had an uncomfortable start to their new jobs.

On Feb 25th, The Department of State released a statement reporting that the new US Diplomats to China had been subject to anal COVID-19 tests. Yes, that’s right. Anal COVID-19 tests. If you think the nasal swab is bad… I couldn’t even imagine this one. Suffice to say,  the diplomats lodged a complaint to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, (although it seems like they should’ve lodged a complaint before the tests had been conducted). The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs denies the claim, saying that no US diplomat has ever been asked to be the subject of an anal test.

It turns out that not only are anal tests not common (shocker), but the diplomats weren’t even required to be tested at all. The Department of State has since assured them that they won’t receive the anal tests again. The DOS says that the tests were conducted in “error”, although, it’s quite an unusual thing to happen in an error. No other diplomat from any other country has reported being subject to these tests.

This news comes shortly after President Biden and Chinese “President” Xi Jinpeng’s first conversation since Biden came into office. Biden claims he mentioned "fundamental concerns" about China’s "coercive and unfair economic practices, crackdowns in Hong Kong, human rights abuses in Xinjiang (Uighurs), and increasingly assertive actions in the region, including towards Taiwan." Along with this, Biden says that they discussed strategies on how to team up to handle the COVID-19 crisis and climate change.

China has also recently “reported”, and I use that word loosely, that they’ve controlled the COVID-19 virus. After they had an increase of 80,000 cases in the month of February of 2020, they’ve since reported less than 10,000 cases nationwide. In addition, they had 4,634 deaths in February of 2020, but have reported 0 deaths in the year since then, while the rest of the world has toppled 2.6 million deaths.

       No matter how divided we get as a country, it gives me joy to see both sides reach across the aisle and can come together as one voice to condemn these actions.