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The Conversation
The Conversation
Stan Grant, Vice Chancellors Chair Australian/Indigenous Belonging, Charles Sturt University

Friday essay: Stan Grant on how tyrants use the language of germ warfare – and COVID has enabled them

A Uighur woman protests before a group of paramilitary police in western China's Xinjiang region. Ng Han Guan/AP

It is 2019. There is a virus lurking in China. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is warning that if it is not contained, it could infect the entire country. It could turn the country upside down. Tear at the social fabric. The CCP’s dream of harmony cannot withstand this. So they tell their people: this must be wiped out. Memories are too fresh in China of what happens when things spiral out of control.

China is a nation that barely hangs together. Throughout time, empires have risen and fallen. Bloodshed beyond imagining – on a scale almost unseen in human history – marks each turn in China’s fate.

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