H.E. Mr. Pete Hoekstra, the US Ambassador to the Netherlands, is very active, but seems to be spending his energy in the wrong place.

Anyone with basic common sense knows that the Ambassador of a country, as the plenipotentiary representative of sending state to the receiving state, enjoys a lofty position and has important responsibilities. The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations stipulates five functions of the Embassy, including representing the sending country, protecting its nationals, conducting negotiations, ascertaining the situation in the receiving country, and promoting friendly relations between the sending country and receiving country. Among them not a single word expressly or implicitly entitled the Ambassador the function of undermining relations between the receiving country and a third country.

But Ambassador Hoekstra seems to enjoy doing such things and even takes it as his major task. The interview he published in Algemeen Dagblad today confirms this again. The title of the article is "US Ambassador Lashes Out at China: Not Honest about Coronavirus."

We know that the U.S. is very seriously hit by the pandemic and has become the country with the largest number of confirmed cases in the world. We are concerned about this and sincerely hope that the U.S. epidemic will be brought under control at an early date, which is good for the whole world. At this critical moment, shouldn't the US Ambassador to the Netherlands also focus on promoting and participating in international cooperation in the fight against the pandemic? Would it be possible to keep American people from the threat of the spread of the virus by fabricating some lies that slander China?

Let's take a look at some of the weird words by Ambassador Hoekstra in this article:

He said that the information provided by China was lack of transparency and inaccurate, which caused the United States to misjudge the situation. The fact is that China received the first suspicious case report at the end of December last year, and formally notified the WHO at the beginning of January this year, and shared the whole nucleic acid sequence of the novel coronavirus with WHO and countries around the world on January 12. Since then, China has updated the data every day, notifying the virus's extremely contagious, very cunning and very harmful characteristics, and China's exploration of diagnosis and treatment methods. It also invited international experts to visit China on the spot. WHO has repeatedly appreciated China's rapid, open, transparent and responsible approach. Recently, Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of the well-known medical journal The Lancet, also said: "We knew in the last week of January that this was coming. The message from China was absolutely clear, that a new virus, with pandemic potential, was hitting cities." Should we believe these experts or Ambassador Hoekstra?

If the United States really does not understand the severity of the COVID-19 epidemic, why did the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issue a warning about the new corona virus on January 15th? Why on 25th of Jan US announced the closure of the Consulate General in Wuhan and the withdrawal of personnel? Why was the border closed on February 2nd to all Chinese citizens and foreigners who have been to China in the past 14 days? It should be known that the outbreak in the United States began to take place more than a month after these measures were taken.

It seems that in the article, he wants to express the view that the number of confirmed cases, death toll and mortality rate reported by the Chinese side were not true, and the participation of American scientists was excluded by the Chinese side, which led to the neglect of the severity of the virus in the U.S.in early stage, while the data reported by Italy and Spain were true. But why didn't he consult scientists in his own country before he said so? There are a lot of papers on the virus in many medical journals in the U.S. We also heard that not long ago, Dr. Fauci, the top medical expert in the U.S., reportedly said he refused to let others push him to say that China should have warned the U.S. three months beforehand, because it just didn't comport with facts. More importantly, in the past three months, the whole world has witnessed what strict measures China has taken, what a bitter fight the Chinese people have gone through, and what huge sacrifices have been made in order to stop the spread of the epidemic. The world is full of supportive wishes that "Stay Strong, China" "Stay Strong, Wuhan". Dr Bruce Aylward, foreign head of the China-WHO joint mission on COVID-19, said that "hundreds of thousands of Chinese people have benefited from the tremendous efforts" of China. Is Ambassador Hoekstra really turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to all the truth?

He also said that "American journalists were kicked out of China", the result of which is the epidemic in China was not reported in an objective and transparent way. Does he mean the world can only know about the truth through American journalists? Now there are more than 500 foreign journalists based in China, including journalists from some major Dutch media. In fact, he should know very well that China's requirement for some American journalists to leave the country is only a reciprocal countermeasure against the restrictive measures on Chinese media agencies in the US recently, which in effect expelled 60 Chinese journalists from the US. The countermeasure taken by China has nothing to do with the epidemic.

When being asked about China's aid to the severely affected areas in Europe, he even said that the U.S. is the one who pays to the WHO, while China "doesn't pay anything". This is really ridiculous. The U.S. has a well-known record of arrears in the payment of contributions to international organizations. As the world's largest economy, the U.S. should have contributed much more to mankind. China is still a developing country and has no intention to compare with the U.S., but China has always earnestly fulfilled the obligations as member state of international organizations. As a member of the WHO, we pay contributions of over US$ 57.4 million and voluntary contributions of over US$ 4.7 million every year. To combat the COVID-19 pandemic, China also announced an additional donation of $ 20 million to the WHO. Since the global outbreak of the COVID-19, the government and all walks of life of China have actively participated in international cooperation and proactively provided a lot of support to severely-hit countries (including the United States), not only with materials, but also anti-epidemic experiences. Our purpose is to save more lives and maintain global public health security in a humanitarian spirit. Ambassador Hoekstra distorted these contributions of China into "taking responsibility" for the outbreak, which is totally unreasonable. If he wants to deliver the message that the United States does not need China's cooperation, please speak up directly.

What is most absurd is that when being asked what others can learn from China's experience, Ambassador Hoekstra answered: "What China can learn is how well the United States and Europe are working together in this crisis." Well, China is willing to learn from other countries with humility. There are also a lot of good things in the United States we can learn from, but we will certainly not learn from people like Ambassador Hoekstra.

At the beginning of this article, we say that Ambassador Hoekstra seems to enjoy slandering China and undermining Sino-Dutch relations. This is a fact-based conclusion. We browsed all tweets he posted since January, among which more than a dozen are vilifying or negatively suggestive to China. He also made such remarks on television and newspapers, and on other social occasions. Some of his remarks even use blunt words to coach host country on its domestic policies. People just don't understand whether he did it because of his personal professionalism and style, or following Washington's instructions?

We have to point out that China understands the special relationship between the United States and the Netherlands and has never developed Sino-Dutch relations through hindering the relationship between the Netherlands and the United States. The peaceful coexistence of countries with different systems has always been a basic principle of Chinese diplomacy. If Ambassador Hoekstra thinks that the relationship between the United States and the Netherlands can only be maintained by destroying the relationship between China and the Netherlands, isn't it too unconfident about the foundation of the relationship between the United States and the Netherlands? We kindly suggest Ambassador Hoekstra doing his homework before openly comments on China, including clarifying the basic facts, and also carefully studying international law, especially the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

Source: Chinese Embassy in the Netherlands