Fury in Beijing as Germany asks China to pay £130bn for ‘coronavirus damages’
GERMANY has rattled China after joining the UK, France and the US in a rare attack, after Berlin called out Beijing’s responsibility for the global pandemic and even issued a £130bn invoice.
According to https://www.express.co.uk/ Germany has sparked outrage in China after a major newspaper put together a £130bn invoice that Beijing “owes” Berlin following the impact of the pandemic. Germany has followed France, the UK and the US in directing its anger at China, where the virus originated. Recent attacks come amid findings that Beijing appeared to cover up the true scale of the crisis, as the source of the outbreak remains a mystery.
A bombshell op-ed this week in Germany’s largest tabloid newspaper, Bild, joined this outrage by drawing up an itemised invoice for €149bn (£130b).
Bild Editor-in-Chief Julian Reichelt rebutted the criticism, saying: “We asked in our newspaper Bild whether China should pay for the massive economic damage the coronavirus is inflicting worldwide.
“Xi Jinping, your government and your scientists had to know long ago that coronavirus is highly infectious, but you left the world in the dark about it.”
“Your top experts didn’t respond when Western researchers asked to know what was going on in Wuhan.
“You were too proud and too nationalistic to tell the truth, which you felt was a national disgrace.”
The list includes a €27 billion charge for lost tourism revenue, up to €7.2 billion for the German film industry, a million euros an hour for German airline Lufthansa and €50 billion for German small businesses.
Troops
Bild calculated that this amounts to €1,784 (£1,550) per person if Germany’s GDP falls by 4.2 percent, under the title “What China owes us.”
China responded by claiming the invoice “stirs up xenophobia and nationalism”.
