Referring to Masayuki Takayama’s Weekly Shincho column “China Virus,” this article discusses the theory that the Spanish flu originated in China, the transport of Chinese laborers during World War I, and the Chinese Communist regime’s attempt to shift responsibility for the Wuhan virus. It questions China’s responsibility for the origin and global spread of pandemics.

March 30, 2020
The carriers were Chinese, just as in the case of the Spanish flu.
Even though that much is clear, Xi Jinping feigns ignorance, and China’s Foreign Ministry has begun claiming that the U.S. military brought it in.
The following is from the serial column by Masayuki Takayama, the one and only journalist in the postwar world, which closes this week’s issue of Weekly Shincho, published under the title “China Virus.”
This time, in his uniquely brilliant argument, he explains that the disease named “Spanish flu” at the end of the First World War actually originated in China.
The opening passage is omitted.
The 400 years of bullying Spain went so far as to turn even Franco, who was not such an evil man, into a monstrous dictator, and even the United Nations adopted a resolution calling for Spain to be treated as an outcast.
A little before that, at the end of the First World War, a deadly respiratory disease spread across the world.
In Japan it was called “epidemic influenza,” and it is said to have been the worst pandemic of the twentieth century, killing as many as 100 million people.
There were various theories about its place of origin, including barracks in Kansas and the trenches of the Western Front.
Recently, the Canadian historian Mark Humphries announced a theory that it “originated in China and was spread by Chinese people.”
According to that theory, Britain and France, short of labor during the war, hastily arranged for 100,000 coolies.
They crossed the Pacific, were transported by train from Vancouver to the Atlantic side, and were then sent again by sea to Britain and France.
At that time in China, a disease resembling pneumonic plague was spreading, killing 50 people a day.
The same symptoms appeared among the coolies, and records remain at a hospital in Noyelles-sur-Mer, France, stating that “hundreds of coolies died of respiratory disease.”
What should this vicious epidemic be called?
At the time, “Kansas disease” was also one of the proposed names.
It is said that the United States, disliking that idea, steered things toward calling it, in effect, the “Spanish flu,” after Spain, then an object of worldwide dislike.
A century has passed since then.
From Wuhan, a filthy infectious disease has spread across the world, driving both human life and the global economy to the brink of death.
The carriers were Chinese, just as in the case of the Spanish flu.
Even though that much is clear, Xi Jinping feigns ignorance, and China’s Foreign Ministry has begun claiming that the U.S. military brought it in.
Even if the place of origin had been Kansas, it would not matter.
The most shameless and disliked country in the world today is China.
What possible problem is there with calling it the “China virus”?