Nice analogy, except for one essential part: French and Dutch immigrants did not have a history of blocking foreign investigations and covering up unwelcome information.
The Chinese have largely themselves to blame for the current suspicions against them. If they had been transparent from the start, the speculations would have been far fewer.
Well, the analogy might in fact be better than I thought: suspicion was initially cast at the Dutch and French since there were recent real wars with these countries (never mind “soft” combat like blocking investigations etc).
As an aside, I’m not taking a side in “blame” on China. I’m really only talking about the public opinion side of things. The cause of the fire was found through an investigation, and had nothing to do with the mob “crowdsourced” sleuthing. And the mob kept changing its mind as to who is to blame.
Sounds to me a lot like NYTimes saying one time “of course it’s not China you bigoted racist” to “ooh questions are being asked and it’s suspicious we don’t have answers” without any real change in available evidence.
Transparent by whose definition? Any investigation can be weaponised very easily. I remember seeing a tweet from one of the western scientists in China claiming the NYT misquoted them regarding the transparency & data they'd been shown.
The Chinese have largely themselves to blame for the current suspicions against them. If they had been transparent from the start, the speculations would have been far fewer.