In April last year, as the first wave of the pandemic ripped through Europe, demands erupted on Chinese social media for a halt to shipments of masks and other personal protective equipment to the Netherlands, where the death toll from Covid-19 was steadily rising. The internet users had picked up on a row over a Dutch proposal to redesignate a trade and investment office in Taiwan as the “Netherlands Office Taipei” – to the fury of the Chinese embassy in Amsterdam. The Global Times, a nationalistic tabloid affiliated to Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily, reported the story with the headline:…