Asking questions about China’s star

But this article is about something else. It is about the ease with which the symbol of an authority that is overseeing the systematic destruction of China’s Uighur Muslim population can be found here among the sandwiches and salads of our supermarkets.

It is also about how that same symbol, which has for decades been used by fashion and advertising executives as a way of attaching Cold War chic to their products, should now conjure images of thousands of people held in camps, the forced sterilisation of women and the extermination of a culture. Yet it apparently does no such thing. Instead the red star is as accepted here as easily as the red lion stamp on an egg.

There is an extra irony in finding it used in a packet of masks and as an emblem of China’s global commitment to protect people from Covid. Walk further into Tesco and you will find many bottles of Australian wine, one of the products that China has stopped importing to punish Australia for daring to suggest that there should be an independent enquiry into the origins of the coronavirus.

This is not a call to boycott masks made in China. But should supermarket executives really so unquestioningly subject their customers to such state propaganda? Because they should know that system that proudly announces itself as our protector by slipping its card into a seemingly blameless packet of masks, is the same authority that is committing the biggest crime against humanity this century.