Commentary by James Watkins, Editor and host of the podcast Coronavirus Update
When the world has shaken off PTSD from the coronavirus and things begin to settle, nations are going to realize that what China did was a very bad thing. Even the liberal media will not be able to turn a blind eye to the tragedy we are witnessing in slow motion across the globe and the culpability China alone possesses in creating the coronavirus pandemic.
We are going to start asking questions about why they, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) who rule China with an iron fist, tried to cover up the virus from December 5 to January 20th, and in doing so, allowed it to spread costing the lives of tens of thousands of its own people, as well as potentially hundreds of thousands of other people around the world in over 178 countries, damaging further still the lives of over two billion people who have been affected directly and indirectly from the coronavirus spread.
The CCP covered up the virus for 45 days; more than six weeks passed while the virus was spreading with urgency in Wuhan and throughout Hubei Province, and then on to the shores of six continents during peak global holiday travel season – and they knew there was a virus spreading between humans, killing them in numbers they also covered up – and continue to do so on this very day!
The facts of this are not in dispute.
It matters less if this was some virus cooked up in a Wuhan bio-lab, or if it came off a tick from a bat in a wild animal market in Wuhan.
What matters more is the lack of transparency the Chinese Communist Party exhibits which display its disdain and disregard for international behavioral norms, coupled with a clear inability to behave responsibly aside a league of progressive and cooperative nations.
All of this which now relegates the government of China to little more than a bush-league rogue nation; a childish and irresponsible nation whose actions must be held to account to determine its future place at the table of global power. After all, are we not tribes?
Is not China a tribe in the modern sense? a congregation of that nations’ underlying and agreed-upon principles it wishes to purport to the world as a way of life, as a quality and ideology of living?
And what do we now witness from China while the deaths of 26,000 people lie still, through no fault of their own?
We see deceit.
To further obfuscate the truth behind the spread of coronavirus only exacerbates China’s already childish behavior.
These recent actions might be predictably acceptable for a small island nation you might discover in the South Pacific, or a temote Amazonian jungle tribe, but such behavior coming from the 2nd largest economic world power with the largest percentage of the world’s population should prove quite embarrassing for 1.4 billion people who now carry this mark foisted upon them by a government who has no business governing, as is clearly emphasized by the ever-increasing fatality count splashed across the media screens of the world.
Shame must now come upon the Chinese Communist Party, and the longer they deny responsibility and continue to act with the precocious intent to deceive (i.e., selling 80,000 defective test kits to The Czech Republic (at a 500% markup), or threatening to cut off prescription drugs to America) the more anger will come, not only from the global leaders, but also from within, from a population who now realizes the cost of believing in a government they were told would protect them, but instead, delivered only misery and despair.
No one will lament their absence when they are finally gone.
For the CCP, the road to reconciliation will be measured not in weeks, months or even years, but in decades.
We will never forget that the CCP did this.
The shame of COVID-19 being allowed to spread to all of humanity falls squarely on the shoulders of the ruling party in the People’s Republic of China. There is no denying this fact.
The story of the coronavirus pandemic is still being written. But at this early date, we can see all kinds of moments where different decisions could have lessened the severity of the outbreak we are currently enduring. You have probably heard variations of, “Chinese authorities denied that the virus could be transferred from human to human until it was too late.” What you have probably not heard is how emphatically, loudly, and repeatedly the Chinese government insisted human transmission was impossible, long after doctors in Wuhan had concluded human transmission was ongoing — and how the World Health Organization assented to that conclusion, despite the suspicions of other outside health experts.
The U.S. government’s response to this threat was clearly not nearly enough, and not enacted anywhere near quickly enough. Most European governments weren’t prepared either. Few governments around the world were or are prepared for the scale of the danger. We can only wonder whether accurate and timely information from China would have altered the way the U.S. government, the American people, and the world prepared for the oncoming danger of infection.
Some point in late 2019: The coronavirus jumps from some animal species to a human being. The best guess at this point is that it happened at a Chinese “wet market.”
December 6: According to a study in The Lancet,the symptom onset date of the first patient identified was “Dec 1, 2019 . . . 5 days after illness onset, his wife, a 53-year-old woman who had no known history of exposure to the market, also presented with pneumonia and was hospitalized in the isolation ward.” In other words, as early as the second week of December, Wuhan doctors were finding cases that indicated the virus was spreading from one human to another.
Sometime in “Late December”: Wuhan hospitals notice “an exponential increase” in the number of cases that cannot be linked back to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, according to the New England Journal of Medicine.
December 30: Dr. Li Wenliang sent a message to a group of other doctors warning them about a possible outbreak of an illness that resembled severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), urging them to take protective measures against infection.
Tao Lina, a public-health expert and former official with Shanghai’s center for disease control and prevention, tells the South China Morning Post, “I think we are [now] quite capable of killing it in the beginning phase, given China’s disease control system, emergency handling capacity and clinical medicine support.”
January 1: The Wuhan Public Security Bureau issued summons to Dr. Li Wenliang, accusing him of “spreading rumors.” Two days later, at a police station, Dr. Li signed a statement acknowledging his “misdemeanor” and promising not to commit further “unlawful acts.” Seven other people are arrested on similar charges and their fate is unknown.
According to a New York Times study of cellphone data from China, 175,000 people leave Wuhan that day. According to global travel data research firm OAG, 21 countries have direct flights to Wuhan. In the first quarter of 2019 for comparison, 13,267 air passengers traveled from Wuhan, China, to destinations in the United States, or about 4,422 per month. The U.S. government would not bar foreign nationals who had traveled to China from entering the country for another month.
January 3:The Chinese government continued efforts to suppress all information about the virus: “China’s National Health Commission, the nation’s top health authority, ordered institutions not to publish any information related to the unknown disease, and ordered labs to transfer any samples they had to designated testing institutions, or to destroy them.”
Roughly one month after the first cases in Wuhan, the United States government is notified. Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, gets initial reports about a new coronavirus from Chinese colleagues, according to Health and Human Services secretary Alex Azar. Azar, who helped manage the response at HHS to earlier SARS and anthrax outbreaks, told his chief of staff to make sure the National Security Council was informed.
Wang Linfa, an expert on emerging infectious diseases at the Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, said he was frustrated that scientists in China were not allowed to speak to him about the outbreak. Dr. Wang said, however, that he thought the virus was likely not spreading from humans to humans because health workers had not contracted the disease. “We should not go into panic mode,” he said.
Don’t get too mad at Wang Linfa; he was making that assessment based upon the inaccurate information Chinese government was telling the world.
January 10: After unknowingly treating a patient with the Wuhan coronavirus, Dr. Li Wenliang started coughing and developed a fever. He was hospitalized on January 12. In the following days, Li’s condition deteriorated so badly that he was admitted to the intensive care unit and given oxygen support.
Also on this day, political leaders in Hubei province, which includes Wuhan, began their regional meeting. The coronavirus was not mentioned over four days of meetings.
January 14: Wuhan city health authorities release another statement declaring, “Among the close contacts, no related cases were found.” Wuhan doctors have known this was false since early December, from the first victim and his wife, who did not visit the market.
This is five or six weeks after the first evidence of human-to-human transmission in Wuhan.
January 15:Japan reported its first case of coronavirus. Japan’s Health Ministry said the patient had not visited any seafood markets in China, adding that “it is possible that the patient had close contact with an unknown patient with lung inflammation while in China.”
The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission begins to change its statements, now declaring, “Existing survey results show that clear human-to-human evidence has not been found, and the possibility of limited human-to-human transmission cannot be ruled out, but the risk of continued human-to-human transmission is low.” Recall Wuhan hospitals concluded human-to-human transmission was occurring three weeks earlier. A statement the next day backtracks on the possibility of human transmission, saying only, “Among the close contacts, no related cases were found.”
January 19: The Chinese National Health Commission declares the virus “still preventable and controllable.” The World Health Organization updates its statement, declaring, “Not enough is known to draw definitive conclusions about how it is transmitted, the clinical features of the disease, the extent to which it has spread, or its source, which remains unknown.”
That day, the head of China’s national health commission team investigating the outbreak, confirmed that two cases of infection in China’s Guangdong province had been caused by human-to-human transmission and medical staff had been infected.
By this point, millions of people have left Wuhan, carrying the virus all around China and into other countries.
January 22: WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus continued to praise China’s handling of the outbreak. “I was very impressed by the detail and depth of China’s presentation. I also appreciate the cooperation of China’s Minister of Health, who I have spoken with directly during the last few days and weeks. His leadership and the intervention of President Xi and Premier Li have been invaluable, and all the measures they have taken to respond to the outbreak.”
At a meeting of the WHO Emergency Committee, panel members express “divergent views on whether this event constitutes a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern’ or not. At that time, the advice was that the event did not constitute a PHEIC.”
January 23: Chinese authorities announce their first steps for a quarantine of Wuhan. By this point, millions have already visited the city and left it during the Lunar New Year celebrations. Singapore and Vietnam report their first cases, and by now an unknown but significant number of Chinese citizens have traveled abroad as asymptomatic, oblivious carriers.
January 24: Vietnam reports person-to-person transmission, and Japan, South Korea, and the U.S report their second cases. The second case is in Chicago. Within two days, new cases are reported in Los Angeles, Orange County, and Arizona. The virus is in now in several locations in the United States, and the odds of preventing an outbreak are dwindling to zero.
On February 1, Dr. Li Wenliang tested positive for coronavirus. He died from it six days later.47
One final note: On February 4, Mayor of Florence Dario Nardella urged residents to hug Chinese people to encourage them in the fight against the novel coronavirus. Meanwhile, a member of Associazione Unione Giovani Italo Cinesi, a Chinese society in Italy aimed at promoting friendship between people in the two countries, called for respect for novel coronavirus patients during a street demonstration. “I’m not a virus. I’m a human. Eradicate the prejudice.”
This epidemic will subside. But we will not forget Beijing’s irresponsibility, nor its cowardice and dishonesty
We have a remarkable ability to elevate the petty over the substantive. President Trump has been thoroughly scolded for calling the virus from China the “Chinese virus” — don’t let’s be beastly to the ChiComs — but the culpability of the Chinese government in the disaster that is playing out around the world is discussed, if it is discussed at all, in the most muffled way. There is a long history of attaching geographic names to diseases. If the present instances are unfair to the Chinese people, who have suffered massively from the outbreak, a better name would be “Xi’s disease.”
We do not blame the Chinese people for the fact that a novel coronavirus cropped up in Wuhan. We blame the government in Beijing for making the problem dramatically worse by trying to cover it up, for its ridiculous efforts to try to shift blame for the epidemic onto the United States and others, and for its ongoing attempts to veil its own shameful incompetence by expelling journalists from the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.
Beijing’s vanity — and its insecurity — gave the coronavirus “a critical monthlong head start,” as James Palmer put it in Foreign Policy. The Communist Party machine that rules 1.4 billion people in China may look like an immovable monolith, but it has weaknesses and fissures. The Chinese people at large may not feel much sympathy for the despised Uighur minority, but they know that if the Uighurs can be rounded up and put in concentration camps, then so can they. They have watched as the government of Xi Jinping has violated the terms of the settlement under which, in theory, Hong Kong is supposed to enjoy a high degree of autonomy and self-rule. They have seen the brutal suppression of dissidents at home and Beijing’s attempts, too often successful, to bully its neighbors and trading partners. They know firsthand the bottomless corruption of the Chinese ruling elite. And they have, for a generation, accepted that corruption and repression in exchange for security and a rising standard of material life. The rulers in Beijing know that they are always one serious recession away from being turned out — and worse — and they so feared economic disruption and damage to their own institutional prestige that they placed a losing bet that the heavy hand of their police state would be heavy enough to quash the coronavirus outbreak.
We are all now paying a price for that corruption and stupidity.
A new disease can crop up anywhere. We do not blame Beijing for that. We blame Beijing for the other Chinese virus: the repression it practices at home and seeks to export, and its criminal negligence in this epidemic.
We blame them for Li Wenliang, the doctor who tried to warn his fellow medical practitioners about the situation in Wuhan only to be silenced by Chinese gestapo and forced to sign a statement that his warnings were criminal misbehavior. He was soon dead of the very plague he tried to warn of. A half-dozen other doctors were silenced in the same way.
We blame them for Xu Zhiyong and Li Qiaochu, anti-corruption activists who criticized Xi Jinping’s coronavirus coverup. They have been disappeared. So have many others. Their likely fates are torture and death.6
We blame them for the lies of Zhao Lijian, the Chinese official who has tried to claim that the coronavirus came from the United States to Wuhan, not the other way around. He has suggested that this was a project of the U.S. military. That is very dangerous talk. Other Chinese diplomats and officials have made similar outrageous claims.
This epidemic will subside. But we will not forget Beijing’s irresponsibility, nor its cowardice and dishonesty in the early days of the outbreak. The Beijing regime has long been a boot on the neck of the Chinese people, but it is now a menace to the world at large. There are many things that we hope will change in the wake of this crisis. The character of the government in Beijing should be one of them.
Did China develop and accidently allow a weaponized virus to escapein Wuhan?
The story really begins in 2009 in Winnipeg, Canada at a bio-weapons research lab, and as reported in the Winnipeg Free Press, two Chinese nationals were able to steal 22 vials containing an unknown strain of a new virus and escaped back to China. These vials contained the coronavirus strain taken from a Saudi nationals’ lung who been infected with SARS.
Back to the future.
It is worth noting, due to its suspicious timing, that the very doctor behind the discovery and extraction of the unknown virus strain in Winnipeg, and who also reported the theft, was set to give a speech on January 23, 2020 in Kenya at the University of Nairobi, except that Dr Frank Plummer died suddenly. He had been working on a vaccine for HIV, and was expected to share some of his research which reportedly could have applications to helpingfind a vaccine for COVID-19.
The BBC says Dr. Plummer died from a heart attack at the age of 67.
What we know is that the coronavirus was stolen from Plummers’ lab by two Chinese nationals, Xiangguo Qiq and her colleague, smuggled the virus samples and took them to Wuhan where they have China’s only bio-weapons lab, and have since, held it in their possession for over a decade.
What we also know from reports inside the facility is that bats were used for testing of the new coronavirus, 605 of them. One staff researcher is on record stating blood from one of the infected bats got on his skin, and that also, ticks were discovered on the bats. We know that ticks can be a common carrier of disease (i.e., the Bubonic plague).
We also, suspect, though it is not confirmed, that some laboratories will sell dead or live animals to local food markets to avoid the higher costs of incinerating or properly disposing of animal carcass used in testing. The fact that the Wuhan Lab is only 3 and a half miles from the seafood market makes it seem likely the virus made its way to the fish market from the lab, though this has never been proven. But, as biowar expert Dr. Frank Boyles states, “the virus came into the food market before it came out,” meaning an infected person had come into the fish market and infected others. It probably was not, contradictory to earlier reports, emanating from an animal sold at the market.
Many now believe earlier infections occurred at a nearby hospital or, most likely coming from an infected person at the Wuhan BSL-4 lab, who may have unknowingly became a superspreader since a person infected can also be asymptomatic for up to 24 days.
We will probably never know the exact circumstances that led to the initial spread of COVID-19. But we do know the CCP knew about the lab, knew about the virus ,and were in fact, probably working on either a vaccine, or trying to weaponize the virus, or both.
We suspect, based on the further testimony from lab personnel in Wuhan, someone was treated at a local hospital who had shown signs of the coronavirus as early as November. It is likely the patient, what we might term patient Zero, infected the doctor who then spread the virus to other staff, and consequently, other patients as well.
We believe it is this scenario that prompted Chinese health officials to, at first, deny the outbreak (and even the virus itself), arresting anyone who discussed the virus in December and early January, and denying the outbreak until as late as January 21, 2020 – three weeks after the first case was reported at Union Hospital in Wuhan.
DID BEIJING KNOW? ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS
We believe Beijing knews it was the coronavirus they had stolen that had spread, because they:
1) Still will not allow U.S. CDC health officials in to Wuhan
2) They denied the problem for over 8 weeks, then jumped zealously as if they had a pandemic on their hands (because they probably knew how dangerous the virus was) AND
3) Once it became apparent that the virus could not be contained, China started taking severe containment action that reflects they were very well aware of the danger of this virus because of:
The mass arrests of suspected asymptomatic citizens
The sealing of apartment complexes and large dwelling areas to prevent people from leaving their residences
Large forces have been mobilized to sterilize entire neighborhoods without restraint in an almost desperate action
The underreporting of crematoriums who are working fully-staffed, 12 hour shifts throughout Wuhan disposing of dead bodies of both humans and animals.
The uncanny statistic showing there is always about the same percentage of deaths to infections at 2.1 percent. It has not wavered since reporting first began, which indicates almost a quota-like policy in reporting fatalities, or a specific mandate was issued to never let the mortality rate get too high, which would reveal the real impact of the virus, or spread panic.
THE GENIE IS OUT OF THE BOTTLE
So the question becomes: If the Chinese were working on weaponizing this virus, who were they planning on using it on?
To believe this virus came from a bat during hibernation season when there are no bats within 600 miles of Wuhan (except at Wuhan Labs being used as testing animals) is to believe in propaganda.
There is a clear link between the Wuhan BSL-4, Coronavirus and the Winnipeg laboratory where Dr. Frank Plummer had worked on the virus going back to 2009, and we have limited testimony from Wuhan Lab workers who talk about using bats to test the virus on, and that some personnel might have become infected.
We also know that one of the first victim of the virus, Li Wenliang, a local doctor at Wuhan Central Hospital hospital, had alerted his staff via email to prepare for an outbreak. He was subsequently placed under house arrest for causing unrest, where he cared for his wife who had contracted the disease within weeks of its first appearance, which indicates the coronavirus was released into the general public as far back as early December OR there might have been a controlled test of exposing COVID-19 to a few people, but that things got out of control because Chinese researchers had underestimated the infection rate, and how easy to was to spread.
Early reports say the corona virus can be spread just by breathing on someone. In recent days this report has completely vanished. But if it is true that COVID-19 is airborne, it woudl also explain why so many passengers on board the Diamond Princess got infected even though no one showed signs of sickness until just a few days ago. The ship had left port 14 days ago.
Still, there are many unanswered question. The geopolitical ramifications of this virus being the product of bio-chemical warfare are immense. When you have the 2nd major world power producing bio-weapons, the world will be forced to respond and China will be forced to answer for it.
We will continue to follow this story where it leads. It is not for the purposes of providing conspiracy to confuse or to create unnecessary fear, but rather to determine the real global threat of this virus, and to learn if China is in fact, deliberately responsible, actually liable, for the damage now being done around the world.
You have probably heard about to Communist threat?
Secretary of State this week commented on the threat, reminding us that it is the greatest threat facing America. But does the average citizen really know what that means? Do we think it means China wants to land on our shores and take over our cities? Do we think the threat means China wants to bomb us?
No. It is none of these obvious, perhaps even archaic and more traditional threats. It is much more subtle, and in fact is on multiple fronts. The least of which is the economic threat. Never doubt the Chinese would like to have an upper hand on the American economy,but because it is a closed system, it will never achieve our level of success. Like it or not, Free market capitalism has as its greatest advantage, transparency, it is a meritocracy based on economic fundamentals that means everyone agrees to play by the rules. In China, a communist dictatorship, the only transparency is what the government wants people to believe.
But lets take a look at the two other grave threats China poses to the West.
1. The Communist philosophy. Remember, a godless government means government can dictate rights. The doctrine is being taught to our children in college. It is the idea that the collective is more important than the individual, the State or , Big Government can solve the major problems like health care, income inequality, even to a certain degree, gender-equality, but the cost is the State regulates everything. This is China, this is North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, places where the Government, those in power, make the rules and oppress all who oppose. Religious freedom in many of the countries is a death sentence, the right to assembly, the right to protest, the right to own property is gone. And yet 35% of our youth say socialism, which is the basis and foundation by which Communism is based, is a good idea, that paternal government, is a better approach to governing. This is an existential threat to the idea of a democratic republic where individual rights are bestowed upon us by our Creator, and that government serves people, not the other way around.
It would be wrong to suggest that China trying to subvert people into adopting communism in the United States, but it would be correct to say that any disruption, including social conflicts, that could weaken the political system in the U.S. would be advantageous to the Communist Party of China. One primary reason for destabilizing the U.S. is that it makes us more vulnerable to spying, and in some cases, stealing of American technology to use against us in military application. There are millions of people who wake up everyday and go to work in China as what we would call cybercriminals, but they work for the Ministry of Truth. Their job, to find weakness, to collect data on Americans, to gather information on people who positions of power in American business, politics, and entertainment. If you are not concerned with this, then you underscore the intentions of the Chinese to your own demise.
The second great threat China poses is the exporting of technology to other world government leaders who, like the CCP, could care less about human rights and are excited about the idea of using technology to oppress dissenters and control millions of people through social credit scores and monitoring. You might not care about this, you jight even think it is not dissimilar to the way the U.S has a credit agency, and that everyone shares thier data, so whats the big deal? Except that I would remind you that the Government, at least not yet, is using tech to monitor every transaction to to use the ability to cut you off, as a way to pressure you into complicity. This is the ugly face of Totalitarianism.
And i you think this is all some dystopian scare tactic,YouTube Social Credit Score in China and see what comes up. It will frighten you, and you will come to understand that when Mike Pompeo says China is a bigger threat than people imagine, you better believe it.
The purpose of Speaking Out if awareness. I will bring you awareness. If you believe Freedom, religious freedom, social and economic freedom and limited government is good and worth preserving, then let’s work together.
I will bring you updates, and you share these updates withouthers. We simply cannot live in the shadows. It is time to pick sides, and its not about Trump verses No Trump. Its much bigger than that. The real threat is the attempt for other world leaders and governments to marginalize the U.S., marginalize freedom of speech, marginalize freedom of religions express.
Go to my website. Check out my articles, comment, contact me, and let’s work together. The website is CandidlySpeaking.net
Our Western media really knows how to kill a story, or in the least, make the story uninteresting because the media itself doesn’t really understand it. And by media I mean Western Journalists who are more preoccupied with Trump than they are with the ruthless mega-monster known as China.
Hong Kong is scared, and they should be. Breathing down their necks is a regime that is in lockdown-mode when it comes to surveillance and strict population control. It stopped being about extradition rights 9 months ago. It is now about freedom itself, and the fact that the American flag is the Hong Kongers flag of choice is telling.
You see, for all of those taught in U.S. public school systems, Hong Kong used to be under British rule until 1997, that is when Hong Kong became part of China, with the stipulation that the small Island State could retain its free-market policies, meaning it could remain relatively independent from Communist China. One Country, Two-Systems was the mandate, but recently things have changed.
For one thing China’s economy is a fraud and they know it. It’s like Jinga, only this tower is so high up and wobbly no one can even see the top.
The escalating U.S. China trade war is also not helping. Chinese needs America to buy its stuff, and Trump knows it. Meanwhile, two things have been taking place in China for the past few years, more surveillance (thanks to new and much-improved technology), and China’s crackdown on dissidents. Usually when you have a “crackdown” it means people at the top are nervous. The CCP needs Hong Kings’ money, I think, because they have run out of their own. But more importantly, China needs obedience. If the mainlanders start hearing about resistance, the fire could spread. Right now China can control its people because it has the tech and the fear to do it. But not so in Hong Kong (this is why you see a lot of protestors wearing masks, which prevents their image from being captured by face-recognition technology).
What happens next is anyone’s guess, but Americans who think it doesn’t matter should remember that if China wins this, it means they gain strength. If they lose, we have the upper hand and Trump will have scored a major victory going into 2020. A broken China is defined as giving in to the resistance of Hong Kong protestors and backing off. Not likely in the long term, but in the short term, it might be prudent for China to fight this battle another day, which they are wont to do.
Remember, China has its own domestic issues at home: high unemployment, urban sprawl, a weak Yuan and of course, a trade deal that keeps them afloat unless Trump dangles the carrot too long.
A fallen regime in China is like the wall coming down in East Berlin in 1989. That was a gift to Reagan, but it also ushered in greater democracy and free markets for Europe, not to mention millions of former Soviets who lives would vastly improve in a free-market system (too bad leadership hasn’t improved in Russia, but some things take time).
China is the Stalinist empire of the 21st Century. They have concentration camps, they kill people because of their faith, they sell organs taken from prisoners, they export their wicked surveillance and social monitoring software to world despots (like Venezuela and Iran), and they are the largest country by population in the world, so yes, they need to go down, and go down hard.
Why does China behave so badly on the world stage?
Obviously China still thinks it can do what it wants and no one will find out about it.
The Communist regime seems to think we don’t know they are taking people to re-education camps and torturing them. I guess Chinese people have never heard of 1984, or George Orwell, or Aldous Huxley and Brave New World. I guess they must think we buy into their propaganda.
What gives China the right to steal other people’s intellectual property to avoid paying for someone else’s innovation? I suppose in a communist regime, there is no individual property rights, so to them, stealing someone else’s ideas is perfectly normal. No wonder they are so horrible at innovation.
Why is what many would consider the home of the worlds wisest philosophies, namely Buddhism and Confucianism, be so ignorant to their own rich religious culture, and instead, embrace a blind atheism? Does the Communist party really believe they can stamp out a person’s yearning for truth? Does the CCP really assert it knows for sure there is no spiritual ideal, an ideal that for thousands of years, has benefitted Chinese culture?
And how long does China believe it can continue to oppress its people, keeping them stupid and uninformed when all around them, invisible and unable to control information is free flowing.
China has a choice. It can continue to spend every resource it has to control and regulate its population of over 2 billion people, or it can set them free, instilling in them loyalty to the ideal of China, which is peace through prosperity, instead of the idea of China, which is to oppress dissent and inflict pain upon its citizens in order to reinforce fear in its communities. This cannot stand, nor will the human spirit be vanquished. History shows us time and time again that when people are oppressed they will eventually revolt.
Hong Kong has lit the fuse that will ignite the passion for freedom elsewhere in mainland China. Your economy will not yield for 14 months as you await to see if your trading nemesis Donald Trump goes away, and you risk your BRI as your dollar becomes weaker. Sending people back to the farms will not solve your problems.
China has a choice. It can change for the better, loosen its grip on power and have faith in its people, or it can go the way of so many other regimes who believed they could hold on to power forever, to the bloodshed of many, to the survival of few who held to such hubris notions of invincibility.
